Age of onset versus duration of problem drinking on the Alcohol Use Inventory

The importance of two factors--the age at which a consistent pattern of heavy alcohol use was established and the duration of problem drinking--was compared in 70 alcoholic outpatients (21 women) using the Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI). Alcoholics who began heavy drinking at age 20 or below reported significantly greater social role maladaptation, more loss of behavioral control when drinking, greater severity of alcoholism, more severe alcoholic deterioration, and more frequent psychoperceptual withdrawal symptoms (delirium tremens) than later-onset alcoholics. Age of onset was consistently a better correlate of these alcoholic patterns than the duration of heavy drinking. Despite the 9.7-year mean difference between the groups with short- and long-term durations of heavy drinking, no significant differences on their AUI scores were found. These data suggest that the hypothesis that steady, excessive alcohol consumption at a young age may have more deleterious effects on the future social, interpersonal, cognitive and physical functioning of an alcoholic than the duration of excessive alcohol intake deserves further investigation.