Our findings on associations of BMI with past-year substance use disorders differ somewhat from those of Pickering et al. (2007) using the same sample, which we believe resulted from methodological differences between their study and ours. Pickering et al. (2007) divided their obese sample further into obese and extremely obese subsamples, and dividing the sample in this way could have reduced the likelihood of identifying significant findings as the number of extremely obese respondents was small, particularly when the sample was further divided by gender. In addition, those authors controlled for a number of additional covariates including eleven past-year medical conditions, and twelve past-year stressful life events. We chose not to control for these variables because both overweight/obesity and substance use disorders appear to increase risk for medical conditions and many of the life stressors examined rather than be caused by them (Chou, Grant, & Dawson, 1996; Klein et al., 2004; Laitinen, Power, Ek, Sovio, & Jarvelin, 2002; Pingitore, Dugoni, Tindale, & Spring, 1994; Poirier et al., 2006; Rohde et al., 2007; Stein, 1999). Although controlling for all possible contributing
