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How biological factors are just as important to addiction as environmental ones
A whisper. A pointed look, silent in words but loud in judgement. Stay close. Don’t make eye contact.
People think they know “the type” to get addicted. Their background, their morals, their suffering—suddenly everything starts to be questioned. It becomes a person’s own failing that they are struggling.
But people often forget that even though a person’s environment may push them toward a narcotic, the addiction itself is inherently the way that the body biologically reacts to a narcotic substance.
It’s the age-old debate of psychology: nature vs. nurture. Do our genes or the way we have been raised have more of an impact on our behavior? And even though most modern psychologists agree that both play a vital role in human behavior, we often forget that there are countless biological factors that predispose certain individuals to struggle more with addiction, opting instead to stigmatize the issue.
According to the Genetic Science Learning Center of the University of Utah Health, family history surrounding substance abuse can greatly influence an individual’s likelihood of developing such a disorder themselves, through the genes passed from parent to offspring. In fact, even “[w]hile finding the precise genetic cause is tricky,” research attributes “a person’s genetics [to] account for 40-60 percent of their risk.”
In the lab, mice are often tested and experimented on because their reward systems can simulate that of a human’s. Through this testing, scientists have compiled a list of many specific genes that determine an individual’s addiction risk.
The DRD2 gene, for instance, which aids in the process of creating proteins responsible for detecting dopamine, in certain individuals appears in the A1 form, where fewer receptors reduce the pleasure an individual feels in everyday situations, as explained in an article by E.P Noble in the European Psychiatry journal. Such individuals have larger biological reactions, or dopamine releases, when utilizing narcotics as the baseline level for their dopamine starts much lower. The A1 form of this gene “is more common in people addicted to alcohol, cocaine, and opioids.”
The Postsynaptic Density Protein-95 (PSD-95), which helps organize other proteins to ensure smooth communication between neurons, is another key player when it comes to addiction because the connection between neurons is vital to learning and memory. The mice who had “about half as much of this protein compared to normal mice” were proven to be “‘super sensitive’ to cocaine.” Certain neuron connections become less sensitive in mice with lower quantities of PSD-95 and they thus feel an exaggerated effect when taking drugs, according to an article in the peer-reviewed journal, Science Signaling.
And while there are countless more examples of genes which—when tweaked in the slightest—can drastically increase addiction risk, there are so many more, complex factors that play a role in how likely someone is to get addicted to a narcotic.
Individuals with a faster metabolism, explains a doctor-reviewed article, may feel a drug’s effects wear off quickly and feel the urge to take another sooner, easily transforming it into a frequent, habitual action and creating a dependence as a result. Yet, in the same breath, individuals who metabolize a drug too slowly can feel an increased “strength and duration of the effects” of the drug—a report on a study published by Dr. Rachel Tomko explained that “young females who metabolize cannabis more slowly may be at a higher risk of developing CUD” or cannabis use disorder.
Even though these factors barely begin to scrape the surface of the hundreds of factors which can exacerbate a person’s risk of drug addiction, societally there still exists a misconception that it is the addicted person’s own inadequacy and moral failings that results in their dependance to such substances. Of course, environment can play a vital role in how an individual came to a narcotic in the first place, but it does not account for the entire problem.
As a society, we must root out the stigma that exists rather than further isolate those already struggling. Only once we begin to acknowledge the biological factors that push a person to addiction can we truly empathize with them and further our research into how best to help them.
This article was written as part of a program to educate youth and others about Alameda County’s opioid crisis, prevention and treatment options. The program is funded by the Alameda County Behavioral Health Department and the grant is administered by Three Valleys Community Foundation.
