Unfortunately, I am sure that this hits home to a lot of us...whether it be a close friend, someone in our family or even ourselves. Take a second to read an excerpt of this article.
ADDICTS CONFIRM NEUROSCIENCE
By Rita Rubin,
Margaret Masure began hurtling down the road to addiction at an age when most kids still have training wheels on their bikes. Daniel Payne was a bit older before he started down that path but still years from being able to drive a car legally. They don't know each other, but they have much in common: They're both from small towns - Margaret from St. Johnsbury, Vermont., Daniel from Hanover, Virginia.
They used to steal beers from their dads before branching out into a variety of drugs. They have been "clean" for three years, thanks in part to several 12-step program meetings each week. And they're both preaching what they practice by working for organizations that offer support to people and families struggling with addiction.
Their stories touch upon themes made clear recently by scientists searching for answers about the genesis and treatment of addiction. The questions have plagued researchers for decades, but only in the past several years have they had the tools - such as technology that provides a real-time view of brain function - to unravel them.
The 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that of Americans 12 and older, nearly 8.4 million were addicted to alcohol and nearly 5 million were addicted to other drugs. About 1.4 million were addicted to both, according to the survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Thanks to advances in neurobiology, "we have enormous knowledge now of what's going on" in addicts' brains, says George Koob, professor of molecular integrative neuroscience at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. Koob, who calls himself an "irrepressible optimist," says he is hopeful that new insights into the mechanisms of addiction will lead to new treatments and reduced suffering.
They might debate the terms used to
describe addiction, but top scientists in the field pretty much agree on what it is. "The inability to stop is the essence of what addiction is," says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.
As Daniel 27, puts it, "my favorite drug was more and all." Nor is addiction the same as dependence, although the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual says it is, says Volkow, who's pushing to drop that wording. "Addiction is much harder to treat. Everybody given an opiate (such as morphine) will become physically dependent, but not everybody will become an addict." But some do. Why?
For many, alcohol or drugs offer a quick fix, Koob says. "You're using the drug to fix something that should be fixed by perhaps getting a good night's sleep or pacing yourself." But the drug eventually wears off, leaving the user feeling even worse than before, and the cycle begins anew, Koob says.
If you want to know whether a child will turn to alcohol or other drugs for a quick fix, look at his parents, says Mark Willenbring, director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. If the parents are abusing drugs, chances are high that the child will, too, Willenbring says.
Having only one or no parent in the home or a psychiatric illness also raises a child's risk of addiction, he says.
Addiction begins at home. Clearly, addicts are born and made, their genes and their environment inextricably linked, says NIAAA director Ting-Kai Li. Even people genetically predisposed to becoming addicted won't unless exposed to alcohol or illicit drugs.
"Children who drink early in their childhood are four times more likely to become alcoholics" than those who don't, Li says. One reason: Their main source of alcohol is the well-stocked fridge or liquor cabinet of parents who drink. Daniel Payne, says he began "experimenting" with his father's beer when he was about 10. He got marijuana from older kids. "In the neighborhood that I grew up in, everybody was doing it," he recalls.
Margaret Masure, 39, says she started stealing her alcoholic dad's beers at age 5 or 6, around when he split from her mother. Her mother worked long hours at a coin laundry, leaving Masure and her brother, three years older and also a recovering addict, to fend for themselves. "I hung around with people who were pot-smoking," Masure says. "Acid, pot and lots of alcohol. Alcohol was like not even a drug."
Scientists have known for decades that separating young laboratory animals from their parents made them much more likely to take alcohol. Such studies "didn't have the impact they should have had, because we didn't understand why," Volkow says. Molecular biology is beginning to provide answers. A rodent study published this year found that contact between offspring and parent is necessary to activate a gene involved in the animal's response to stress, Volkow says. Environmental stressors in childhood, such as abuse, probably have a longer-lasting effect than similar stressors in adulthood, Volkow says. Thanks to imaging studies, "we have come to realize that the brain is changing significantly during childhood and adolescence," she says. Li says the frontal lobe may not fully mature until age 25.
Research has shown that stress is a major contributor to addiction. People who repeatedly take drugs may end up with an exaggerated response to stress,
so minor stressors become major ones, says Frank Vocci, director of NIDA's Division of Pharmacotherapies and Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse. And even after an alcoholic has stopped drinking or a drug addict has stopped using cocaine, Vocci says, "stress is thought to be a major inducer of relapse."
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