High IQ linked to drug use
thechart.blogs.cnn.com
thechart.blogs.cnn.com
The articles shy away from the elephant in the room which is that the UK and US gvts have a massive legal and propaganda effort to prevent drug use. Indeed the idea that only stupid people do drugs is part of this propaganda.
So maybe its because a higher IQ allows one to realize that the War on Drugs is fucking irrational bullshit and magical thinking and act accordingly (i.e. to choose for oneself).
In a world where broccoli is illegal because its "evil", the headline could have been "High IQ linked to broccoli eating".
Here's a question: is a high IQ linked to smoking? How about alcohol?
Update: So alcohol is also correlated with iq too.
From the article:
> The lead researcher says he isn't surprised by the findings. "Previous research found for the most part people with high IQs lead a healthy life, but that they are more likely to drink to excess as adults," says James White a psychologist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom.
What the article doesn't explore is the fact that drugs are expensive; isn't it possible that drug use is correlated with revenue?
The study apparently didn't make a difference between addicts and occasional users.
IQ is also correlated with revenue (probably because that's what it actually measures: socio-economic class), and so that may be a part of the explanation, at least for "recreational" drugs.
False. Charles Murray compared brothers of the same household of different intelligence levels, and found significant disparities in income.
http://www.eugenics.net/papers/murray.html (article originally appeared in The Telegraph)
It's more accurate to say socioeconomic class measures IQ, rather than the other way around. To oversimplify, high IQ people are more productive, IQ at adulthood is heritable to a great extent (~80% of variation in IQ is due to genetic variation), so 1 + 1 = rich families have higher IQ children. Imagine if people were paid based on how tall they are, and replace IQ with height, and it'd be the same -> Tall parents + high heritability for height -> rich families have taller offspring. People don't recognize this with regards to IQ because they ultimately don't believe IQ is highly heritable, which it is.
Links:
IQ and productivity: http://www.onetest.com.au/awms/Upload/documents/whitepapers/...
IQ and heritability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ (first paragraph)
they ultimately don't believe IQ is highly
heritable, which it is
1) small variations in IQ tests don't matter, like for example the difference between 120 and 140 being negligible and depends a lot on external factors, like rest, vitamins in your blood-stream and mood ... give a person several IQ tests over a period of time and he'll score differently every single time
2) you can increase your IQ score with a certain amount of points just by making your brain work harder. Physical exercises work too (professional athletes are above average)
Ultimately the most common complaint is that intelligence (while hereditary) is not something you can accurately measure and that IQ tests are inherently not reliable.
Not sure what you mean by several. I took 4 (5?) over a 30 year period, and the results were all within a couple percentage points of each other.
However, my point was that small variations are not significant. Also, the correlation between IQ scores and intelligence in general is highly debatable - and that's what people are arguing about.
Individual IQ cannot be precisely measured. However heritability and economics studies show that it can be measured with good accuracy.
Also, just because one can game the test, or make its result less accurate, it doesn't mean the population level data is much less accurate. I'm reminded of the Body Mass Index - men, by strength training, can put on lots of muscle mass and become classified as "overweight" or even (rarely) "obese" without being fat. But the fact is that most "overweight" men are in fact fat, and not muscular. The fact that a test for an individual can have reduced or zero validity, does not necessarily threaten the validity for the overall population.
If everyone were to start gaming the tests, things might be different. Then again, being able to game the test might be a highly IQ dependent task, so the IQ test remains an IQ test.
So all those uber-rich guys who select stereotypically dumb, hot trophy wives are doing their offspring no favors in this department. (On the flipside, they may be doing their offspring plenty of favors w/r/t looks, and countless studies have shown that looks are also highly correlated with professional success).
Finally, IQ is, for lack of a better word, malleable. It's not locked in at birth. It can be trained, and it can also wither on the vine if not properly used and challenged. And it's highly susceptible to environment: types of attention received as a child, education, socialization, and even environmental pollutants all play a big role. And they continue to play a big role throughout life, up until roughly the mid-20s, when the brain stops undergoing its rapid changes and loses a lot of its plasticity (though not all of it).
[1] This is something I think science should call the "Lisa Simpson Effect," inasmuch as it explains how a dolt like Homer and a smartie like Marge could produce a genius child.
