
High IQ linked to drug use - orky56
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/14/high-iq-linked-to-drug-use/?hpt=hp_t2
======
buff-a
FTA:It's not clear why people with high childhood IQs are more likely to use
illegal drugs. "We suspect they may be more open to new experiences and are
more sensation seeking," says White.

The articles shy away from the elephant in the room which is that the UK and
US gvts have a massive legal and propaganda effort to prevent drug use. Indeed
the idea that only stupid people do drugs is part of this propaganda.

So maybe its because a higher IQ allows one to realize that the War on Drugs
is fucking irrational bullshit and magical thinking and act accordingly (i.e.
to choose for oneself).

In a world where broccoli is illegal because its "evil", the headline could
have been "High IQ linked to broccoli eating".

Here's a question: is a high IQ linked to smoking? How about alcohol?

Update: So alcohol is also correlated with iq too.

~~~
bambax
> _How about alcohol?_

From the article:

> _The lead researcher says he isn't surprised by the findings. "Previous
> research found for the most part people with high IQs lead a healthy life,
> but that they are more likely to drink to excess as adults," says James
> White a psychologist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom._

What the article doesn't explore is the fact that drugs are expensive; isn't
it possible that drug use is correlated with revenue?

The study apparently didn't make a difference between addicts and occasional
users.

IQ is also correlated with revenue (probably because that's what it actually
measures: socio-economic class), and so that may be a part of the explanation,
at least for "recreational" drugs.

~~~
porfirio
"IQ is also correlated with revenue (probably because that's what it actually
measures: socio-economic class)"

False. Charles Murray compared brothers of the same household of different
intelligence levels, and found significant disparities in income.

<http://www.eugenics.net/papers/murray.html> (article originally appeared in
The Telegraph)

It's more accurate to say socioeconomic class measures IQ, rather than the
other way around. To oversimplify, high IQ people are more productive, IQ at
adulthood is heritable to a great extent (~80% of variation in IQ is due to
genetic variation), so 1 + 1 = rich families have higher IQ children. Imagine
if people were paid based on how tall they are, and replace IQ with height,
and it'd be the same -> Tall parents + high heritability for height -> rich
families have taller offspring. People don't recognize this with regards to IQ
because they ultimately don't believe IQ is highly heritable, which it is.

Links:

IQ and productivity:
[http://www.onetest.com.au/awms/Upload/documents/whitepapers/...](http://www.onetest.com.au/awms/Upload/documents/whitepapers/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%20Summary%20-%20Onetest.pdf)

IQ and heritability: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ> (first
paragraph)

~~~
bad_user

         they ultimately don't believe IQ is highly 
         heritable, which it is
    

I don't think anybody sane questions that, but what people are saying and that
studies so far have confirmed ...

1) small variations in IQ tests don't matter, like for example the difference
between 120 and 140 being negligible and depends a lot on external factors,
like rest, vitamins in your blood-stream and mood ... give a person several IQ
tests over a period of time and he'll score differently every single time

2) you can increase your IQ score with a certain amount of points just by
making your brain work harder. Physical exercises work too (professional
athletes are above average)

Ultimately the most common complaint is that intelligence (while hereditary)
is not something you can accurately measure and that IQ tests are inherently
not reliable.

~~~
mgkimsal
"give a person several IQ tests over a period of time and he'll score
differently every single time"

Not sure what you mean by several. I took 4 (5?) over a 30 year period, and
the results were all within a couple percentage points of each other.

~~~
bad_user
I took the same number of tests (4) over a period of 7 years and the minimum I
got was 119, while the maximum was 140. Clearly this has some significance, as
over 100 you're definitely at least average, over 130 you're definitely
gifted, while below 80 you're definitely challenged.

However, my point was that small variations are not significant. Also, the
correlation between IQ scores and intelligence in general is highly debatable
- and that's what people are arguing about.

