The Real Gateway Drug is Legal–and It’s Alcohol
Marijuana used to get the rap for being the gateway drug. However, recent research has shown that many people start out with alcohol as their first substance. Marijuana and tobacco were the second and third substances of choice respectively.
In the study, alcohol was the first substance used by over 65 to 68% of participants. On the same vein, many young people today drink alcohol in the form of binge-drinking.
New Research Points to Alcohol as the Real Gateway Drug
Dr. Denise Kandel, a psychiatry professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, along with Edmund A. Griffin and other psychiatrists and neurobiologists, published a paper that “cemented the validity of the gateway hypothesis.”
In the study, it shows that alcohol affects the brain, which amplifies cocaine’s effects and make them biologically more vulnerable to addiction.
This also makes it possible how people may also have polysubstance abuse disorders, in which they abuse two or more substances.
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