From early to late adolescence: Alcohol use and anger relationships

Purpose: To evaluate the longitudinal relationship of alcohol use in early adolescence to anger in late adolescence. Methods: Data were collected in Indianapolis, Indiana, from 1987 to 1993 as part of a large drug abuse prevention trial. Fifty percent of the 1201 students were female, 75%, white, and 69%, low socioeconomic status, who were surveyed in grades 6/7, 9/10, and 11/12. Subjects were asked four anger-related questions: "When I have a problem, I get mad at people," "When I have a problem, I do bad things or cause trouble," "When I have a problem, I say or do nasty things," and "I am a hotheaded person." Two additional items asked subjects to report the number of alcoholic drinks consumed and frequency of drunkenness in the past 30 days. Odds ratios (OR) were used to assess the predictive relationship of alcohol use in early adolescence to anger in late adolescence. Results: Early use of alcohol increased the odds of later anger. Specifically, alcohol use in the past month in grade 6/7 increased the odds in grade 11/12 of saying or doing nasty things (OR = 8.23, p < .01), self-reported hotheadedness (OR = 9.72, p < .01), and high anger on a composite anger scale (OR = 4.84, p < .05). Drunkenness in the past month in grade 6/7 increased the odds of self-reported hotheadedness (OR = 6.17, p < .05) and high anger on the anger scale (OR = 3.20, p < .05) in grade 9/10 and doing something bad to cause trouble in grade 11/12 (OR = 24.97, p < .01). For subjects in grade 9/10, alcohol use in the past month increased the odds in grade 11/12 of doing something bad to cause trouble (OR = 2.79, p < .05), saying or doing nasty things (OR = 2.02, p < .05), and self-reported hotheadedness (OR 2.51, p < .05). Conclusions: The present study showed that alcohol use in early adolescence was associated with increased anger, both in middle and late adolescence, controlling for gender, age, and socioeconomic status. The findings suggest that alcohol and drug prevention programs delivered in early adolescence may have the capacity to prevent risk for later anger and related violent behavior. (C) Society for Adolescent Medicine, 2001.