~~~
mgkimsal
Interesting. My variation wasn't that marked. Some of the tests were
different, so their scales may have been slightly different (IIRC). On at
least one I remember I had when I was umm... 5(?) or 6? then again in mid 20s
then again in late 30s - all were within 5 points of each other. I can't
remember if it was stanford-binet or something else though. Hrm... no... I
think earlier tests were stanford-binet, later were wisc and wj. To that end,
the scoring models would have been different on the ones when I was a kid, and
I know there's some issues between child scores vs adult scores - not
necessarily directly comparable.

------
guard-of-terra
I think it might be because, as Wil Shipley pointed out
<http://blog.wilshipley.com/2007/12/on-saying-goodbye.html> (some) smart
people tend to be miserable because their wits let them skip the mechanisms
put in place in human mind to prevent it from feeling miserable despite
actually being so.

Also <http://blog.wilshipley.com/2007/03/crazy-talk.html>

------
tomlin
As someone who suffers from ADHD-PI, I can't help but wonder a possible co-
relation here. Before my occasional marijuana use a few years ago, I wasn't
aware of my concentration issues. Like many others, I thought I was just lazy
or unmotivated. When smoking marijuana for the first time, my friends lay
around unmotivated and relaxed while I couldn't stop thinking about working on
one of my many "one day" projects. This eventually lead me to getting tested
for ADHD. Now I am on pharma, but the benefits appear the same.

I feel like drugs helped me realize a lot about myself. While I am not so sure
IQ is a reliable measurement, I can definitely say I can handle a lot more
information and make good use of that information much better than I had ever
before.

I've done some research on brain wave activity and dopamine
receptors/activity. It seems that people with ADHD tend to have misaligned
brain wave activity and stimulants manage to align this activity up to a
point. My theory, from my own experiences, is that there is an optimal brain
wave frequency and people with ADHD are suffering from dopamine deficiency
that skews below optimal frequency, and too much dopamine activity skews above
optimal frequency. Further, I've noted that those who experience drugs as a
depressant tend to have normal dopamine activity whereas those who experience
drugs as a stimulant appear to have low dopamine activity. It's just a wild
theory with no medical evidence - I'm just trying to understand the pattern. I
would love to hear others chime in here and adjust my theory as necessary.

I've been told that alcohol or marijuana makes one drowsy or lazy. For me, it
stimulates - until a point - then I also become drowsy and lazy. This is where
I believe I've gone past optimal dopamine activity. For the average person
with normal dopamine activity, passing this threshold seems to happen much
sooner.

~~~
pingu
What medication gave you the same benefits as weed, if you don't mind me
asking?

My experiences very closely match yours, fwiw. I tried Ritalin but wasn't
satisfied at all, and am 'back on' weed.

~~~
tomlin
Right now I am on Concerta, 54mg. I have tried higher dosages, but the
drowsiness and inattentiveness came back. This is what originally lead me to
believe that the effects (stimulant or depressant) of substances are relative
to the person's dopamine reception. At a higher dose of Concerta, 72mg, I
figured I'd end up being superhuman, but, surprisingly I ended up back where I
started - inattentive and unmotivated. At Concerta 54mg, I've noticed
marijuana will often push me over this threshold as well, causing the
marijuana to act as a depressant where it was otherwise a stimulant.

Ritalin, while chemically similar, doesn't seem to provide the same benefits
from those who've disclosed their experience (again, anecdotal). Concerta is
once-a-day release-controlled dosage.

------
hayeah
I can't take a newsflash seriously if they don't even link to the original
study.

Are the socioeconomic levels of these higher IQ individuals controlled? How
exactly did they select their sample for the study? And they mentioned
marijuana, cocaine, heroine in one breath, as though those are the same drug.
Surely different population groups use those drugs to different extents.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Also, "A high IQ is defined as a score between 107 and 158."

Is that standard? Isn't that about 1/2 to 4 standard deviations on IQ charts?
Seems like a wide range.

