It will come as no surprise that drinking lots of alcohol often goes hand-in-hand with bad decision making. But up until now, scientists had yet to come up with a direct cause and effect relationship regarding alcohol and unprotected sex.

In the January issue of the journal Addiction, a new study reports that researchers in Canada conducted 12 experiments to test the theory. The results–yes, rather obvious–confirmed that drinking alcohol affects decision-making, and the more alcohol one drinks, the more impaired the decision making. As the results show, for every 0.1mg/mL increase in blood alcohol level, study participants were 5 percent more likely to engage in unsafe sex.

While the findings may not seem overly newsworthy, they do confirm the direct connection between alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases. The study’s conclusion states that  ”alcohol use is an independent risk factor for intentions to engage in unprotected sex, and as risky sex intentions have been shown to be linked to actual risk behavior, the role of alcohol consumption in the transmission of HIV and other STIs may be of public health importance.”

“Drinking has a causal effect on the likelihood to engage in unsafe sex, and thus should be included as a major factor in preventive efforts for HIV,” said principal investigator Juergen Rehm of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, in a statement. “This result also helps explain why people at risk often show this behavior despite better knowledge: alcohol is influencing their decision processes.”

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On November 1, the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA) released a new study, “Alcohol Consumption Over a Woman’s Lifetime Associated with Risk of Breast Cancer.” The study looked at the cumulative effect of low to moderate alcohol consumption among more than 100,000 women, ages 30 to 55, who were followed for 28 years.

In its aftermath, the study results were all over the press with headlines causing a frenzy among women who consume only a couple of glasses of a wine a week. They read:

“Women who drink three to six glasses of alcohol per week have a 15 percent higher risk of getting breast cancer than women who do not drink”

“A Few Drinks a Week Raises Breast Cancer Risk”

“Women: Even a Little Alcohol Ups Breast Cancer Risk, Research Finds”

“Even Small Amount of Alcohol Increases Risk of Breast Cancer”

Although the headlines are not inaccurate, they may be provoking unnecessary alarm. Ten days after the study results were released, the AARP posted an article titled: “Alcohol and Breast Cancer Link: Is Wine Really Bad for Women?” With a subtitle that reads, “The Risk May Not Be As Bad As You Think–or Fear,” the article calls on readers to take a closer look at the study’s statistics before adopting a lifestyle akin to the days of Prohibition.

Taking a different angle than prior research, this new AMA study looked at the cumulative effect of consuming low to moderate amounts of alcohol. Previous studies linking alcohol and breast cancer risk focused mainly on binge or heavy drinking.

The researchers found that those who drank as few as three to six alcoholic drinks a week during those years had a 15 percent increased risk of breast cancer, compared with those who didn’t drink. And women who regularly drank two or more drinks a day had a 51 percent higher risk than women who never drank.

As the AARP piece explains, “Those numbers — 15 percent increase and 51 percent increase — sound high until you do the math. The average woman’s risk of getting breast cancer in her lifetime is one in eight, or 12 percent. A 15 percent increase over that means her lifetime risk rises to 13.8 percent. For a woman age 50 to 59, whose risk of getting breast cancer while in her 50s is one in 42 or 2.4 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute, her risk rises to 2.76 percent,” the article continues.

So in other words, as Steven A. Narod, M.D., director of familial breast cancer research at the Women’s College Research Institute in Toronto, further clarified in an editorial accompanying the study, for women who had one drink per day, “their 10-year risk increased by 0.7 percent (from 2.8 percent to 3.5 percent).”

Although the risk is real and women need to weigh the risks and benefits of drinking, the ensuing panic may be premature. As reported by the AARP, the study’s authors pointed out in their conclusion: “We did find increased risk at low levels of [alcohol consumption], but the risk was quite small.”

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In less than a week, my daughter will be off to college. Sitting on a beach chair a few weeks ago, her eyes glanced at her computer screen under the glare of the sun and the ocean only steps away. I assumed she was watching some incredibly gripping movie from which she couldn’t tear herself away. But when I inquired, she rolled her eyes and explained that she was watching an alcohol awareness video—a mandatory assignment for her university.

Despite the efforts made by educational institutions, new psychological research suggests that the pitfalls from all those jello shots and games of beer pong aren’t bad enough to make students stop drinking.

