Two Main Causes of Addiction

Many experts believe that the two main causes of addiction are genetic vulnerability and stress. When considering genetic vulnerability, some of us may have a high vulnerability, and others a sow vulnerability. For those of us who have a high genetic vulnerability, it does not mean you will have an addiction, it does not mean you will not have a problem with addiction. It means that you “could” develop a problem with addiction depending on your life experiences and stressors in your life. The second main cause of addiction is believed to be stress. When we think of this component, we think of two kinds of stress. One is a rather sudden, very intense stress that may occur. Examples might include a young mother who awakens to find her 2 month old daughter dead in the crib, dying from SIDS. Or the young man or woman who signs up for duty in the Vermont Guard, advertized as 2 weekends a month, 2 weeks of duty per year to help fellow Vermonters and their community. But then unknowingly they are shipped to Afghanistan, only to see injury and death, and return to Vermont a changed person, suffering from PTSD from an experience they would never have imagined. The second type of stress is that of chronic, on-going stress of life that we just can’t seem to get away from. This might include when our car continues to have problems that cost more and more to repair, the never-ending problem in getting rides to office visits because we don’t have a license or vehicle, or repeatedly having difficulty trying to find a job because of a criminal record. Both types of stress act upon our possible genetic vulnerability, to create a perfect environment where the repeated use of drugs and substances can lead to a real change in our brain structure, and the development of an “addiction, dependency, a substance use disorder”.

In order to consider what this vulnerability might look like in the brain, and in the spirit of using a bit of hypnotherapy, we might visualize ourselves going on a mountain hike. As we go up the trail, we stop by a stream to get a drink, and watch the water constantly going over the rocks. The stress of the water goes over the rock every second, every minute, every hour. And in our first instance, we take out our small hammer and hit the rock, and find that the rock is incredibly hard and solid. Nothing seems to be happening to the rock, as the water goes over it; it is granite. We would consider this rock to have a low genetic vulnerability, or less of a chance that stress would effect us so much to develop an addiction to drugs or substances. We then continue on our hike, going down a ravine and find another stream to take a short break. We again watch the water, the stress of the water going over the rock every second, minute, and hour. We again take our hammer and hit the rock to find this time that the rock chips off easily. We hit it again, and again it breaks a piece off. This rock is soft and fragile; it is sandstone. This rock has a very high chance that stress could have a big impact on the stone, or genetic vulnerability so that we have a higher chance to develop an abuse or addiction to the drugs or substances that we are using. And when we look a bit closer at this soft rock, we see that a groove has actually been formed by the flow of the water. The constant stress has caused some structural change, similar to the concept of a change that might happen to our brain with the development of an addiction. And when we reconsider the two types of stress, in the case of the long term, on-going stress, we see a slow progression of the grooves in the sandstone. In the case of the more severe, intense stress, we might visualize a big storm develop on our hike. The downpour creates a flood of water over the sandstone causing a deep groove to form in the rock. And so it is that stress works on our possible genetic vulnerability, our hard rock or soft rock, to lay the groundwork for the possible development of an addiction or “substance use disorder”.