Association of the different types of substance use behaviors in the Hungarian adult population

BACKGROUND, AIMS: There are several examples in international literature dealing with the connection between different types of substance use behaviors. Studies mostly report the strengthening effect of one type of substance use on other types as well among Hungarian high school students. In our study the relationship between different substance use behaviors are analyzed on adult population. METHOD: The analysis was carried out within the framework of the Hungarian Population Survey on Addiction Problems (OLAAP) on a sample of 2710 persons from the Hungarian population between 18 and 64 years of age. RESULTS: Lifetime prevalence of abstinence regarding all substance use behaviors in the 18-64 years population is 7.5%. 848% of all subjects have drunk alcohol ever, 55.6% have smoked, 13.1% have consumed prescription drugs and 9.3% have used illicit drugs at least once while lifetime prevalence of abusive prescription drug use is 6.1%. One fourth (24.8%) of the surveyed persons have not used any of the studied substances in the last month. Socio-demographic pattern of different substance use behaviors is rather heterogenic, however descriptive analyses on the relationship between different actual (last month) substance use behaviors in line with the cluster analysis carried out on prevalence data of different substance use behaviors indicate the relatedness of substance use behaviors. CONCLUSION: Our results support the phenomenon called multiple drug use in literature that was observed on a Hungarian high school student sample as well. At the same time however, based on the substance use data regarding adult population, a slightly different cluster structure was identified.