[quote=Rustico] The occurrence is extremely high for combination of alcoholics, chain smoking, drug addicts, eating disorders etc. in the same family. We see things like cleft pallate occuring but much less frequently. We even see entire sibling groups as serious alcoholics pretty often. I am not sure but, I don’t think even asthma afflicts whole families nearly as often as these substance problems? What is the explanation?[/quote]
All these issues are very interlinked with socio-psychological stress. In fact, in utero stress can cause genetic/neurological modifications that will make people more susceptible to these kind of issues.
Interesting discussion:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/3/addiction
Dr. Gabor Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel Society, which runs a residence/harm reduction facility and North America’s only supervised safe-injection site in Vancouver, Canada, home to one of the world’s densest areas of drug users. The bestselling author of four books, we speak to Dr. Maté about his latest, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, which proposes new approaches to treating addiction through an understanding of its biological and socio-economic roots
