Really understanding and getting to the root of the causes of alcoholism and drug addiction isn’t straightforward - because they are complex illnesses by nature.

Genetic factors and the fact that alcoholism and addiction is hereditary in many cases, certainly does play a role. But that only explains part of the story because ultimately we’re all shaped by our environmental influences - parents, family, peers, experiences, media etc.

So when considering the impact our psychological makeup plays in drug addiction and alcoholism - our psychological makeup is largely formed in our formative childhood years - mostly from our family environment, particularly our parents.

Generally speaking - if we come from a generally loving, stable and supportive family environment (especially in our early childhood years) - it usually means we grow up with better self confidence and are more comfortable with ourselves and who we are.

Or if when we’re young we, we have a more traumatic childhood - which could mean anything from losing a parent, having one of our parents addicted to drugs or alcohol, our parents divorcing, or anything that really effects us emotionally - it could result in us developing various ways to cope with that, which can then manifest in our lives in all sorts of different ways.

This could mean you find yourself developing a whole bunch of stuff - which could be anything from depression to anger, anxiety, different kinds of eating disorders and naturally various forms of addiction, including drugs and alcohol.

It’s pretty likely that if you speak to an addict or alcoholic - that there will be something that happened when they were young that effected them pretty bad. For me having an alcoholic parent was tough to deal with - also because how that impacted on our family.

Naturally it doesn’t always happen that way. You’ll find many cases, I’m sure, of alcoholics and drug addicts that were brought up in a loving, stable and supportive environment. But hopefully when considering alcoholism and psychology and trying to understand the psychology of addiction - everything will make a lot more sense for you.