Suspected causal association between cocaine use and occurrence of panic

Aim: To estimate a suspected causal association between cocaine use and the occurrence of panic. Methods: Data are from an epidemiologic sample of school-attending youths enrolled in primary school who were traced, rerecruited, and assessed via standardized interviews in young adulthood during 2000-2002. A total of 1,692 young adults comprised the analysis sample. Occurrences of panic and cocaine use were assessed in young adulthood, via standardized item sets from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule. A brief assessment of panic experiences had also been made when the youths were in early adolescence. Results: With statistical adjustment for important covariates, we found a modestly excess occurrence of panic attack-like experiences among those who had used cocaine at least once, relative to occurrence among young people who never had used cocaine (estimated odds ratio, OR=1.9; p=.014 before exclusion of 288 with early onset panic attack-like experiences; p=.005 after this exclusion). Discussion: The main finding of this study was an association linking cocaine use and panic attack-like experiences, which was more modest than was observed in study samples that included older adults.