Do you have a source for this that isn't, um, from the Simpsons? Geneticists have an equation for estimating the response to selection, the change in IQ from parent to offspring, and it uses an average of both parents' IQ. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability#Response_to_Select... for the equation.
IQ is somewhat more malleable initially, but it seems to converge on a point set by one's genetics, by adulthood. The APA estimated heritability in childhood at .45 and .75 by adulthood.
My Simpsons reference was meant to be a colorful analogy, and not a "source." Sheesh.
The source for my statement was journal article I read a few months back. I can't seem to track it down online, but here's a blog that summarizes the studies:
http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/men/thank_mom_for_brains.htm
Like I said, the jury is still out on this. This is a relatively new hypothesis, and not a long-standing theory.
Here is another link: http://discovermagazine.com/2005/oct/sex
There are more genes related to intelligence on the X chromosome than on just the X and Y chromosomes. There are still 22 other pairs of chromosomes, which in offspring, are a mishmash of the father and mother's chromosomes. Genes on these chromosomes have been experimentally linked with intelligence (eg, http://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV453.pdf)
Plus, there are sex differences in intelligence; there are more male dullards and geniuses. Men score higher on visuospatial ability, and women on verbal ability. Given that these are distinctly sex related, their genesis lies in differences between the X and Y chromosomes.
Not really. Doing enough drugs to be counted as a 'drug user' shouldn't cost more than five or ten bucks a year.
> Then when participants turned 30, they were asked whether they had used drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the past year.
They only need to use drugs once in the last year to qualify.
Not sure what you are getting at with this question, but according to TFA, yes it is.
(maybe I'm just dense and your point went over my head)
I'd be interested in an addition of an "average alcohol consumption" variable to this dataset.
Stress for me is a killer, by Friday night if I've had a hard week I'm either wishing I still had a pot dealer or I'm hitting up the liquor store for some whiskey.
Similarly high IQ is linked to depression, again likely for a mix of reasons from social isolation (aka being smarter than everyone) and having a greater ability for introspection into ones life (aka I could have done more with my life, etc.). Depression is often a major factor in alcoholism and drug abuse.
The question I wonder is does a high IQ predetermine what drugs a person is going to use. Smart people I've noticed seem to target pot and hallucinogenics. It always seems to be the idiots and suggestibles that end up with the heroin addiction.
Really? You mean like, W.S. Burroughs, Kurt Cobain, Patrick Kroupa, Edgar Allen Poe (although he used opium), Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, and a lot of other people who like to keep their addictions hidden least they be stigmatized as junkies?
I know it's so tempting to just classify a certain class of people as undesirables based on what drugs they prefer or what their skin color is, but that's not smart.
Heroin (diacetylmorphine) is merely a cheap and potent painkiller, cheaper than other popular ones like oxycodone. It's used in UK to treat severe pain. It's not the strongest one out there (fentanyl is stronger), nor will it make you addicted instantly.
You will probably get addicted if you have easy access and some recurrent pain issues: psychological or physical. A lot of people start off with prescription pharma, and then as their prescription or money runs out, they are forced to use cheaper street alternatives like h.
Others just like to nod once in a while, and only a small part, I believe, makes heroin their ultimate priority enough, willing to kill their own grandmother for a fix. Unfortunately, those junkies are also the most vocal and noticeable ones.
I mean, heroin is not entirely safe and it's very pleasant and it can be addictive just because it's so fucking nice. But I think a lot of people use the idiotic societal stereotypes to justify their own lack of maturity to handle detox, and right now, with the plethora of unaddictive painkillers, rehab, methadone, suboxone, support groups, antidepressants detoxing is easier than ever.
I doubt is has as much to do with economics as some would argue. Some of the poorest people are addicts and they find a way. I myself have been out there on the streets with a negative bank balance yet somehow managed to find my fix through various forms of petty theft and manipulation. If I could produce $20 bills right now like I used to back then I'd be a rich man. Addicts find a way.
Of course I'm sure a majority of them were not addicts but casual users. I see some comments suggesting that a single use of drugs within the past year doesn't count somehow. It's as if to imply that drug use is far more common than it is. I agree that more people use drugs recreationally than we really know but I'd venture to guess that there are far more people completely abstinent from any type of drug use than there are those who use once a year or more. That kind of thinking comes from users themselves who are surrounded by other users (ranging from rare, casual use, to full blown addiction and abuse) and begin to think the rest of the world behaves as they do.
