Addictions

10 Pages 2552 Words

hroughout history, the prevailing attitude toward addiction has been one of disapproval, even repugnance. Addiction was seen as a personal failing, one that resulted from moral weakness and a lack of discipline. At best, addiction was a bad habit, at worst, a sin.

Although addiction has not entirely lost its stigma, an increasing body of scientific research has improved people’s understanding of and sympathy for the problem. One major development in addiction research is the theory that addiction is primarily a biological phenomenon. As Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, puts it, addiction is “literally a disease of the brain.”

For years, addiction researchers have asserted that alcoholism has a genetic basis. According to John Crabbe, a researcher at Oregon Health Sciences University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, “Alcohol dependence in humans is clearly influenced by genes as well as environmental factors. There is clearly an increased risk for severe alcohol-related problems in children of alcoholics, . . . even if they have been raised without knowledge of their biological parents’ problems.” While studies seem to support the view that alcoholism is genetic, identifying the specific genes that lead to an increased risk of alcoholism has been a laborious task, since humans express more than one hundred thousand genes. However, in 1997, researchers at the Portland Alcohol Center announced that they had mapped three gene regions in mice that influence susceptibility to physical dependence on alcohol—information that they believe could lead to the development of new treatments for alcoholics.

Furthermore, research documenting the impact of drugs on the brain may shed light on why some people are more prone to addiction than others. Drug use—along with other potentially addictive activities such as gambling or sex—causes the brain to release dopamine, a chemical invo...