A SIBLING STUDY OF SENSATION SEEKING AND OPIATE ADDICTION

Substance abuse and its correlative personality traits may have famili al associations. We assessed the relationship between sensation seekin g and drug use in 201 opiate addicts and 133 of their siblings in a cr oss-sectional family study. Probands and their drug-abusing siblings s howed greater sensation seeking than their non-drug-abusing siblings a nd this diagnosis accounted for the most variance in regression models . Degree of sensation seeking correlated among drug-abusing siblings a nd with age of first drug use. The results are discussed in terms of s ubstance abuse typologies and for using sensation-seeking assessments for prevention and treatment of substance abuse.