Survey on Smoking, Consuming Alcohol, and using Illicit Drugs in Patients with Epilepsy

Addiction can be defined as the continuous consumption of addictive substances or repetition of certain behaviors despite adverse consequences. Epilepsy is associated with an increased risk of psychiatric disorders. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no published data regarding addictions in patients with epilepsy. Considering the high incidence of psychopathology, we planned a survey using a self-report questionnaire to study some of the addictive behaviors in patients with epilepsy and in control subjects.

Patients from our outpatient epilepsy clinic (n=106) and control subjects (n=96) aged between 18 and 65 years took the 20-question questionnaire that screened for smoking, consuming alcohol, or using other illicit drugs.

Fifty-three percent of patients with epilepsy were male (n=57) and in the control group, 52% were male (n=50) (p=.062). The mean age was 32.66±2.23 years for patients with epilepsy and 35.70±0.59 years for the control group (p=.810). Mean duration of epilepsy was found to be 14.33±11.26 (1-46) years. Majority of patients with epilepsy (84%) had focal epilepsy. Alcohol intake was found to be significantly lower in patients with epilepsy (p=.0001). There was no difference regarding smoking (p=.530) or using illicit drugs between the groups (p=.262). Smoking cigarettes was lower in new onset epilepsies (<5 years) compared with epilepsies of longer duration (p=.031).

Recent studies connote to some common substrates in the pathophysiology of epilepsy and addiction. Therefore, we wanted to evaluate some addictive behaviors in patients with epilepsy. Although this study did not show significant differences other than low frequency of alcohol use in patients with epilepsy and low rate of smoking in patients with epilepsy duration of <5 year, further studies among homogeneous epilepsy subgroups with larger scale along with their neuropsychological profiles may still be required.