Are High-IQ People More Likely to Use Drugs?

[The Straight Story]

Many people think that Freud was abnormal. Conventional wisdom implies that smarter people are less likely to use drugs. But a study from Cardiff University in Wales found that people with higher IQs are more likely to indulge in illegal drugs than people of average or lower intelligence.

Researchers surveyed 7,900 British people born in April 1970. At age 5 and 10, researchers measured their IQs and at 16 and 30, the researchers asked them to fill out surveys about psychological problems and drug use. By age 30, 35% of men and 16% of women admitted to smoking pot at least once in the past year, while 9% of men and 4% of women indulged in cocaine. People who copped to doing drugs also scored higher on IQ tests than those who did not partake.

Women in the top third of IQ scores were five times more likely to have used marijuana or cocaine than those ladies in the bottom third. Men with the highest IQs were almost 50% more likely to use amphetamines and 65% more likely to have used ecstasy.

Lead researcher, James White, provides several theories explaining why smarter people might indulge in drug use more frequently. He says that anti-drug campaigns often provide simple messages that might not appeal to smarter children. Also, bright people may experience more boredom and social isolation than their less intelligent peers. However, he thinks that attitudes might account for the differences:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/108415

[Vincardog]

1. This one is

[NashVegas]

2. Ask Again at 40

High IQ people are going to at least try drugs and make up their own minds.

[dtexdem]

3. Well, aside from IQ, high people are.

;-)

But I'm not surprised that higher-IQ people would both seek the refuge of drugs (in the crazy world we inhabit) and see through the anti-drug messages so often used. But it's most likely due to income: high-income people are more likely to be able to afford drugs and may feel safer in reporting said use on a survey -- and higher-IQ people are more likely to achieve higher incomes, although those who inherit wealth are likely dumber than the norm.

[JuniperLea]

4. It's been my experience...

That this is true.

The experiments could be fun. I wonder how much I can get paid for this research? Beer and travel money at the very least, I presume. Oh, and a Weed budget too!

[Morning Dew]

5. and many experiences.

[JuniperLea]

7. :)

Just having random thoughts today I guess...

heehee...

[rrneck]

6. Woah. nt

[quinnox]

8. *puts hooking up with the local heroin dealer on to do list*

If smart people do it, What could go wrong? :shrug: :dunce:

[snooper2]

9. That's because we can get around in society better high

Than most people can sober lol


Jesus, just navigating Kroger with a shopping cart I have to be stoned. Yo Bluehair, cart parking is down and to the left lol

[BadDog40]

10. Its because intelligent people see past the govt lies about weed

And the hypocrisy of their drunken elders.

[wildeyed]

11. I believe it.

If you have an IQ high enough to be 1 in 100, you may only meet a few people who will be your intellectual peers in day to day life. What if you are 1 in 1000? Seems like alcohol and drugs might help to take the edge off the social isolation.

[Upton]

12. Seems pretty obvious..

the higher the IQ, the less likely an individual is to believe government drug war propaganda.

[mike_c]

13. full professor and lifelong stoner here....

Just sayin'. Everyone will be very happy to learn that I deleted the long and rambling speculation about why recreational drug use was always good to me. :rofl:

[Leftist Agitator]

22. Two going on three Masters degrees and lifelong stoner here, too.

If marijuana was detrimental to one's intellect in any way, I'd be a fucking vegetable by now.

:smoke:

[mainer]

14. Marijuana, maybe. But heroin? Crack? Oxycontin? No.

My neighbor was a drug counselor, and almost all his clients were pretty much at the bottom rung of society, unable to earn a living, and not particularly bright. Or so he says.

I think it really depends on which drugs you're talking about.

[RainDog]

20. the article talked about risk assessement as maybe the biggest factor - cannabis would be low risk

in terms of health and law, for simple small possession...heroin and crack, etc... not in the same risk pool.

since the spread of cannabis use, etc. in the 1960s, colleges have taught courses about drug use and abuse for the general student population, not just students in health sciences. I remember lots of people taking a class like that to learn about the actual health effects, not the govt. propaganda. The scare tactic of blaming LSD for Thalidomide babies was a big moment that made a lot of people question the govt's honesty and made people seek out information on their own.

And... I also knew a female chemistry student back in the day who made her own LSD, so there's that sort of availability in higher ed. too.

Some people are interested in altering their consciousness to see what the experience is like.

Back in their days, Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestly, founder of the Unitarian church, were getting high on nitrous oxide with friends after Priestly discovered it existed and James Watt created a machine to be able to inhale it.

Before nitrous oxide was ever used to help dentists relieve pain during minor surgery, people in Britain were throwing nitrous oxide parties... in 1799.

Experimentation is part of intelligence - but risk assessment is what makes experimentation stupid or not.

[Fly by night]

15. Speaking for myself, ....

National Merit Scholar, honors college grad (with a triple major), grad work at Vanderbilt, UT-Austin, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, Congressional advisor under two Presidents, an 11 page resume ...

... and every line of that resume was accomplished under the influence of cannabis.

Fly by night
Federal Bureau of Prisons # 16502-075

Edited to add: IQ was 168 the last time I was tested.

Well enough about me. Now tell me what you think about me. (That's an old family joke.)

[Qutzupalotl]

16. I have brain cells to spare.

[The Doctor.]

17. Yes, and for a number of reasons.

One main reason is that more intelligent people tend to be more inclined toward critical thinking and pro-active investigation. It is very true that the anti-drug messages are so overly simplified that smarter kids are completely unaffected by them. They simply recognize garbage when they see it.

The other reason, and this is a more complicated relationship, is that using drugs actuates pathways in the brain that are otherwise not active. Many drugs, especially marijuana, change the way the brain makes associations and processes information. This can actually increase intelligence, but the Stanford-Binet 2 still used is a very blunt instrument, so for that and other reasons it's difficult to measure exactly how intelligence is augmented.

[BadDog40]

18. Intelligent people are smart enough to realize how awesome drugs are!

[KurtNYC]

19. My hunch would be college, living outside the parents home and

boredom with alcohol use play a role here.

And if they count alcohol as a drug, which they should, then their headline is bogus.

[truedelphi]

21. There is a benefit to society as well.

A friend of mine who was a rocket scientist was once talking about how this subject came up among his colleagues. And to a person, they all agreed that a lot of the work on the space program and other advances in science would not have happened without LSD and pot.

An LSD user I knew in the seventies had more electronic patents to his name than any other engineer at Bell Labs.

[saras]

23. You'll get more sensible results if you separate "drugs" by category

The article also seems to be assuming that the anti-drug message is basically correct, and the issue is to figure out why more smart people break the rules. What if how much good drugs can do you depends on how smart you are?

Different kinds of drugs have different audiences with different behaviors. The people who restrict themselves to psychedelics are very different than the people who restrict themselves to opiates, or those with a preference for a particular pharmaceutical, or those who will indiscriminately take anything.

I suspect the high IQ/psychedelics question is really different that the high IQ/opiates question. High IQ people are more likely to be ayahuasca tourists, and less likely to huff gasoline or paint thinner, for example, but drugs and IQ aren't the only two controlling factors.

here's another potential explanation. Anti-drug propaganda has been so dishonest, so scientifically corrupt, so sleazy and manipulative, so degrading and stereotyped - for pretty much the entire twentieth century - that the more intelligent don't even take the anti-drug position seriously enough to investigate it instead of trying things for themselves.

[Odin2005]

24. Intelligent people are mire likely to need outlets for escapism, IMO.

It's the old "The Truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable" thing, smart people are more likely to see what is wrong with society and end up depressed about it.