The causes of alcoholism can be different. One of them is genes. If you are looking for an answer to whether alcoholism is hereditary, read this article.
Alcoholism is sometimes considered a weakness or a lack of willpower. In fact, it is a complex disease that requires specialized treatment. It is characterized by relapses and progressive. The power of addiction can be enormous and destroy both health and life. The whole family often bears the consequences of drinking one person. However, codependency is not the only problem. Members of alcoholic families often wonder whether alcoholism is hereditary or whether there is a risk that the tendency to addiction has been passed on to them in a biological sense. Is Inheriting Alcoholism A Myth? How is it really?
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I am drinking because I inherited the alcoholism gene?
The patients of our Od-Nowa addiction treatment center and their family members often ask themselves about the causes of alcoholism. They have the impression that finding the cause, the essence, the one moment it started, will change anything about the disease. No, it will not change, but there may be many causes of the disease. Neither is considered a key knowledge about which can reverse the course of the disease.
There are at least several causes of alcoholism:
medical – alcoholism may be caused by the pharmacological effects of alcohol on our body;
psychological – alcohol addiction may be the result of mental disorders that affect us;
pedagogical – alcoholism may be the result of an incorrect socialization and upbringing process;
hormonal – some hormones can increase alcohol tolerance;
sociological – we live more and more intensively, alcohol becomes a quick way to get rid of stress and relax;
genetic – despite inheritance, not everyone becomes an alcoholic.
From generation to generation alcoholism is not just a question of biology. The risk of disease is increased by a number of different factors, but none of them clearly doom us to addiction.
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Wondering if alcoholism is hereditary? Yes, it may be genetic, but it is not congenital. Currently, scientists are able to identify many genes responsible for alcoholism. Genetic mutations in drinkers increase the risk of disease in their offspring. However, just because alcoholism can be hereditary doesn’t mean it will certainly develop in the next generation.
A child of an alcoholic with a predisposition to addiction
It is certainly possible to recognize in the human brain the element responsible for the mechanism of addiction to substances or behaviors. *
People with such a disorder have a habit, or even compulsion, from the early years of life to compulsively regulate their feelings. They are not able to live them calmly. The pain felt during the experience is so great that any event that brings with it at least slightly stronger emotions is perceived as suffering. On the other hand, the reward of anesthesia attracts so much that they cannot resist it. This state of affairs is influenced by specific variants of genes that interfere with chemical processes in the brain.
If you are a child of an alcoholic …
If you are the child of an alcoholic you are at risk. However, it is by no means saying that you will get sick. It doesn’t have to be that way. Stay vigilant. Observe the amount of alcohol you drink, the frequency of drinking, and more difficult moments in your life. If you associate alcohol with relief, check with your therapist why.
It is difficult to clearly define whether the causes of alcoholism in children of alcoholics are genes or the dysfunctional family in which they grew up and the lack of a proper socialization and upbringing process. Perhaps both of these factors contribute to an addiction. It should be emphatically emphasized that inheriting alcoholism is not a sentence, that everyone has a chance to live sober, it all depends on us.
Alcoholism and ACA
Psychologists talk about a set of certain personality traits in common and the ways in which people are brought up by an alcohol-dependent parent or parents. This is called The ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) syndrome, accompanied by a set of established patterns of action.
