Drug epidemics unfold “like a vector phenomenon, where you have one individual who seeds that community and then the spread begins,” said Dr. Anna Lembke, an addiction-medicine specialist at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the author of Drug Dealer, MD. People whose parents or grandparents were drug- or alcohol-addicted have dramatically increased odds of becoming addicted themselves, with genetics accounting for 50 to 60 percent of that risk, Lembke explained; she noted that the correlation between family history and depression is much lower, 30 percent. Other risk factors for
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