BY OUR EARLY 30S, WE'RE HARDLY PARTYING

Substance Abuse Declines With Age

Is your social life sagging?

It seems that by the time Americans reach their early 30s, they no
longer party hearty.

And that is a good thing, if you are a researcher in the field of
substance abuse. Fewer parties mean less of it, a new study shows.

When they are 18, about 94% of males and 92% of females go out at
least once a week for fun or recreation. By the time they are 31 or
32, 73% of men and 64% of women get out that often, says a new study
from University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR).

It's not a sign of the times, but rather an indication of assuming
more adult responsibilities such as marriage and parenthood, says lead
author Jerald Bachman, an ISR social psychologist. Today's
18-year-olds go out about as much as 18-year-olds did in 1976, he says.

In general, he says, ''Evenings out for fun and recreation, especially
going to parties, hanging out with friends, and going to bars, are
activities that decline steadily and substantially with age.''

Look more closely and it seems even more obvious that party animals
have been tamed by their early 30s:

* At 18, 52% of men and 48% of women go out more than three times a
week.

* At 23-24, 35% of men and 24% of women get out that
often.

* But at 31-32, only 15% of men and 11% of women manage to get out of
the house at least three nights a week.

That is just fine with Bachman. He is not all that interested in party
animals who run out of steam as they age. He is more interested in the
fact that young adults who go out frequently in the evening for fun
and recreation are more likely than their peers on average to drink
heavily and to use illegal drugs. And studying substance abuse is his
special interest.

Bachman finds that the relationship between nights out and heavy
drinking and marijuana use weakens a little with age. Still, at ages
29-32, those who go out at least three nights a week are twice as
likely to report marijuana use or heavy drinking than those who go out
less than once a week.

Bachman's study analyzes 25 years of data on more than 38,000 people
from the ISR Monitoring the Future Study, conducted yearly since 1975.
That government-supported, long-term research is used as a barometer
of trends in various behaviors among American adolescents and young
adults.

Research indicates that while temporary increases in substance abuse
show up after high school, they diminish as young adults marry and
have families. ''Their social lives change as they take on these other
responsibilities,'' Bachman says. ''We find that is what accounts for
a lot of the change.''

The findings from Bachman's team appear in a new book, The
Decline of Substance Use in Young Adulthood: Changes in Social Activities,
Roles and Beliefs from Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.