I'm on the board of the Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization (HERO) and the numbers we're seeing agree with this study. We're seeing a trend where students who are more intelligent (based on standardized tests, GPA, and, if available, IQ tests are using drugs more often than average students and below. We're talking about 6th through 12th grade kids. That study was done by the Robert Crown Center here in Chicago and I'm not sure if it's published yet but if it is it would be on their website.
That's not propaganda. It's numbers. Doing drugs = high risk. And it's stupid to take high risks with your body, unless you don't mind dying young.
I've never understood why many 'tech' people are so pro drugs. Why do you need it?
There's some things you don't need to try.
"Why do you need it?"We need to educate people about drugs differently and the justice system needs to stop persecuting users and addicts as if they were burglars, rapists, and killers.
First, we need to put marijuana in the same class as alcohol and cigarettes. A little weed doesn't hurt anyone. Abuse of it does and that's what we need to teach. That marijuana abuse hurts you by taking you away from more important things in life. The drug itself can't really do too much damage. I'd equate it to alcohol use. A beer or two after work won't hurt you and getting drunk occasionally won't either. It's the consequences of abuse that hurt you, not the substance. There are plenty of completely functional successful people who drink beer regularly (not abusively or for escape) and the same goes for smoking a joint.
Then we need to get real with people and let them know what really happens when you use stimulants, opioids, etc. Let them know that the first time is dangerous but that the real negative effect isn't seen until later. Then educate people on the reasons why people use, help them spot the reasons in themselves, and explain the progression from curious one time use to full blown addiction. Lumping them all in as bad and evil is making this problem worse.
Then our justice system needs to provide treatment rather than punishment. The stigma attached to users is so unfair and hurts their chances for recovery. Once you take someone out of society and label them as "bad", "criminal", or "addict" they'll slip into that role and play the part.
I myself am a recovered heroin addict and on the board of the Heroin Epidemic Relief Organization. We're seeing huge progress by doing just what I described here. We're focusing on Will County, Illinois which is just outside of Chicago. We have politicians on board with us and we're doing a ton to change how drug users are treated and how drug education happens. Will County will likely become the model for the test of the country one day. We have a Drug Court program which gives those charged with certain felonies a chance to have their case dropped if they complete a minimum of one year in a treatment program that includes therapy, inpatient, outpatient rehab, then a halfway house and regular weekly, biweekly, and monhthly court appearances (as you move through the program and show progress) along with scheduled and random drug screenings. Participants are in the program for as long as they need to become sober (maximum 4 years I believe) and must attend school if they have no high school equivalency and must get a job which the court helps with. They also strongly encourage participants to attend college but not all do. Failure to complete the program means pleading guilty and being sentenced to the full term of whatever sentence you would have gotten had you not participated. (I do believe there might be a trial before that, I forgot).
We're also doing the education thing I mentioned too and it's working! Every county in Illinois is looking over at us to see how we're beating this thing. It's saving the government boatloads of money to make drug offenders productive citizens rather than letting them waste a prison cell and become burdens on the state.
I'm sorry to rant but whenever I hear someone generalizing drugs and drug users and repeat the misinformation the war on drugs has been letting loose I lose it. The point here is that not all drugs are created equal. Smoking pot should be a choice like smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol. And pretty much everything we were taught about drugs and their users is wrong.
Sorry, but I disagree. Some kids are brought up well, to respect authority, the law and to respect their bodies. Not everyone tries drugs. Blame the parents...
"First, we need to put marijuana in the same class as alcohol and cigarettes. A little weed doesn't hurt anyone."
I'd go for that as long as cigarettes and marijuana are both illegal to use outside your own private property. Breathing in drug addicts smoke is not something the public should have to do. Thankfully we're moving the right direction making smoking tobacco in public places illegal.
I might have used some blunt language but it's true. It doesn't matter how kids are brought up. It's a fact of nature that adolescents are hard wired to rebel against whatever they were taught at home. They test their upbringing and usually come out the other end believing what they were taught to begin with plus or minus a few beliefs but in the middle they almost always try to see what's up for themselves. You'd be surprised how many kids who grew up in wonderful moral families end up abusing or addicted to drugs. The founder of the organization Im part of is a retired Chicago PD officer with a number of degrees in education. He brought his son up in a well off upper-middle class neighborhood with good schools and strong morals. This family might as well have the Brady Bunch. But his son got mixed in with heroin and died after a long struggle with addiction. This was exactly the type of kid you say won't use.
