So it turns out, according to Psychology Today, that kids with high IQ’s drink more as adults, even controlling for income and education and all that.
The article claims to be testing the hypothesis that “intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in (drinking,)” but it seems to me this says something a little more depressing than that. It doesn’t say that smarter people drink more; even putting aside that the IQ test only measures one kind of intelligence, IQs can change significantly throughout your life. It says that, in the US and UK at least, kids who score well on an IQ test drink more when they grow up.
So let’s say that smart kids do want to escape their consciousness. They want to make themselves stop being smart, if only for a moment. Says Andrew Sullivan, “When you have constantly charging brain, you need to shut it off sometimes in order to breathe and live.”
But why is that? That seems like a terrible truth, if it is one. Might it have more to do with the way kids with a certain type of intelligence are treated by their peers and mentors? Couldn’t it also be that “smart” kids get picked on? That they tend to be less popular, at least if the American high school experience has anything to do with it? That they are ostracized socially? Wouldn’t that be more likely to drive people to drink than the fact that they scored well on a test?
3 responses
Maybe they’re bored. Not saying I’m a genius or anything, but I live in a rural area and about 90% of my social F-2-F encounters leave me craving the solitude I need for reading (and writing and painting, etc.) I value community in the abstract, but the reality of engaging with my neighbors, etc., often drives me right up a tree. So here I sit with a margarita and the Rumpus. Thanks for being there.
Ahhh. Makes so much sense now. Mondays are rough, but weekends are rougher.
I remember, as a teen stuck in a festering hellhole of a small, stupid town, feeling like if I could just kill off a lot of brain cells I’d be happier. I tried that for a while but then figured out getting the hell outta Dodge was way more life-affirming. Which meant I was then pretty much broke a lot of the time so I couldn’t afford the substances it took to kill a lot of brain cells, so I think it worked out ok.
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