Understanding What Causes Alcoholism and Drug Addiction
Alcoholism – and any addiction for that matter is extremely complex. Getting to the root of what causes alcoholism and addiction certainly isn’t straightforward.
Genetic factors certainly play a role – but I believe it’s the impact of the environment that is most telling because ultimately we’re shaped by our environment – parents and family especially, friends, experiences etc.
Now when considering alcoholism and psychology and the role the psychology of alcoholism plays in alcohol/drug addiction – you need to understand that our psychological profile is formed largely in early childhood – mostly through the influence of our parents and family.
If we are brought up in a home environment that is mostly supportive, loving, stable and secure – we’ll tend to develop a healthy sense of who are, good self-esteem and be fairly well-adjusted.
However, if our younger years are filled with some sort of trauma, instability or emotional turmoil – like there being alcoholism in the family, abuse, losing a loved one, our parents separating, or anything we regard as being traumatic – we tend to create all sorts of coping mechanisms to help us deal with that, which can then show up in our lives in a number of different ways.
These could include any or a combination of anger, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, withdrawing from society, excessive fear and worry, and substance abuse – which in turn can lead to alcoholism and drug addiction.
It’s pretty likely that if you speak to an addict or alcoholic – that there will be something that happened when they were young that effected them pretty bad. For me having an alcoholic parent was tough to deal with – also because how that impacted on our family.
It doesn’t, of course, always happen like that because naturally you will find that there are lots of addicts who had stable and loving upbringings. But when trying to understand the psychology of alcoholism and addiction, hopefully what I’ve shared with you will help.