Question: do you believe that addiction is as a result of genes (if your parents were addicts ) or social pressure (peer pressure)

Claire Melia answered on 16 Jun 2018:

Hi Farah, this is a really important question but it doesn’t have an easy answer, sorry!

Genetically, some people are predisposed to addiction. There are certain genes which are thought to increase your risk of addiction and there is an entire field of research called epigenetics which tries to figure out how these genes work and how they impact reactions to treatment. There has been a lot of research and the general agreement is that genes explain at best 40-60% (usually people just say it explains half) of the causes of alcohol addiction.

The other half is your environment. So it’s not specifically social pressure, but this definitely can have an impact. It’s all about how you learn to behave, the ‘rules’ you learn about alcohol use, generally the different behaviours you learn throughout your life. So if your parents drink a lot, then you might have learnt a perception that it’s really normal which then might make you more likely to drink. Also, even if you have a genetic predisposition to alcohol, if you are never in a situation where you turn to drink, for example after a traumatic event some people turn to drink to cope, then you might not trigger this gene!

So the short answer is it’s both! That’s why it’s so difficult to treat alcohol addiction effectively as there are many possible different causes and the extent to which it is genetics or environment will change for each individual. Hope this helps 🙂