In conclusion, our findings show that perceived social support from friends play an important role in buffering the effects of genetic risk for alcohol use and suggest that the role of social support from both family and friends in relation to alcohol use vary across age. These results suggest that strengthening social support may be one means to reduce alcohol use among EA and AA adults. Given prior evidence that psychosocial interventions may mitigate genetic risk for alcohol use outcomes (Kuo et al., 2019; Neale et al., 2021), our findings also suggest that intervention programs that target at strengthening social support from friends may have the potential to reduce alcohol use among those high in genetic risk.
