Genetic

[freud]

I can not stand it when people say that alcoholism is genetic. We always try to blame everything on genes, but strangely enough they can never find the gene that is involved. Why is that? It is like they are making science up to give people a scapegoat for their behaviors.

If anyone can provide some insight into this, I would love to hear it.

[Recon]

I agree, I do not understand how alcoholism is genetic as it is made by choice. No one told you to drink in the first place, which leads to overdoing it.

[Dyeva]

I know that in my family there are a lot of alcoholics, some on the verge of dieing and others completely covering it up so that we can't even see it anymore. I know that there are things that I need to look out for, but I know that just because I am related to people that are alcoholics I still don't have to become one. People who get that idea in their minds pretty much condemn theirselves to becoming one.

[pmer.jack]

I completely disagree with this view....Alcoholism can never be genetic..   .I will tell you this that my father drinks and so does my brother....However, I have not been attracted towards this menace....Even when i am always surrounded by people, who always drink and look for reasons to do the same...Its your own choice rather than heredity that leads you to go for alcohols in your life...Nothing can force you to do a thing, its only your own mental state that accepts it....

[Honesty]

According to my personal experience alcholism is genetic. But it is not always necessary that what happens with me happens with evrybody.

[watson]

If it was genetic, why can they not pinpoint a gene or at least some type of evidence? They make assumptions and have theories, but they never have facts, In my mind, it is not genetic, genetics is just a scapegoat for a bad behavior they choose to be part of.

[sure]

i don't know (about this), but a concrete cousin of mine said: "Medicines discovered the alcolohol-gene."

[psy_guy]

Acoholism isn't genetic. Maybe you tend to drink a little more, if your father drank, I am not sure about that. But that isn't something you will do for sure, isn't something you get from your father like a disease. It's your psychological choice. If your parents drank, maybe you tend to drink more, if you start drinking. But that's not something like "my father drank, my mother was an alcoholic, I will be such too". Of course it affects child's thoughts, personality and the way they think, if the parents are drunk all the time, but it's not THAT genetic.

[sure]

if that is really true, i'm gonna celebrate a lot about it ... Maybe Horton is right re avoidance of stress, thoughts and problems. MY COUSIN IS WRONG !

[Mahiqun]

Btw. is there really "an addictive personality" or it's just another myth?

[sure]

I found something as 'environmental stress': Your body, your psyche remembers. how it has been in this town, with these people, in this envirornment etc.
when you're back in the same situation, e.g. finding yourself back with an alcohlics-father, a disappointed, frustated, dull mother, a surburbian small-town, a 50s workers' flat or similar, you react similar nevermind what you learned before and this environment has the same negative influences on you.
Selfdistruction with drugs as coffee, cigarettes, vodca and no-food, no beauty, no activitaty, nothing positive as creation, lucks and happyness. No ambition, just averageness. Yeah: No higher feelings or emotions. It's the environment that destroys you - because you or your parents have destroyed it!