Is Alcoholism a Hereditary Disease?
Is Alcoholism a Hereditary Disease?
Imagine yourself being 11 years old. You and your next-door neighbor just finished eating dinner, and now playing cards in front of the television. A few hours pass and your mother tells you that its bedtime. After being asleep for a couple of hours, you hear your father come inside your house. This was not unusual; he always comes home late at night. You hear your parents yell at each other and then you hear an awful sound. Did your father just hit your mother only because his dinner was cold, and he was late? You ask yourself why, why is he like this? He is like this because he is an alcoholic and cannot control his temper when he has been drinking. The next day you promise your mom and yourself that when you grow up you were never going to become an alcoholic. You see what your father’s alcoholism has done to your family and yourself and would never want that to happen to your family when you become an adult. Twenty years later, you too become an alcoholic.
Children of alcoholics are four times more likely to grow up to be an alcoholic than any other children, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. (NCADI: Fact is Alcoholism Runs in Families) One in five adult Americans lived with an alcoholic while growing up. (AACAP) Studies have shown that even twins separated at birth and living in two very different environments still became alcoholics. There were an estimated 28.6 million Children of Alcoholics (COAs) in the United States in 1991, nearly 11 million of them under the age of 18. Of the under 18-age group, there will be almost 3 million that will develop alcoholism and other drug problems. More than half of these teens will marry alcoholics and are likely to recreate the same kinds of highly stressful and unhealthy families in which they grew up. (NCADI)
I am not saying that alcoholism is hereditary. It can and does skip some generations. What I am trying to say is that it definitely has genetic factors. Although, you become an alcoholic does not mean that your sister will become an alcoholic too. She might not have inherited that particular gene. If your mother was a good math student in high school, it does not mean that you will be good in math also....