------
fourk
This link seems to have much more specific data from the original study:

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111114221018.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111114221018.htm)

EDIT: The abstract is available from the publishing journal in the following
link. The full text was unfortunately not available without a subscription of
some form.

[http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/28/jech-2011-20025...](http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/28/jech-2011-200252.abstract)

------
robinhouston
It’s a shame the article itself is not freely available, but even the
published abstract gives some interesting details that the CNN report didn’t
mention.

[http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/28/jech-2011-20025...](http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/28/jech-2011-200252.abstract?sid=5d54347e-ce5e-4d55-ace4-b96e00a76727)

In particular the abstract makes it clear that the measured associated is
independent of life-course socioeconomic position.

Actually a quick search of Google Scholar throws up a number of papers on this
topic, most of which seem to confirm the association reported here.

This one <http://personal.lse.ac.uk/KANAZAWA/pdfs/RGP2010.pdf> looks quite
interesting: “The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that more
intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse
evolutionarily novel values than less intelligent individuals. Consumption of
alcohol, tobacco, and drugs is evolutionarily novel, so the Savanna-IQ
Interaction Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are
more likely to consume these substances.”

------
tryitnow
My guess is that this phenomenon has something to do with boredom (as
mentioned in the article). I have never studied IQ, but when I reflect on the
IQ tests that I take I realize that a big part of my problem solving process
involves rapidly imagining potential solutions and mentally "testing" them to
see if they make sense.

Does anyone know what this type of thinking is called?

Anyways, that's how I think when I'm trying to solve a puzzle. I notice that
the hard part is not in testing my imagined hypotheses, but in hypothesis
generation. Where am I going with this? Imagination. I've noticed that my
ability to rapidly imagine different scenarios is a key part of my ability to
solve difficult problems. There are other components, like working memory,
logic, etc, but imagination plays a big role. At least for me.

If what is true for me is true in general it could mean that people who are
more inclined to imagine complex alternative worlds in their heads are also
more likely to enjoy the "out of the ordinary" mental states provided by drugs
and alcohol.

------
sev
Boredom has probably something to do with it.

------
schrijver
It’s kind of odd that the article doesn’t look at the social aspects.
Different social groups have different patterns in and attitudes towards drug
consumption. These patterns change over time. Note, research is based on
findings from 1970. In 1970, drugs might still be tied to counterculture, and
thus to people with on avarage higher education (and on avarage higher iq),
while in 2011 drug use seems to appear in much more diverse layers of society…

------
itmag
High IQ people are probably more in their head and thus seeking out the
sensory connectedness that "normal" people take for granted.

------
gcanyon
Here's a reasonable-seeming argument why we should expect smarter people to be
more likely to use drugs: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-
fundament...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-
fundamentalist/201010/why-intelligent-people-use-more-drugs)

~~~
daemin
Could it be that the smarter/brighter individuals are bored (not
stimulated/challenged enough) by the average education system and so they find
a release elsewhere with drugs, as something that will make the boredom less
painful?

~~~
skore
I have also heard, a number of times now, that a lot of smart people use drugs
because it "makes people more interesting", which is probably code for "I numb
my own brain to be able to strike a casual conversation". (My primary example
would be having this as a direct quote by Christopher Hitchens. I seem to also
recall that there was a House MD episode of a genius putting himself on a
controlled substance to be a little more numb because he would otherwise scare
away the girlfriend that he loved with his rambling mind.)

So yes, some people might be searching for a thrill because what they are
supposed to do does not deliver that. But others just really want to "be
normal" and drugs are a quick way to get there, strangely.

------
Darmani

      high IQ is defined as a score between 107 and 158.
    

That means around 70% of the high IQ people in this study had an IQ between
107 and 120. Over 90% had an IQ less than 130. Don't go out and assume that
smoking a joint will help you get into Mensa.

------
csomar
_A new British study finds children with high IQs are more likely to use drugs
as adults than people who score low on IQ tests as children._

I stopped here. The title should be "Drug use linked to High IQ". That's
completely different.