See, that's the big problem. Everyone thinks its a moral failing and they take the attitude that it's the neighbor's kid but never mine until it happens to you. There are so so many families this has happened to and their afraid to warn others for fear of being labelled bad parents who didn't provide a solid moral ethic to pass down to their kid(s).
I am a smoker and I'm happy to admit that others done want to breathe in my second hand smoke. I'll also give you the rule on smoking 15 feet away from buildings is a good one too. But there's a fine line where legislation doesn't need to go. Banning it in public altogether is just ridiculous. We're all adults. We can say something if we want a smoker to leave the middle of the street. I mean cigarettes are legal and public areas are public. Leave the poor smokers alone when they're not bothering you. You can also choose to walk away. I mean, we not do it for 5 minutes at a time. You won't get cancer in those minutes. Please don't take my freedom away from me. What if I don't want your crying child or strong perfume or breast feedi near me? I'm not going to make it illegal because it inconveniences me.
But what really bothered me about that last paragraph was how you called it "drug addict" smoke. Yes, they are addicts technically but using those words in a derogatory way like that just perpetuates the stigma carried by addicts. We aren't sun-humans, bottom feeders, or somehow just some class of undesirables. We're your friends, neighbors, and family and we need help. Most of us are incredibly intelligent and have a lot to offer society if we could just get the help we need. I know how bad the behavior of an addict can be because I am one but all of deserve a chance to get better before being written off.
It's not getting cancer I'm worried about, it's the disgusting smell, making me+my kids cough etc. You may as well go up to people in the street and burp and fart in their face - it's as disgusting.
I know, I lack empathy etc. But I still believe most of it comes down to proper parenting. I don't have all the answers, but I don't believe legalizing more drugs is the way forward.
First, I believe the parlance is recovering addict. If you choose to subscribe to the 12 step method of recovery, you are never fully "recovered" from addiction.
Second, marijuana, alcohol, and cigarettes are all gateway substances. The dangers of these mood altering drugs are self-evident. It seems to me that we should be doing everything possible to educate people before they get hooked, not try and deal with a drug addict after they become addicted.
In any case you're right. We do need to deal with them before getting addicted, not after. It's much cheaper and easier to prevent than anything else. Good education starts with getting real about substances and the process of addiction, not scaring people. The scare method just created a generation that assumes drug users have a moral failing and that's where the stigma comes from. Meanwhile the users are languishing in prison or on the streets not getting the help they need and deserve.
(I'm in the UK so the culture etc may be different).
I think it has more to do with the fact that people with higher IQs don't feel like they are a part of regular society and it's a way to cope with it.
Many people that are depressed use illegal and legal drugs to make themselves feel better. I have a feeling there is also a higher level of depression in people with high IQs as well.
I would be interested to see if the same holds true with people that have lower than average IQs.
"The articles shy away from the elephant in the room which is that the UK and US gvts have a massive legal and propaganda effort to prevent drug use"
Illegal drugs aren't good or healthy for you. I feel like you will most likely spread propaganda in the opposite direction and it's just as bad.
I feel like drugs helped me realize a lot about myself. While I am not so sure IQ is a reliable measurement, I can definitely say I can handle a lot more information and make good use of that information much better than I had ever before.
I've done some research on brain wave activity and dopamine receptors/activity. It seems that people with ADHD tend to have misaligned brain wave activity and stimulants manage to align this activity up to a point. My theory, from my own experiences, is that there is an optimal brain wave frequency and people with ADHD are suffering from dopamine deficiency that skews below optimal frequency, and too much dopamine activity skews above optimal frequency. Further, I've noted that those who experience drugs as a depressant tend to have normal dopamine activity whereas those who experience drugs as a stimulant appear to have low dopamine activity. It's just a wild theory with no medical evidence - I'm just trying to understand the pattern. I would love to hear others chime in here and adjust my theory as necessary.
I've been told that alcohol or marijuana makes one drowsy or lazy. For me, it stimulates - until a point - then I also become drowsy and lazy. This is where I believe I've gone past optimal dopamine activity. For the average person with normal dopamine activity, passing this threshold seems to happen much sooner.
