Social Anxiety Disorder: An Important Antecedent of Alcohol Use Disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) theoretically could increase risk for later alcohol use disorder (AUD); for example, alcohol is used to cope with anxiety at social gatherings (self-medication), and SAD frequently precedes AUD and has a younger age of onset. However, the known association between the two disorders could be driven by the comorbidity of SAD with other anxiety disorders, by genetic or environmental factors shared by SAD and AUD, or by the increase in anxiety caused by drinking. To learn more, researchers assessed 2801 twins at a mean age of 28 (T1) and 10 years later (T2) for the presence of AUD, SAD, and other anxiety disorders in the previous 5 years.

SAD had the strongest association with AUD (odds ratio, 4.68), and only SAD pr…