A Very Fine House: A Mother's Story of Love, Faith, and Crystal Meth

by Barbara Cofer Stoefen

I’d previously learned that family history can predispose someone for addiction, but Dr. McCauley told us that genes alone don’t do the job and do not necessarily doom someone to addiction. There is apparently “good evidence that genes combined [emphasis added] with severe environmental stress cause addiction.” He emphasized that this isn’t the kind of stress we usually think of in our normal, harried lives. It’s extreme stress resulting from traumas such as physical abuse, rape or molestation, extreme violence or war, mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression, ADHD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. For one with a history of such stress, “drugs wouldn’t just be pleasurable . . . but would be instantly recognized by the midbrain as a survival coping mechanism. Such a scenario would account for the way some addicts describe instant addiction with their first drink or use of drugs. The degree of relief they felt when they first used drugs or first drank was so great that it immediately became their main way of coping.”