Adolescents who sleep poorly and insufficiently may develop alcohol and drug problems

Sleep difficulties and insufficient sleep are common among American youth. Prior research has shown that poor sleep can predict alcohol-related problems and illicit drug use among adolescents and young adults in high-risk samples. A new study has found that sleep difficulties and hours of sleep can predict a number of specific problems, including binge drinking, driving under the influence of alcohol, and risky sexual behavior in a nationally representative sample.

Results will be published in the February 2015 online-only issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"National polls indicate that 27 percent of school-aged children and 45 percent of adolescents do not sleep enough," said Maria M. Wong, professor and director of experimental training in the department of psychology at Idaho State University. "Other studies have shown that about one in 10 adolescents have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep almost every day, or every day, in the previous 12 months." Wong is also the corresponding author for the study.

"This paper is important in that it advances our understanding of the relation of sleep to substance use problems to include not only problems sleeping, that is, trouble falling asleep and/or staying asleep, but also insufficient sleep, addressed here as hours of sleep," added Tim Roehrs, director of research at the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at the Henry Ford Hospital, and one of the first researchers to identify sleep insufficiency as a clinical issue in the 1990s.

"Among normal adults, sleep difficulties and insomnia have predicted onset of alcohol use one year later, and increased risk of any illicit drug use disorder and nicotine dependence 3.5 years later," said Wong. "Among adult alcoholics who received treatment for alcohol dependence, those with insomnia at baseline were more likely to relapse to alcohol use. The association between poor sleep and substance use has also been found in younger age groups. Overtiredness in childhood has predicted lower response inhibition in adolescence, which in turn predicted number of illicit drugs used in young adulthood. Overtiredness in childhood has also directly predicted the presence of binge drinking, blackouts, driving after drinking alcohol, and number of lifetime alcohol problems in young adulthood. The purpose of this study was to examine whether sleep difficulties and hours of sleep prospectively predicted several serious substance-related problems that included binge drinking, driving under the influence of alcohol, and risky sexual behavior."

Wong and her co-authors analyzed data collected via interviews and questionnaires from 6,504 adolescents (52% girls, 48% boys) participating in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Data were collected for three waves - 1994-1995, 1996, and 2001-2002 - and study authors used sleep difficulties from a previous wave to predict substance-related problems at a subsequent wave, while controlling for substance-related problems at the previous wave.