The death of the singer Amy Winehouse has caused many people give some thought to addiction. Many news articles speculate about her exact cause of death, and how that might have been prevented. In general, there are both genetic and environmental factors that are connected with addiction.
Addiction, in its many forms and varieties, tends to run in families. If one of your relatives suffers from addiction, then you can be certain that will be some other relatives and ancestors who also have struggled with addiction, located somewhere in your family tree. Genealogists may discover this as they work on creating a medical family tree.
People tend to wonder if addictions are “caused” by a person’s genetic makeup, or if they were “caused” by the specific details about the environment that a person lived in. In reality, both of those potentialities plays a part in determining who will, and who will not, become an addict.
A study involving twins found that somewhere between 50% and 60% of addiction is caused by genetic factors. The study learned this by looking at the DNA of identical, and of fraternal, twins.
It goes without saying that your parent’s passed some of their genetics down to you, and that you have, (or someday could), pass some of your own genetics to your children. This how you got your eye color, your hair color, “the family nose”, and maybe even some of your talents. Obviously, the genetic factors that go along with addiction can also be passed down from one generation of a family to the next one, and so on.
Another factor that determines who will become an addict is environmental. Children who grow up with parents who are addicts are eight times more likely to develop their own addictions. Kids learn a lot from what they see happening in their own families while the child is growing up. Patterns of behavior, from celebrating Christmas, to becoming an alcoholic, get learned, and repeated. People who have poor coping skills tend to have a higher chance of becoming an addict.
Recent research shows that the younger a person is when he or she starts using drugs or alcohol, the more susceptible that person is to developing a lifelong pattern of abuse of those substances.
Another study, done by the University of Utah, shows that “the biggest contributing factor to drug abuse risk is having friends who engage in problem behavior”. A young person wants to be friends with a group of young people who use drugs, alcohol, or both. This situation can influence the young person to start using substances, too. The friends, who are already using drugs and/or drinking, will encourage this behavior in their new friend, in order to continue their own addictions and habits.
In the case of Amy Winehouse, it seems clear that she had some issues with drugs and alcohol. Her last tour, before she died, had some shows cancelled after she appeared intoxicated onstage. Her ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, is said to have been the person who first introduced her to hard drugs, (specifically heroin and crack cocaine). It probably didn’t help that she was in a profession where people tend to take drug and alcohol abuse to a whole new level. This would be hard to overcome with, or without, having the genetics that connect to addiction.
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