Aging, alcoholism, anxiety, and sensation seeking: an exploratory investigation

Aging alcoholic (n = 36) and aging nonalcoholic (n = 35) male veterans were compared on biographic/demographic variables and psychological characteristics. Results indicated that aging alcoholics and nonalcoholics were married at approximately the same ages, married roughly the same number of times, and produced similar numbers of offspring, but aging alcoholics were better educated and had fewer persons economically dependent on them. They had higher scores than aging nonalcoholics on objective measures of state anxiety, trait anxiety, overall fears, tissue damage fears, social-interpersonal fears, miscellaneous fears, and failure/loss of self-esteem fears. Aging alcoholics also had higher scores on the sensation-seeking variable of boredom susceptibility and disinhibition, suggesting the existence of a relationship between need for sensory stimulation and maladaptive drinking among aging alcoholics.