This often happens earlier on in their life before their 21st birthday. The earlier a person begins to start drinking, the more likely they will develop an alcohol use disorder. It’s important to remember that while you can’t be born with alcoholism, the likelihood is still much higher than someone who is not predisposed. It’s also much more likely that you will encounter many environmental cues that will increase your chances. The best way to stay clear of developing alcohol use disorder is to understand the risks and learn how to avoid them.

As a rule of thumb, a person increases their risk of addiction to alcohol if they regularly consume a high volume of this drug. For this reason, there is a general advisement that individuals “drink responsibly,” which means keeping intake to a manageable level. To use a legal standard, individuals could feasibly enjoy alcohol while being mindful to constantly keep their blood alcohol content (BAC) to below 0.08 percent. In other words, individuals are considered legally too drunk to drive if their BAC is 0.08 percent or higher. If you have a genetic risk of developing an alcohol addiction and have exhibited signs of this disorder, it’s important to seek treatment as soon as possible. Counseling and support can help tackle social and environmental factors that could contribute to an alcohol problem in the future.

Chapter 4 of GPT4 on Precision Mental Health: Genetics and Mental Health

There’s also a belief that mental health disorders can contribute to substance use disorders. For example, if someone is depressed or dealing with a condition such as PTSD, they may drink to ease the symptoms of those mental health disorders. There are three possibilities, according to researchers, as to why these disorders coexist so often. One belief is that common risk factors, such as stress and trauma, can cause changes to genetics that are passed down, contributing to the development of either disorder. Additionally, as children get older parents will encourage them to try alcohol.

As an article published on Psychology Today discusses, studies of twins have revealed helpful information about the connection between genes and an alcohol use disorder. In specific, studies that compare fraternal twins and identical twins can be particularly insightful. Among identical twins, their 23 chromosome pairs are exactly the same (i.e., identical twin are monozygotic). Fraternal twins do not have identical chromosome pairs; hence, they look different from each other. If addiction has a genetic basis, it would be expected that identical twins who carried the alcoholic gene or genes involved in addiction would similarly express them (though environmental factors can be involved).

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To date, GWAS have
focused on common variants, with allele frequencies of 5% or higher. Most GWAS are case-control studies or studies of quantitative traits in
unrelated subjects, but family-based GWAS provide another approach. GWAS are
beginning to yield robust findings, although the experience in many diseases is
that very large numbers of subjects will be needed. To date, individual GWAS
studies on alcohol dependence and related phenotypes have been relatively modest
in size, and most do not reach genome-wide significance. This may reflect both
the limited sample sizes and the clinical and genetic heterogeneity of the
disease. As noted above, the functional ADH1B polymorphism is
not represented on GWAS platforms; GABA-receptor genes are often nominally
significant but well below genome-wide significance in these studies.

Genetics help determine our traits, behaviors and personality characteristics. Some of these traits are passed down from parents to their children. As a result, it’s possible for families sober house with a history of alcoholism to pass down those tendencies to later generations. Genetics, as well as social and environmental factors, strongly influence alcohol dependency.

Protective Genes

Having a close relative, such as a parent or sibling, who struggles with alcohol use disorder increases the chances that a person will also struggle with the same addiction. This makes a strong argument for the learned behavior theory but in reality, there may be other influences that might predispose a person to alcohol addiction. Alcohol is widely consumed, but excessive use creates serious physical,
psychological and social problems and contributes to many diseases. Alcoholism
(alcohol dependence, alcohol use disorders) is a maladaptive pattern of
excessive drinking leading to serious problems.

In essence, there’s more of an objective, responsible approach to consuming alcohol in some countries/cultures. A person with a genetic disease has an abnormality in their genome; an individual with a hereditary disease has received a genetic mutation from their parents’ DNA. While no one can control their genetic makeup, addiction is preventable.

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Even when your alcohol use negatively affects your financial situation, personal relationships, and physical health, you can’t seem to stop. It is generally a situation where a person requires excessive levels of alcohol just to feel the buzz and desired effects. Alcohol metabolism is linked to hereditary prospects as some people get allergic reactions and health repercussions after consuming alcohol. Addiction is a chronic disease of the brain, affecting the reward and motivation centers, and it is also a genetic problem.

Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) are using fruit flies to find the genetic causes of alcoholism. According to scientists, drunken drosophila fruit flies behave the same way humans do when they are drunk. In addition, a fruit fly’s resistance to alcohol appears to be controlled by the same molecular mechanism as humans.