Alcohol and the Teen Brain (E29)
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Gill discusses alcohol and the teen brain. She explains how bullying contributes to teen drinking and why teens tend to binge drink (hint: it has to do with their brains!). This topic connects back to episode 22 on anxiety, so you’ll learn more about brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) with an explanation on DNA and RNA. She will also discuss how teen drinking puts kids at risk to develop addictions later in life and some statistics on this topic. This episode is very interesting, so even if you didn't drink as a teen or have a teenager, you will still enjoy learning this information.
Key Takeaways
The earlier you start drinking, the more likely you are to develop a problem with alcohol. This is because heavy drinking while your brain is still developing can cause changes to the brain that wouldn’t happen otherwise. These changes can make it more likely that the person will develop an addiction problem, where if they didn’t drink during these years, these changes may have never occurred.
More than 90% of the alcohol that is consumed by teens is in the form of binge drinking. A big contributor to this is that teens don’t feel the negative effects as quickly as adults do, and they don’t display signs of drunkenness as quickly.
A 2006 national survey published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine looked at about 43,000 adults who began drinking before the age of 14. They found that almost half became alcohol-dependent at some point in their lives, compared to 9% of people who waited to drink until they were 21. Even when genetic predispositions are taken into account, this correlation still holds.
Cite this page
Tietz, G. Episode 29: Alcohol and the Teen Brain. Sober Powered. 2021
Sources
John Peyton Bohnsack, Tara Teppen, Evan J. Kyzar, Svetlana Dzitoyeva, Subhash C. Pandey. The lncRNA BDNF-AS is an epigenetic regulator in the human amygdala in early onset alcohol use disorders. Translational Psychiatry, 2019; 9 (1)
Silveri, M. Just How does Drinking Affect the Teenage Brain? McLean. 2020
Paturel, A. The Effects of Drinking on the Teenage Brain. Brain and Life. 2011
Melanie Klinck, Anna Vannucci, Tessa Fagle, Christine McCauley Ohannessian. Appearance-related teasing and substance use during early adolescence.. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 2020
Louise Mewton, Briana Lees, Rahul Tony Rao. Lifetime perspective on alcohol and brain health. BMJ, 2020