On the USA Today website, an article, “College Drinking is Liberating, and a Good Excuse,” reports on why the efforts to raise awareness are not working.

“We thought if we could demonstrate to students that their performance deteriorated under alcohol, they would be convinced that their alcohol consumption has put them at risk,” says psychologis E. Scott Geller, director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems at Virginia Tech. But “knowing that one is impaired, physically and even emotionally, did not seem to reduce alcohol consumption.”

Geller, who’s been studying alcohol awareness since the mid-1980s, states clearly that the alcohol education hasn’t worked. “We have shown in several studies that their intentions influence their behavior. If they intend to get drunk, it’s difficult to stop that.”

Going for the effects is what it’s all about. One student, Brandie Pugh, a senior at Ohio University, says in the article: “I think everybody’s aim is to get drunk on the weekend. It’s not about the taste of the alcohol. It’s about the effects of it. It’s about the lowered inhibitions.”

In another study, researcher Laina Bay-Cheng, an associate professor of social work at the University at Buffalo-State University of New York, found that when teenagers drink, they think they can use their intoxicated state as an excuse for their actions. Students in her focus groups–there were 97 teens ranging in age from 14 to 17–described alcohol as emboldening and said it offers “liquid courage,” a phrase other researchers also have cited. Colleges, she says, need to “acknowledge and reckon with” alcohol’s appeal.

According to Bay Cheng, another result of drinking is that it can be an excuse for young women to “act out being sexually assertive, carefree, liberated,” she explains. ”If you have sex, you’re a slut, and if you don’t, you’re a prude — but drinking allows you to do both. You can go out, get drunk, have sex and the next day say, ‘I’m still a good girl.’”

In the USA Today article, Pugh goes on to say that she has seen this scenario play out on her campus repeatedly: “‘I was drunk so I hooked up with that guy.’ ‘I was drunk so I missed my class this morning.’ ‘I was drunk so I got in a fight.’ If it’s something they’re not proud of, it gives them an excuse.”

After next Wednesday, I’ll hope from afar that my daughter doesn’t ever feel that she needs to use alcohol as an excuse for anything.

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Last weekend, I spent the evening with extended family on the pristine grounds at Tanglewood, the summer residence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Berkshire mountains. While children tossed balls and frisbees along the edge of the sprawling lawn, picnickers sat on blankets and chairs enjoying the summer night before the 8:30 concert–a performance of Berlioz’s Requiem–began.

In need of a match to light a bug-repelling candle, I wandered around in search, veering toward a table that had four votives twinkling. When I arrived in front of the table–covered in a white cloth–and asked for a light, I couldn’t help but notice that the couple who sat in front of the table was sipping their sparkling wine from crystal flutes, the bottle of bubbly was sitting in a silver ice bucket amid the votives, and there was even a candle snuffer waiting to do its job.

I went back to our much less formal spread, sat on a cozy blanket and sipped an Alexander Valley cabernet sauvignon. I’m not particularly a great fan of choral music, but as the concert went on, I became increasingly focused on the voices and truly enjoyed the music to my ears. It was a nearly perfect night (my kids’ presence would have made it completely perfect), and it made me wonder about the connection of drinking wine and listening to music. Can music actually influence how we taste wine?

According to some sources, yes it can. A joint study conducted by Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University and wine company Montes claims that music can alter the taste of wine.

The research was conducted with 250 adults. In return for a glass of wine, a group of five people were played the four pieces of music and asked to try to match each of these to one of the four perceptions investigated by the research, namely ‘powerful and heavy’, ‘subtle and refined’, ‘zingy and refreshing’, and ‘mellow and soft’

The study’s conclusion reads: Background music influences the taste of wine. The specific taste of the wine was influenced in a manner consistent with the mood evoked by the music. If the background music was powerful and heavy then the wine was perceived as more powerful and heavy than when no background music was played. If the background music was subtle and refined then the wine was perceived as more subtle and refined than when no background music was played. If the background music was zingy and refreshing then the wine was perceived as more zingy and refreshing than when no background music was played. If the background music was mellow and soft then the wine was perceived as more mellow and soft than when no background music was played. The magnitude of these effects was not insubstantial, and they were stronger for red wine than for white.

