Drinking problems and childhood IQ linked

The cause of a drinking problems starts way back in grammer school. Not just because of going to collage. My son's IQ is 143 and it has made him different than his peers threw all his grades. The teachers also handled him differnt than other kids, too. No matter what kids say they do not want to be different. Teachers get threatened when they get asked questions they could not answer and made my son's days long and frustrated.

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Being gifted can be very challenging and there can be many reasons to use mind altering substances. I would not consider myself gifted, I have two BS degrees and I am good at Math. My DH, however, has a PHD in Quantum Mechanics and I would consider him gifted. At age 16 he graduated from High School and was off to college at 17. He told me that for him it was because life was too easy in school and he needed more of a challenge. Not too many people can take a test while on something and still get 100%. The other side is depression. Gifted people see the world differently and can get depressed easily. The sense of obligation to help is very high. Teachers ask gifted people to help the struggling students and that can be too much for a child to try and teach another child. Very few gifted children have what it takes to teach another the fundamentals. It is also tough being different from every one else. Lots of people go to college. Only a small fraction of those could be considered gifted. I don't believe there is where the connection lies. At least not from my experience.

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I wanted to add my perspective after reading this article and feeling a little irritated about the college drinking propaganda mentioned. I was in college and I drank. I still drink sometimes. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with being in college that I still indulge sometimes. Just like the two comments before mine, I think that being gifted causes you to be treated differently, causes you to process things differently, see things more vividly and more realistically than your average peer... it is a tough world out there even if your check mark lands in the "ignorance is bliss" column, let alone if you're smart enough at a young age to absorb the insanity of the world we live in. It is no coincidence that the people who have the most realistic grasp of the world are those who are the most clinically depressed. Quit trying to make connections where you WANT them to be and really try to think outside the box about this. It is a far more logical conclusion that your commenters have reached than the much more far-fetched one that you endorse.

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A friend of mine with an I.Q. above 150 started having drinking problems before he was out of high school. We went to a small, public county high school with no gifted programs.
Perhaps I should be glad my daughters are on the lower end of the gifted spectrum. The gifted programs at their school don't really add any pressure because the work they do there doesn't even count as a grade.
As for average-me, I have a glass of wine now and then but have never had a drinking problem.
This could all be coincidence, though.

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I was considered gifted in school, and I attended college. I also have a history of drinking problems in my family. I want to personally say that I drink (probably too much, but FAR from alcoholism if my family members are any indication) for 2 reasons that might apply to the "gifted alcoholics" theory. 1-When I do I feel less annoyed at the people of lower intelligence around me. Despite TRYING to get over the frustration I feel when people do not catch on to things as fast as I do, I have never managed to be accepting. And it makes me even more frustrated at myself that I have nasty feelings towards otherwise wonderful people for what I percieve to be of little consequence. 2-Boredom. I'm bored a lot of the day by the conversations of people around me, I was bored by the work in school and college and my job before I became a SAHM. It became a way to distract myself.

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Kids who succeed academically and gifted kids are not always the same kids.

As someone who has been considered "gifted" -- one of the reasons that I am is that there is a part of my brain that never stops. It never stops analyzing, never stops looking for connections between things, never stops grabbing onto a problem and mashing it into pieces. Another way to look at it is that it never shuts up.

Being buzzed mutes it. Being drunk shuts it down. I don't like having that part of my brain shut down, so I don't get drunk. But I can see why people would.

Even before the current college culture in the US, there's been a long-documented link between substance abuse problems and giftedness (whether high intelligence or high creativity . . . which aren't two separate things).

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