------
super_mario
Nothing is said about adult IQ. It only says that kids with higher IQ end up
using drugs (I can see that, it's depressing being intelligent). But somehow I
doubt that adult drug users have higher IQ as well.

------
dubya
Interesting, but this part is pretty weasily: "...told by parents and teachers
that intelligent people didn't use drugs. Turns out, the adults _may_ have
been wrong." As an unqualified statement, it is definitely wrong, and was
demonstrably wrong at the time: Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Paul Erdos...

------
signalsignal
...and thus IQ is a poor indicator of success. People should get over the high
scores others can get on tests and focus on something more substantial.

------
shin_lao
Correlation isn't causation. What's the next study? People with brown eyes do
more drugs? Seriously.

~~~
Jach
I don't think anyone here is arguing that smoking pot (or in general "doing
drugs") raises IQ scores... Nor do I see arguing that high IQ scores cause pot
use, just that the presence of a high IQ seems to, if the study is to be
believed, increase the probability of pot use. Correlations and probabilities
are interesting for themselves, and can in fact be used to imply causation.
[http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-
Pe...](http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-
Pearl/dp/052189560X/)

------
adamtmca
Higher IQ = go to college/ university = experimentation.

~~~
davidcuddeback
That was my first thought when reading the article. There's probably a
correlation between high IQ and college attendance, just as there's probably a
correlation between college attendance and drug use.

------
keys1234
If you have a high IQ then it is that much easy for you, 1)to find what you
want (age<20), like drugs 2)and be richer(age>30) than many folks , so you can
drink a lot.

~~~
steve-howard
Dunno about finding what you want. I have a reasonably high IQ, but I couldn't
tell you the first thing about where to find a dealer. I didn't even drink
before I turned 21, not for lack of wanting.

------
porfirio
This article doesn't tell us what we think it does.

In America, the relationship between drug use and high IQ is small or non-
existent: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-
fundament...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-
fundamentalist/201010/why-intelligent-people-use-more-drugs)

(Someone else linked this earlier)

Despite the UK being very similar to the US, on a global scale, the
relationship between IQ and drug use is not the same across the herring pond.
There _are_ relationships between IQ and social indicators that are consistent
across time and nations, and this isn't one of those. Whatever is causing this
relationship in Britain is cultural - I doubt it's a feature of high
intelligence, rather than just Brits who have high IQ.

------
porfirio
I know a fair amount about IQ, having studied it a bit, and I'm surprised. IQ
correlates pretty strongly, with law abiding behavior, at the very least, not
going to jail. High IQ people are less socially dysfunctional than average and
low IQ people, eg see the table here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve>

As for the sex difference between men and women of high IQ, fewer women in
general do drugs, so it's easier for high IQ women to rack up a higher
multiple of drug use over their average IQ female counterparts.

I looked at the Psychology Today/Kanazawa link, and it says that the
relationship is insignificant in America. I.e., the relationship between
childhood IQ and drug use is a British phenomenon. Maybe the intelligent are
more decadent in Britain? If Kanazawa represents the data accurately, this
whole IQ-drugs relationship is BS, in the American setting. Bye bye grand
social theorizing.

~~~
jbooth
"Not going to jail" != "law abiding behavior". Especially when you get class
issues involved.

Getting picked up for smoking pot or petty vandalism in the suburbs often ends
in a trip home to mom and dad after a very stern scare. In the city, it's
another statistic for this month's arrests.

------
mqqq
You guys are full of shi*t. You actually believe that high IQ means more
intelligent. And now you find an excuse to your drug use and say, "see, I use
drugs because I'm smart". why don't you guys just admit that you guys are too
weak minded and the only reason you use drugs is because you are too weak to a
avoid peer presure.

~~~
S_A_P
What does my Karma need to be to get a down vote link? People use drugs for a
lot of reasons, Correlation != Causation comes to mind here.

