Ask the Addict: Aren't most addicts born that way?

An emphatic no is the answer here to our first question from Cindy in Quincy. Addictions, addictive tendencies and addictive personalities are developed in life as a result of a whole host of factors: Childhood trauma (intense, repeated or both), parental behavior (modeling), peer pressure through modeling or desire for acceptance/approval, accidental discovery, legitimate medicine use for pain, sustained stress/pain and inability to cope, to name a few. Only on rare occasions is a person born with an addiction due to the mother’s use of drugs or medicine during pregnancy.

That being said, it has been shown that you can be born with an inherited sensitivity or reaction to certain substances. Alcohol and some narcotics affect certain individuals and groups very differently. In my case I get almost no pain relief whatsoever from opiates where others seem to think they are heavenly. Alcohol is also believed to have a strong impact on those who appear to have an allergy to the material from which the drink is fermented.

As in one of my earlier columns, I split addiction issues into substance, behavior and feeling categories. In the vast majority of cases addiction is a learned trait and there are lots of ways to learn something, good or bad.

My father had no visible addiction but he did have a job that forced him to travel a lot and move his family to a new town over and over, forcing me to enter a new school as a “new” kid six times before sixth grade. The repeated trauma of being new, developed a fear and anxiety in me that never left and always caused heartache. I gradually discovered that alcohol, porn, hard physical labor and being admired really reduced this pain, at least for a while. It didn’t take long to start using these coping mechanisms on a regular basis that turned into a very regular basis since job stress, marital and parenting stress made me hurt more and more. At some point I woke up and realized that even under no stress or pain I craved my habits.

How to ‘Ask the Addict’: Please email your addiction-related questions to asktheaddict@yahoo.com