Cognitive functioning in male polydrug abusers with and without family history of alcoholism.

We investigated the family history of alcoholism as a potential contributor to cognitive dysfunction in polydrug abusers. A sample of 62 male polydrug users whose main drug of use was heroin included no one with which comorbid antisocial behavior varied by family history of alcoholism. They were compared on a battery of cognitive tests. Polydrug users with positive histories tended to perform worse on several cognitive measures than those with negative family histories, but these tendencies were not statistically significant. The current findings support the hypothesis that cognitive deficiencies observed in previous studies of persons with positive family histories of alcoholism may, in part, be attributable to a failure to exclude individuals with diagnoses of antisocial behavior.