Tattoos and piercings linked to heavy drinking: Study

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDApr 17 2012

French researchers have found evidence proving the stereotype that people who sport tattoos and piercings are heavier drinkers.

Alcohol tests performed on nearly 2,000 young men and women frequenting bars in the west of France showed a strong correlation between body art and drinking, they said. “Pierced and/or tattooed individuals had consumed more alcohol in bars on a Saturday night than patrons in the same bars who were non-pierced and non-tattooed,” said a study for the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

There has been earlier research that has shown that people with tattoos and piercings were more likely to engage in unsafe sex, fighting and heavy drinking, but this was the first such project to measure more alcohol per litre of exhaled breath. The subjects were tested as they left 21 bars in four cities on four different Saturday nights on the Atlantic Coast of Brittany, an area with high alcohol consumption, said the researchers. The men and women were asked whether they had tattoos or piercings and then asked to take a breathalyser test. The men tested were on average 20.6 years old and the women 20.2 years.

Tattoos and piercings are relatively new phenomena in France, and under-18s need permission from their parents.

• Of 1,081 men interviewed, 903 had no body art and an average measure of 0.18 milligrams of alcohol per litre of exhaled air, lower than France's 0.25 drink driving limit.
• The figure increased to 0.19 in the 98 men with tattoos, 0.23 percent for the 53 men with piercings, and 0.26 for the 27 men with both.
• Of the 884 women, 537 had no body art and an average alcohol measure of 0.12, which rose to 0.14 for the 124 with tattoos, 0.20 for the 138 with piercings, and 0.24 for the 85 women with both tattoos and piercings.

Researcher Nicolas Gueguen of France's Universite de Bretagne-Sud, said the findings showed that teachers, parents and doctors should consider tattoos and piercings as potential “markers” for alcohol abuse. “A host of previous studies have routinely shown that individuals with body piercings or tattoos are more likely to engage in risky behaviour than non-pierced or non-tattooed people,” he said. Educators, parents and doctors should consider tattoos and piercings as potential signs of drinking and use them to begin a conversation about alcohol use and other risky behaviours, Gueguen suggested.

But fellow scientist Myrna Armstrong from Texas Tech University, who reviewed the paper, cautioned against a “tendency to see a tattoo or piercing and automatically profile or stereotype that individual as a 'high-risk person' as this may or may not be conducive for helping them. A clinician, for example, can spend some time not judging individuals about their present tattoos, but talking to them about safe tattooing, etc. and alcohol in general . . . not because they have tattoos or piercings but because they are in a high-risk age group.”

The results of a study Armstrong conducted in 2009 also suggested that there is a difference between having a few tattoos or piercings and having many. “We found that those with only one tattoo were very similar to those without any tattoos in terms of high-risk behaviours, including alcohol. We also graded body piercings and found that individuals with seven or more were the really high-risk group. In other words, be very careful about generalizing among those with many tattoos or piercings and those with only one,” she noted in the news release.