In their study of more than 4,000 sixth-graders at Chicago schools, 17 percent of the children had used alcohol in the past year. Those students who'd started drinking were also more likely than their peers to have a range of problems, such as getting into fights, shoplifting or getting into trouble at school.

The findings, reported in the journal Health Education and Behavior, suggest that alcohol prevention needs to start in grade school, researchers say.

Health experts are turning more and more to group therapy to help troubled tweens defeat troubling levels of pot and booze addictions.

The number of 12- and 13-year-olds treated for addiction hit a three-year high in 2007, with 34 kids in Massachusetts facilities, up from 27 in 2005, according to Department of Public Health figures obtained by the Herald.

“It is definitely disturbing,” said Jennifer Gearhart, director of outpatient mental health at Brockton-based South Bay Mental Health, which treats more than 1,000 young addicts each year. “We’re finding that the most effective treatment is group treatment. It is a more recent development and more effective than the usual one-to-one counseling.”

In their separate oasis, alcoholics and prescription drug abusers of a certain age do not curse at one another, raise their voices in anger or blast music at midnight. They don’t brag about their macho pasts or stage drama-queen breakups on the communal pay phone. They show up on time for therapy groups.

“We have different health issues, different emotional issues, different grief issues,” said Patrick Gallagher, 66, who was treated here for a dual addiction to pain medication and alcohol. “We need more peace and quiet and a different pace.”

The latest entry in the lexicon of food-related ills is drunkorexia, shorthand for a disturbing blend of behaviors: self-imposed starvation or binging and purging, combined with alcohol abuse.

Drunkorexia is not an official medical term. But it hints at a troubling phenomenon in addiction and eating disorders. Among those who are described as drunkorexics are college-age binge drinkers, typically women, who starve all day to offset the calories in the alcohol they consume. The term is also associated with serious eating disorders, particularly bulimia, which often involve behavior like binging on food — and alcohol — and then purging.