Is Drug/Alcohol Addiction Genetically Caused?

Medical researchers believe that addiction is genetically caused. If you have certain genes in your body, then you will become an addict. However, research finds that certain people with genes thought to “carry” addiction  are not drug/alcohol addicts and don’t have addictive traits.

Genetics was founded by Mendel who discovered that genetic characteristics are selectively handed down from parent to offspring, through the generations. Genetic material from both parents combines at conception. The unique genetic code of the child determines whether his eyes will be blue, his hair dark or blonde and every other factor that makes him a unique person.

In the normal course, inherited traits follow strict patterns, called Mendelian Laws. You can predict which genes in combination will give rise to particular outcomes, with absolute certainty. Therefore when you find a person with genes that researchers say are genes for addiction yet the person is not an addict, you really need to be looking for other possible causes for the condition of addiction.

Genes can be damaged and fail to reproduce exact patterns of themselves. This damage is called mutation, the messages carried by your genes have in some way changed. Genes which mutate in utero mutate due to internal trauma, genes exposed to external trauma will mutate sometime after birth. If a gene changes after conception then the reasons are environmental, they are no longer your inherited genes.

Researchers lament that in families, addicts tend to pop up at random, ignoring genetic laws. People exposed to similar trauma may have the same damaged genes that researchers associate with a particular addiction. Yet some of these people are NOT ADDICTS.

If genetics is really a cause of addiction, then these people would have no choice – they carry the genes and therefore are destined to be drug or alcohol addicts.

Perhaps it is too obvious to suggest that it is the traumatic environment itself which causes both the physical stress on the body that leads to genetic mutation, and that the mental stress caused by the same environment  causes people to take up addiction, to get emotional relief.

If this is correct then having certain mutated genes and being a drug/alcohol addict are merely co-morbid conditions caused by the same traumatic environment. Whereas any substance abuse has a capacity to cause genetic mutation, there is in fact no evidence today to show that genetic mutation causes any kind of addiction.

If a particular form of addiction has a range of associated genes, whether inherited or mutated and both are caused by the same trauma, then obviously you will always find them together – but proximity does not mean causality. To establish causality – you need to look into the past.

Past history of families with addicts in them shows some very persuasive patterns to predict who will become an addict. These reasons are not genetic.

Abused children have a tendency to addiction and co-dependence with drug/alcohol addicts.

Even if damaged parental genes are passed on to children, these are not causes of addiction. Addiction is a response to the emotional pain borne by an abused child, perhaps the child of addict parents.

If you have a vested interest in making genes the cause of addiction , then you can research for years, at public expense, like a dog chasing its own tail. If you are open to seeing the obvious then you will clearly see, that it is not the funding of genetic enquiry that we need to resolve addition but some good holistic counseling and families therapy.