The earlier people first begin drinking, the greater their
chances of using alcohol as a coping technique to deal with
stress later in life, a new study finds. Researchers followed a
group of 306 German children at risk for alcohol abuse (they had
been followed from infancy as part of a larger study) and
questioned them as teenagers and again at age 22 about their
alcohol use. Among those who had a larger-than-usual number of
stressful life events , those who had their first drink at age
13 or earlier consumed more than twice as much alcohol in the
month before the survey compared to their counterparts who
started drinking later in life. "We found that the impact of
stressful life events on drinking behavior depends on the age at
first drink," Dorothea Blomeyer, a senior researcher at the
Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, said in
a statement. "The earlier they start with alcohol use, the
stronger the association between life stress and drinking in
young adults ." She noted that this tre