Dr. Cali Estes - The Addiction Coach ®

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Can addiction run in the family?

Can addiction run in the family?

This would greatly depend on who you ask but let’s examine some recent studies to answer this question. Recent studies have shown conclusively that family history of alcoholism and drug addiction is in part genetic and not just a result of the family environment. Millions of Americans are living proof of this.

Plain and simple, alcoholism and drug dependency does run within the family. Recent research has identified numerous genes that are associated with addiction. One of the ways that these jeans affect your risk for addiction involves how your genes metabolize alcohol. Another is how your nerve cells signal one another and regulate their activities during drug use. Such changes in jeans can be passed down from one generation to the next. So some would say that because of these genetic occurrences that addiction could be a disease while others take the same evidence and say that it’s just the functioning of the genes past down from your family genes that regulate the metabolism of drugs and alcohol within your body therefore making it NOT a disease, but genetic functionality.

Kind of like is the glass half full or is it half empty. Regardless, family history affects your chances of addiction in many ways. While jeans or a large factor, it’s important to remember that alcoholism and drug addiction are genetically complex. Now having said this researchers have identified several family related risk factors that increase the likelihood of drug addiction and alcoholism. These factors include family dysfunction, a parent who is depressed her suffers from other mental illnesses, or one or more parent who abuses or is addicted to drugs and or alcohol.

So if you ask me if Addiction can run in the family I would tell you MOST DEFINITELY!

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