Abstract
Background: Adolescents often indulge in alcohol consumption either on peer pressure or for enjoyment. A few studies were conducted on alcoholism among adolescent students in Indian settings. Materials & Methods: A Cross- Sectional study was conducted during January-March 2005 for three months on 226 adolescent students in the age group of 15 to 18 years belonging to two senior secondary schools in Tadong area of East Sikkim. Simple Random Sampling Technique was applied after obtaining informed written consent for the selection of respondents. A pre-tested interview schedule was used to study the association between Knowledge, Attitude and Practice in relation with alcoholism. CAGE questionnaire was used to assess alcohol abuse. The collected data were tabulated and analysed by using the statistical package SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 10.0 for Windows. Findings were described in terms of proportions.Results & Conclusions: In this study, stress reduction, relaxing effect and mere pleasure were considered by the participants to be the major reasons for alcohol consumption. Though 66.4% of respondents were found to consume alcohol regularly, 33.3% of them wanted to give up the habit. Among the regular alcohol consumers who had developed alcohol abuse (68%), majority (65.3%) felt the need to cut down on drinking while 58.7% felt guilty about drinking.