Next time you are listening to music and sipping wine, perhaps you’ll give some extra thought to the musical notes and whether or not they enhancing the taste of what’s in your glass…

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A new study published in the June 24 edition of The Journal of the National Cancer Institute revealed that lifestyle changes, such as drinking less alcohol, weight loss, and increased amounts of exercise, could lead to a considerable reduction in breast cancer cases across an entire population, according to a new model that estimates the influence of these variable risk factors.

Often times, breast cancer risk is based on elements that can’t be modified, such as family history. And until now, there have been no models based on ways women can impact their breast cancer risk through lifestyle adjustments.

The findings provide “extremely important information relevant to counseling women on how much risk reduction they can expect by changing behaviors, and also highlights the basic public health concept that small changes in individual risk can translate into a meaningful reduction in disease in a large population,” wrote Dr. Kathy J. Helzlsouer, of Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, a journal news release.

Using data from an Italian study that included more than 5,000 women, the U.S. National Cancer Institute researchers created the model that included three modifiable risk factors (alcohol consumption, physical activity and body mass index) and five risk factors that are difficult or impossible to modify (family history, education, job activity, reproductive characteristics, and biopsy history).

Benchmarks for some lifestyle factors included getting at least 2 hours of exercise a week (for women 30-39) and having a body mass index (BMI) under 25 (in women 50 and older).

The  authors of the study noted that the predicted changes in lifestyle to achieve significant  changes — such as former and current drinkers becoming non-drinkers — might be overly optimistic.

But the findings, say researchers, may help in designing programs meant to encourage women to make lifestyle changes. For example, a 1.6 percent absolute risk reduction in a general population of one million women amounts to 16,000 fewer cases of cancer.

For information about breast cancer risk, go to the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

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For those of us who have watched–and enjoyed–the epic frat party film, Animal House, it’s easy to see that these boys are having one good, drunken time throughout. According to a recent study, the alcohol-induced male elation is not purely fictional.

The study, published in Biological Psychology, shows that men experience greater pleasure form drinking alcohol than women do. Apparently, liquor triggers the male brain to release a higher amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that causes euphoria and pleasure.

When the high subsides, however, it’s not all fun and beer pong. Researchers say that the additional dopamine may help expain why men, especially those who can hold their liquor, are twice as likely as women to become alcoholics.

“It’s not just that people who release more dopamine like it better,” says John H. Krystal, chair of the Yale University psychiatrity department and one of 11 authors of the study. “They also learn to want it more.”

On two separate days, the researchers tested how the brains of 21 young social drinkers reacted to alcohol. On one day, the men and women were given juice mixed with a tiny amount of alcohol. Then the researchers used PET scanners to measure the dopamine release in the subjects’ brain. They expected the effect to be minimal, Krystal says, and it was. But they wanted to control for the possibility that people would feel euphoric just because they thought they were getting drunk. On the second day, when the subjects were given stronger drinks, dopamine levels were higher–and the men’s brains released more than twice as much dopamine as the women’s.

The researchers’ goal is to develop ways to “damp down” dopamine release in the brains of people predisposed to alcoholism. With the use of medications and other treatments, young drinkers with a family history of alcoholism may be able to lessen their chances of becoming problem drinkers.

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I recently told a friend that one of the greatest things about my daughters getting older–they are now 15 and 17–is that I can finally watch good movies with them. In the last few months, films like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Good Will Hunting and It’s Complicated came, were enjoyed, and left via Netflix (My Left Foot and Into the Wild await in our queue). Little makes me happier then curling up on the couch with my two girls, enveloped in a powerful film or a completely silly one. They are even willing to do subtitles these days.

When they were younger, I didn’t pay much attention to movie ratings, but was careful about what they saw. One daughter is still scarred from seeing Home Alone (she watched at a friend’s house, and it seemed a safe choice), and I strongly steered them away from movies with violence, particularly on the big screen. Bad language and sex scenes were typically unnecessary, but somehow, they didn’t seem that harmful. By now they’ve seen completely inappropriate films, like Borat and The Hangover, and a few night ago, I sat just rows behind my daughter and her friends at a screening of Bridesmaids. Bad judgement?

It is, perhaps, according to a recent study linking R-rated films to teenage drinking and drug use. Doctors at the Dartmouth School of Medicine interviewed thousands of middle-schoolers about their movie choices over two years, and the study results indicate that parents who steer their sons and daughters away from R-rated films usually prevail against peer pressure on kids to drink alcohol.

