Adolescent high impulsivity, risk-taking, thrill and novelty-seeking behaviors promote heavy drinking and other drug experimentation. Adolescent individuals drink their heaviest in their late teens and early to mid-twenties and are more likely to drink large amounts of alcohol when drinking. 44% of college students binge drink every two weeks and 19% have more than 3 binge drinking episodes per week (Wechsler et al., 2000). Adolescents are less sensitive to the sedative effects of alcohol (Monti et al., 2005; Silveri and Spear, 1998), which allows them to stay awake to drink more alcohol. However, they are more vulnerable to alcohol-induced neurotoxicity (Crews et al., 2000; Crews et al., 2006b; Monti et al., 2005). Interestingly, the parts of the brain undergoing highly plastic changes in adolescence are sensitive to alcohol neurotoxicity in adolescence (Crews et al., 2000) (Fig. 7). Studies of adolescent individuals with alcohol use disorder have found smaller prefrontal grey and white matter volumes than age-matched controls. Lower prefrontal volumes correlated with a higher maximum number of drinks per drinking episode (De Bellis et al., 2005). Studies of social drinkers
