Drinking like an adult? Trajectories of alcohol consumption before and after college graduation

College students who engage in high-risk drinking patterns are thought to “age out” of these patterns as they transition to adult roles. College graduation is an important milestone demarcating this transition. This longitudinal study investigated the impact of the sentinel event of college graduation among a cohort of 1,253 young adults originally recruited as first-year college students for a study of health-risk behaviors. Standard measures of alcohol consumption were gathered during eight annual personal interviews (76% to 91% followed up annually). Graduation dates were culled from administrative data from the home university (85%) and supplemented with self-report data for individuals graduating from other institutions (5%). A series of spline models, in which separate trajectories were modeled before and after the “knot” of college graduation, were fit to eight annual observations of alcohol use frequency (past-year) and quantity (typical number of drinks/day). Alcohol use frequency exhibited a linearly increasing trajectory pre-graduation, followed by a quadratic trajectory post-graduation with a slight decrease and subsequent rebound to pre-graduation levels. In contrast, quantity decreased linearly throughout the eight-year period. Findings confirm that, on average, high-quantity drinking characterizes the college years, but also suggest that high-frequency drinking patterns that develop during college are likely to persist for several years post-graduation, albeit in lower quantities. Recent college graduates might be an important intervention target. Additional research on subgroup variation (e.g., gender) might provide important information about individual differences in alcohol use trajectories during and after college.