“We think this is a very important aspect of parenting, and one that is often overlooked,” says James D. Sargent, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) who served as principal investigator in the study. “The research to date suggests that keeping kids from R-rated movies can help keep them from drinking, smoking, and doing a lot of other things that parents don’t want them to do.”

Additional research conducted by Sargent also suggests that children who see R-rated movies become more prone to ‘sensation seeking’ and risk taking. ”We think seeing the adult content actually changes their personality,” Sargent says, adding that PG-13 movies, as well as many TV shows, also frequently portray drinking and other adult situations.

I believe you have to know your child before making a judgement call. I’m pretty sure I know mine, and right now she’s waiting for me to watch Crash.

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Did you know that nearly a third of what we drink is black market? That women abstain more than men? And that Russians are the world’s most dangerous drinkers?

These are just a few of the results from the recently published report on global alcohol consumption from the World Health Organization. The report, released in February, delves into a wide variety of areas concerning alcohol, including per capita consumption, trends, patterns, health, and societal effects.

In a piece titled, “Does the World Have a Drinking Problem?” Daily Beast writer David Sessions captures some of the more “stunning” statistics from the study. In a nutshell, Sessions shares the following from the WHO report:

1. Nearly half of us have never had a drink.
2. We love beer and liquor, but wine not so much.
3. Europeans are earth’s bigger drinkers.
4. Ireland is the world’s drunkest country.
5. Americans are drinking less than Europeans, but dying more often from it.
6. Russians are the world’s most hazardous drinkers.
7. We’re not drinking any more or less than we used to.
8. Our kids are drinking a lot more.
9. More of us are dying from alcohol than from AIDS.
10. Women are abstaining more than men.
11. Men are at highest risk for alcohol-related death.
12. Nearly a third of what we drink is black market.

If you’d like to dig deeper, there’s some fascinating stuff in the report. And now that the results above have surfaced, as well as those concerning the major disease and injury categories causally related to alcohol, and socioeconomic differences and drinking, it’ll be interesting to see what, actually, the WHO will do with this info.

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by Margot Magowan

I love sleeping. Everything about it. I love my bed with its firm, square pillows and its silky, indigo bedding. I love anticipating sleep, knowing its hours or minutes before I become so relaxed that I actually slip into another state of consciousness.

But recently, I had to make a choice between two of my great loves: sleeping and drinking.

These days, if I drink a glass of wine, invariably, I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling asleep again. And let’s just say those waking hours aren’t the most peaceful for my brain.

If I drink two glasses of wine before bed, forget it. I’ll toss and turn the entire second half of the night. When it’s finally time for me to stumble out of bed, I feel tired and depressed. There are circles under my eyes and my skin isn’t exactly glowy. I’m likely to yell at my kids for tiny infractions that don’t get on my nerves when I’m well rested.

This reaction to alcohol is annoying, because like I said, I love sleeping. I love the moment when my husband comes into bed, usually about an hour or so after me, and I feel his warm body is resting next to mine. No matter how much my family is irritating me, I’m easily reminded of how much I love them all unconditionally when they’re sleeping. If any of my kids are driving me crazy, I make a point to go take a look at their sweet, little faces while they’re peacefully slumbering, and instantly, I feel overwhelmed with adoration.

I didn’t always fetishize sleep. To the contrary, I didn’t understand the point of it. When I was just out of college, I remember reading somewhere that humans spent a third of their lives in bed. I was shocked.  What a waste of time! One third of our short lives. The article went on to state that no one, not doctors or scientists, really understood what the point of all that sleep was. They still don’t.

But things changed for me. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I fell in love with sleep when sleep abandoned me. I had a baby. A colicky baby who slept, at most, in three hour blocks. After months of nursing her 24/ 7, being exhausted, cranky and miserable (following months of restless nights of pregnancy, waking up to pee on the hour) all I could think about, all I wanted, all I craved, was sleep. I couldn’t believe I had taken something so glorious for granted. I would look around, envious, as strangers, thinking: “Most humans got to sleep every single night!” I promised myself that if ever I got the chance to sleep again, I’d appreciate it.

Then I had two more kids.

Now my youngest is one and a half years old and finally, all five of us are sleeping through the night. And like I wrote, I’m in bliss.