I think in general you are going to find depressants will act like depressants, and stimulants will act as stimulants. In your theory, focus on the inflection point where (e.g. alcohol) a depressant acts as a stimulant. It is a stimulant for all people when consumed in the right amount, though it also depends on other factors. Some days alcohol will make me stay up all night, some days it will put me to sleep in 15 minutes.
I believe this to be true, although, I am talking about those who suffer with ADHD or other dopamine-related disorder.
> It is a stimulant for all people when consumed in the right amount, though it also depends on other factors. Some days alcohol will make me stay up all night, some days it will put me to sleep in 15 minutes.
My theory is, a substance is a stimulant or depressant relative to your dopamine (or brain wave activity). Too much dopamine reception? Depressant. Too little dopamine reception? Stimulant. It has been reported that average people taking methylphenidate (ADHD medication) experience drowsiness (too much dopamine reception) as oppose to those who have dopamine receptor deficiencies, find the drug as a stimulant (too little dopamine reception).
Also, dopamine levels often vary throughout a day for most people, so your perspective would hold true with regard to this theory.
My experiences very closely match yours, fwiw. I tried Ritalin but wasn't satisfied at all, and am 'back on' weed.
Ritalin, while chemically similar, doesn't seem to provide the same benefits from those who've disclosed their experience (again, anecdotal). Concerta is once-a-day release-controlled dosage.
For some background see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P200
Are the socioeconomic levels of these higher IQ individuals controlled? How exactly did they select their sample for the study? And they mentioned marijuana, cocaine, heroine in one breath, as though those are the same drug. Surely different population groups use those drugs to different extents.
Is that standard? Isn't that about 1/2 to 4 standard deviations on IQ charts? Seems like a wide range.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111114221018.ht...
EDIT: The abstract is available from the publishing journal in the following link. The full text was unfortunately not available without a subscription of some form.
http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/28/jech-2011-20025...
http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/28/jech-2011-20025...
In particular the abstract makes it clear that the measured associated is independent of life-course socioeconomic position.
Actually a quick search of Google Scholar throws up a number of papers on this topic, most of which seem to confirm the association reported here.
This one http://personal.lse.ac.uk/KANAZAWA/pdfs/RGP2010.pdf looks quite interesting: “The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values than less intelligent individuals. Consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs is evolutionarily novel, so the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to consume these substances.”
Does anyone know what this type of thinking is called?
Anyways, that's how I think when I'm trying to solve a puzzle. I notice that the hard part is not in testing my imagined hypotheses, but in hypothesis generation. Where am I going with this? Imagination. I've noticed that my ability to rapidly imagine different scenarios is a key part of my ability to solve difficult problems. There are other components, like working memory, logic, etc, but imagination plays a big role. At least for me.
If what is true for me is true in general it could mean that people who are more inclined to imagine complex alternative worlds in their heads are also more likely to enjoy the "out of the ordinary" mental states provided by drugs and alcohol.
So yes, some people might be searching for a thrill because what they are supposed to do does not deliver that. But others just really want to "be normal" and drugs are a quick way to get there, strangely.
high IQ is defined as a score between 107 and 158.
I stopped here. The title should be "Drug use linked to High IQ". That's completely different.
Actually, that needs to be studied! Mutations in the melanocortin-1 receptor (the "red head" gene) affect eye color and also affect sensitivity to opioids (painkillers).
In America, the relationship between drug use and high IQ is small or non-existent: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundament...
(Someone else linked this earlier)
Despite the UK being very similar to the US, on a global scale, the relationship between IQ and drug use is not the same across the herring pond. There are relationships between IQ and social indicators that are consistent across time and nations, and this isn't one of those. Whatever is causing this relationship in Britain is cultural - I doubt it's a feature of high intelligence, rather than just Brits who have high IQ.
As for the sex difference between men and women of high IQ, fewer women in general do drugs, so it's easier for high IQ women to rack up a higher multiple of drug use over their average IQ female counterparts.
I looked at the Psychology Today/Kanazawa link, and it says that the relationship is insignificant in America. I.e., the relationship between childhood IQ and drug use is a British phenomenon. Maybe the intelligent are more decadent in Britain? If Kanazawa represents the data accurately, this whole IQ-drugs relationship is BS, in the American setting. Bye bye grand social theorizing.
Getting picked up for smoking pot or petty vandalism in the suburbs often ends in a trip home to mom and dad after a very stern scare. In the city, it's another statistic for this month's arrests.