East Lyme ―The results of a recent survey indicate students who drank alcohol recently said they did it to be social or to feel good, while those who used marijuana commonly cited a different reason: They did it to cope.

That’s according to the Southeastern Connecticut Regional Action, the substance abuse prevention group that in April administered an anonymous, online survey to students in grades seven through 12. Last month, the group released results with participation from about 80% of the student population.

Of the 1,111 middle and high school students surveyed, just over 5% reported consuming alcohol and just under 5% reported using marijuana in the past 30 days.

While the number of students reporting recent use of alcohol and marijuana were similar, SERAC epidemiologist Jennika Jenkins said it was concerning that students commonly reported using marijuana for coping reasons.

She said using a substance as a coping mechanism comes with an increased risk of addiction.

“Having coping come up as a major reason for using marijuana is…something I would definitely pay attention to,” she told members of the Board of Education during a November presentation.

SERAC interim executive director Angela Rae Duhaime this week said teens are more likely to get addicted because of the way their brains work. And students with conditions like depression and anxiety may be at a higher risk for using drugs or alcohol in order to cope with stress-related issues.

“National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism research shows that people who started drinking before age 15 were 50% more likely to become alcohol dependent as adults,” she said.

She pointed to an explainer about the connection between mental health disorders and addiction from the nonprofit Child Mind Institute, a group devoted to mental health and learning disorders among children.

“In the adolescent brain, pathways between regions are still developing. This is why teens learn new things quickly. This ‘plasticity’ means the brain easily habituates to drugs and alcohol,” the organization wrote.

The group said drug and alcohol use escalates from experimentation to a serious disorder much faster in adolescents than it does in adults, and that progression is more likely to happen in kids with mental health disorders.

The survey results showed 9.7% of students reported having used marijuana at some point in their lives.

Surveys use the past 30 days as a standard indicator of current use, while the “lifetime” measure indicates experimental use.

When it came to alcohol, 16.6% of the surveyed students said they’d consumed alcohol at some point in their lifetime.

Jenkins acknowledged the students’ responses might not totally reflect the reality of substance use and mental health issues in town.

“With any kind of self report, there is going to be a discrepancy between the actual behavior,” she said. “This is probably underreported.”

The numbers are down sharply from 2015, when a survey of 1,200 students revealed 14% of them said they’d used alcohol within the past 30 days, while 33% said they’d used alcohol in their lives. When it came to marijuana, 9% of students reported recent use and 18% said they’d used the drug in their lives.

SERAC for more than a decade has been surveying high school students throughout southeastern Connecticut. Duhaime said surveys were conducted most recently in towns including Colchester, Griswold, Lyme-Old Lyme and Norwich.

The survey was sponsored by the school and endorsed by the East Lyme Prevention Council.

School board member Jaime Barr Shelburn expressed her own concerns about any trend that indicated students might be more likely to become addicted to marijuana.

Shelburn said she wished East Lyme had banned marijuana sales in town like Waterford did recently. The East Lyme Zoning Commission this spring approved a special permit for a local businesswoman to sell marijuana for medicinal and adult recreational use, though the project has not yet been approved by the state.

“I think with it being legalized and so many parents and adults out there saying it’s okay for them to use it, we’re going to see that number go up – if they tell the truth,” Shelburn said.

The survey results showed only 31% of students classified using marijuana as a great risk, compared to 45.2% who said it was a great risk to drink one to two drinks a day.

The survey results delved further into the mental health realm to reveal 20.7% of students said they’d thought about hurting themselves and 8.3% had seriously considered suicide.

School board member Bill Derry said that translates to far too many students when even one is too many.

“Two hundred kids have thoughts of hurting themselves and 83 kids seriously considered suicide,” he said. “That’s scary to me.”

e.regan@theday.com