Except when I drink at night. Then my sleeping becomes so disrupted, I may as well be nine months pregnant or have a nursing baby at my bedside.

My sensitivity to alcohol while sleeping may seem extreme, but apparently, it’s not just me. An article about a new study published in Science Magazine and titled, “Alcohol Disrupts Women’s Sleep More than Men’s” found that: “Women who consumed alcohol had fewer hours of sleep, woke more frequently and for more minutes during the night, and had more disrupted sleep compared to men who drank alcohol.”

The study doesn’t say that missing sleep can turn your life or your face into a mess, but here’s the thing: If the point of wine is to relax me and give me some pleasure, which is why I drink it, at this time in my life, alcohol isn’t accomplishing that goal. In fact, it’s getting in the way. At some future date, I may enjoy wine again. But for tonight, I choose sleep.

Margot Magowan‘s blog ReelGirl is supposed to rate media and products for girl empowerment, but she often gets sidetracked into writing commentary on politics and culture. Her articles have also been published in Salon, Glamour, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous other newspapers and online sites. She has appeared on “Good Morning America,” CNN, Fox News, and other TV and radio programs. Margot is the Director of the Fellows Program at the Woodhull Institute, providing media training and placement to extraordinary women leaders. Margot also worked as a talk radio producer creating top-rated programs. Her short story, “Light Me Up,” is featured in an anthology coming out in June 2011. She is currently writing a chapter book about the fairyworld. Margot lives with her husband and their three daughters in San Francisco.

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According to an article on the BBC website, a recent study by the NHS (England’s National Health Service) reported that middle class professionals frequently drink more alcohol than people belonging to a low income group.

The statistical data collected by the NHS showed that nearly 1 in 3 men and 1 in 6 women, who are earning above £35,000 annually (equal to approximately $54,000), consume alcohol nearly every day.

People belonging to a high income group drink only on a few occasions in a week but they end up gulping down alcohol whenever they drink, consuming almost six to eight units of alcohol at a time.

However, people earning a low income are less likely to consume alcohol on a daily basis and therefore, they drink mostly on weekends.

According to Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre, “The figures show the extent to which people from all backgrounds drink alcohol both frequently and in quantities that could be harmful to their health.”

In addition, Straughan said, “They show that a greater percentage in the richest households drink [more] frequently than those in the poorest.”

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A new gene variant that may protect against alcoholism was recently discovered at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

The results of the study report that 10 to 20 percent of the population carries a gene variant (called CYP2E1) that makes them get drunk more easily–and therefore makes them less susceptible to alcoholism.

According to an article in USA Today, Dr. Kirk Wilhelmsen, the study’s lead author, explained that the finding, “potentially changes the paradigm about how we think about how alcohol affects the brain.” While the finding doesn’t yet have any treatment application, he says, “my expectation is this is actually going to lead somewhere.”

Wilhelmsen and colleagues collected hundreds of pairs of siblings, all at college-age and all with at least one parent who was an alcoholic. The study participants were given a mixture of grain alcohol and soda that was equivalent to about three drinks that they drank at regular intervals. They were asked to answer questions describing how the alcohol made them feel: “I feel drunk, I don’t feel drunk; I feel sleepy, I don’t feel sleepy.”

The 10 to 20 percent of the population that carry the gene variant typically avoid drinking often or in large quantities because they can’t “hold their liquor.” As a result, they are less likely to become alcoholics in the long run. The new finding offers hope for a treatment of alcoholic if scientists can develop a way to modify the gene or copy its effects.

“We have found a gene that protects against alcoholism, and on top of that, has a very strong effect,” Wilhelmsen said in a statement. “But alcoholism is a very complex disease, and there are lots of complicated reasons why people drink. This may be just one of the reasons.”

The findings are published in the online version of the journal, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, and will appear in print in its January 2011 issue.

The latest estimates to come out of a survey conducted by the Centers of Disease Control reveal that binge drinking–defined as four or more alcoholic drinks per occasion for women and five or more for men–is highest in wealthier adults (with annual household incomes of $75,000 or more) and among high school students. About 33 million Americans are binge drinkers. Most are not alcoholics.

In an NPR.org piece on these latest findings, Scott Hensley writes, “Now, it’s probably obvious that binge drinking isn’t so good for your health. In the short run drinking like that contributes to accidents and sexual transmission of disease. Keep it up, and there’s liver damage and a higher risk for heart disease and stroke.”

