As noted, underage drinking can have lasting consequences throughout adolescence and into early adulthood (Newcomb & Bentler, 1988a), possibly due to disrupted brain maturation processes and/or other adverse developmental effects of alcohol consumption (Brown et al., 2000). The current analysis examines adolescent alcohol use, adverse consequences, and subjective well-being in relationship to young adult problem drinking. Despite hypothesized positive associations between alcohol use and subjective well-being during adolescence (Molnar et al., 2009), the former was still expected to positively predict problem drinking in early adulthood (Mason et al., 2010), even after controlling for earlier adverse consequences.
