It was hypothesized that alcohol use would predict increased subjective well-being, after controlling for earlier adverse consequences, based on findings reported by Molnar and colleagues (2009) in their study of first-year university students residing in an urban setting of Eastern Canada. However, our analyses showed that subjective well-being predicted increased alcohol use in a sample of rural teens from the Midwestern United States. Neither earlier alcohol use nor earlier adverse consequences significantly predicted subjective well-being.