Naturally, these numbers are not to be taken lightly. According to the CDC, binge drinking was the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States and it annually accounted for, on average, approximately 79,000 deaths per year during 2001 and 2005.

The problem, though bad, isn’t much worse than it’s been in recent years. In 1993, the CDC says, about 14 percent of adults had gone on drinking binges. But as Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the CDC put it, “Because binge drinking is not recognized as a problem, it has not decreased in 15 years.”

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In a recent Huffington Post piece titled “The Hidden Health Benefits of Alcohol?” writer, psychologist and addiction expert Stanton Peele addresses a recent government report on drinking and the elderly.

Peele’s post discusses the impact of the 2010 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and how they validate that moderate drinking results in longer life and less incidence of dementia. To the contrary, a recent NY Times article reveals nothing of its benefits, but rather drinking’s negative impacts on the elderly.

Peele writes:

Taken together, the contrasting (or are they complimentary) emphases “drinking is only beneficial to older Americans,” “drinking is most harmful to older Americans,” sound like the punch line for a Groucho Marx joke — “You should never drink before you are old, and then you should quit.

Needless to say, the comments came rolling in with a vengeance. Peele responded with another post, “We Don’t Believe Alcohol’s Good For You!” in which he decided that rather than “piss people off individually, I thought I could piss everybody off more efficiently with this follow-up post.”

Some of the comments raise issues concerning politics, industry, advertising and medicine. It’s fascinating and frustrating. Yet it’s the good and bad, ups and downs, and yin and yang of women and drinking that we believe the Drinking Diaries is all about. Always feels free to share your thoughts…

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Hot milk? Maybe. Glass of red wine? Don’t think so…

In an effort to study what foods and/or drinks may help induce slumber, Michael Grandner, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology, tracked the diets and sleep habits of 459 women enrolled in the federal government’s 15-year Women’s Health Initiative.

The findings of Grandner’s recent research, recently published in the journal Sleep Medicine, found that fat was the main nutrient (out of dozens tracked) associated with getting less sleep. “The more fat you ate, the less you slept,” he says.

“The bad news for people trying to talk about food and sleep is that . . . generally it’s hard to find foods that help with sleep,” says Grandner. “The easier question is what are the things to avoid?”

Among the things on the don’t-drink (or eat) list—along with caffeine and spicy foods—was alcohol. Although a nightcap might help you fall asleep, Christine Gerbstadt, a medical doctor, registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, explains that “Alcohol does disrupt the sleep cycle. It delays the onset of and shortens REM sleep, which is the restful sleep you need every night.”

Both red and white wine contain melatonin, Gerbstadt says, but that hormone’s sleep-inducing properties are offset by the alcohol’s interference with REM sleep. Still, She says, you might benefit from eating red grapes with the skin on to get a little boost of melatonin.

Milk, herbal tea and other comforting remedies help “not by making you sleepy, but by making you more relaxed,” wrote Grandner. “When it comes to calming foods, there are a number that may have calming effects, but honestly the evidence suggests that it is mostly placebo.”

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According to a new study directed by psychology graduate student Helle Larsen of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, the relationship between drinking alcohol and drinking in groups may be genetically linked. In other words, those who inherit a specific gene which affects the brain’s “reward system” are more likely to drink greater amounts of alcohol in the company of their party-loving peers.

As reported in an online article in Psychological Science, the study suggests that “Adults carrying at least one copy of a long version of the dopamine D4 receptor gene, dubbed DRD4, imbibed substantially more alcohol around a heavy-drinking peer than did others who lacked that gene variant.”

Larsen’s study is the first to offer evidence that a gene influences human alcohol use in social situations. “Carriers of the long gene may be more attuned to, and influenced by, another person’s heavy drinking than noncarriers are,” Larsen says.

An article in Science News, which sheds light on how the study was conducted, reported that: “Scientists have yet to decipher the precise brain effects of DRD4’s long form. Larsen hypothesizes that in the presence of heavy drinkers, the gene variant may increase dopamine activity in brain areas that amplify alcohol’s appeal as a rewarding social activity.”

Other attempts to substantiate findings of gene-environment interaction have yielded mixed resulsts, so Larsen agrees that other researchers will need to confirm these findings.

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