Hacker News Reader

Comment by brador | Hacker News Reader

How about High IQ = more stressful employment = more recreational drug use?

I'd be interested in an addition of an "average alcohol consumption" variable to this dataset.

I think there's potentially lots of reasons why a high IQ would lead to drug/alcohol use.

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.

"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.

Couldn't agree more. Having spent some time living near a lot of junkies, it seems the people that got addicted to heroin were the people who tried heroin. You could hardly say they were idiots to try heroin - the pushers are fairly good marketers, get somebody fucked drunk, give them some cocaine and ectasy, and then a hot girl convinces them to try it, and they have a (brief) lifetime customer.

http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/heroin.html about 23% of users become dependent. Alcohol has 15% addiction rate, I believe.

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.

Ha ha ha. Professional statistician here. Drug statistics are shit. There just completely shit. I mean, really, you just can't measure that stuff. Nobody tells you anything, it's dangerous as hell, and when people do tell you stuff, they are usually lying, to you and to themselves. In good quality, controlled experiments, results are still pretty open to interpretation.

I'm going to speak from experience here. My IQ is in the range talked about in the article, I'm a few years from 30, and I do have a history of polydrug use/abuse. It seems intelligent people are also more likely to become depressed as well. My thoughts are that people like the ones described in the study as being more intelligent are more thoughtful, analytical, and sensitive. They need an outlet and drug use is a form of self medication.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com