According to Deborah Dawson, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health, who was the lead researcher, That is even worse than it initially sounds. That is because even when they aren't experiencing stress "their base levels of drinking are already higher than those of other drinkers," Dawson was quoted as saying in a press release.
The study looked at the drinking habits of 27,000 people over the course of one year.
Researchers found that when a person started drinking at 14 or younger that their average daily consumption of alcohol shot up by 19 percent with each additional stressful event in their lives. However, among people who started drinking when they were older than 18 the increase was a mere 3 percent.
Researchers concluded that "the association between stress and volume of consumption was significant only for early initiators."
Those results indicate that young teens would benefit if they were given stress-reduction techniques that could serve as an alternative to drinking, the authors wrote. They also said there was no simple or easy way to stop teens from drinking.
The study appears in the January issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
