Life Stress as a Precursor to Adolescent Drug Dependence

Abstract

Though drug dependence is often characterized as a stress-produced disorder, there is little or no quantitative data relating stress and drug dependence. Coddington''s Life Event Record, used for measuring stress, was administered to 31 drug-dependent adolescents by estimating levels of life stress during the year preceding their 1st illicit drug use. The drug-dependent subjects showed significantly higher life stress scores than did a standard normal population of adolescents. The null hypothesis of no difference was rejected at the 0.005 level. A stress-reduction theory of drug dependence gained support from these results.