Causes of Addiction: Biopsychosocial Model, Personality Theories and Neuropsychology
Dysfunctional family environments characterized by conflict, neglect, or abuse can increase the risk of addiction (Onyenwe & Odilbe, 2024). On the other hand, supportive relationships and strong social networks can act as protective factors. For example, variations in genes related to the dopamine system—such as the dopamine receptor D2 gene (DRD2)—can affect the brain’s reward system (Deak & Johnson, 2021).
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Rather, it evolved gradually as researchers and clinicians grappled with the limitations of earlier, more narrow approaches. In the 1970s, George Engel proposed this model as a way to understand health A Guide To Sober House Rules: What You Need To Know and illness more broadly. It wasn’t long before addiction specialists recognized its potential to shed light on the complexities of substance use disorders. These individuals may experience constant hyperarousal, hypervigilance, anxiety, and abuse drugs may be an effective way to regulate these emotional experiences (Felitti et al., 1998). Thus, numerous psychological factors and experiences can increase the risk of changing how one feels (or regulating emotions) via drugs of abuse. The more an individual’s needs are met within a drug culture, the harder it will be to leave that culture behind.
Psycho-social systems are concrete entities or groups whose members act in relation to each other, such as families, religious organizations, and political parties (Bunge 2004). Social processes in addiction are investigated by examining social categories such as networks, groups, organizations and subcultures that alone cannot be explained by neurobiology. Addiction consists of interacting biological and psychosocial mechanisms because the mechanism (e.g., the behaviour) contributing to addiction involves action within a social system.
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Along with genetics, another contributing factor to the risk of addiction is one’s psychological composition. Some individuals may be more affected by the rewarding effects of drugs of abuse because they are trying their best to regulate painful emotions. This chapter aims to explain that people who use drugs participate in a drug culture, and further, that they value this participation. White (1996) draws attention to a set of individuals whom he calls “acultural addicts.” These people initiate and sustain their substance use in relative isolation from other people who use drugs. Examples of acultural addicts include the medical professional who does not have to use illegal drug networks to abuse prescription medication, or the older, middle-class individual who “pill shops” from multiple doctors and procures drugs for misuse from pharmacies. Although drug cultures typically play a greater role in the lives of people who use illicit drugs, people who use legal substances—such as alcohol—are also likely to participate in such a culture (Gordon et al. 2012).
Addiction: Understanding Its Nature, Causes, and Impact
It’s like trying to climb out of a pit – the deeper the pit and the fewer the tools available, the harder the climb. Before the biopsychosocial model, addiction was often viewed through a single lens – be it purely biological, psychological, or social. These Models of Addiction provided valuable insights but failed to capture the full picture. It’s like trying to describe an elephant by touching only its trunk or its tail. Although there is no “addiction gene” to definitively identify a person as being at risk for addiction, it is evident through twin studies, adoption studies, family studies, and more recently, epigenetic studies that addiction has a genetic component.
The Biological Model of Addiction delves deep into these neurobiological changes. Addiction throws a wrench in the works, causing the machine to malfunction and demand more and more of the substance to function. It is obvious from the science that treatment of addictions will be best served by a combination of pharmacological agents and the psychological tools we have now, integrated into a whole treatment program. Scientists don’t yet understand why some people become addicted while others don’t. Addiction tends to run in families, and certain types of genes have been linked to different forms of addiction.
Spiritual Dimension
Advances in neuroscience are changing how mental health issues such as addiction are understood and addressed as a brain disease. Although a brain disease model legitimizes addiction as a medical condition, it promotes neuro-essentialist thinking, categorical ideas of responsibility and free choice, and undermines the complexity involved in its emergence. We propose a ‘biopsychosocial systems’ model where psycho-social factors complement and interact with neurogenetics.
- Mental health conditions like depression and anxiety are often both causes and effects of substance abuse.
- Substance users, loved ones, and treatment providers need to realize that significant lifestyle changes are frequently required to replace the culture of addiction with a culture of recovery.
- Even within such organizations, though, there is some cultural diversity; regional differences exist, for example, in meeting-related rituals or attitudes toward certain issues (e.g., use of prescribed psychotropic medication, approaches to spirituality).
- They’ve shown that addiction is a long-lasting and complex brain disease, and that current treatments can help people control their addictions.
- It’s like building a strong immune system – by addressing vulnerabilities on multiple fronts, we can increase resilience to addiction.
The multifaceted disorder needs a multifaceted conceptualization, and we find that in the biopsychosocial model of addiction (Marlatt & Baer, 1988). Rather than pinpoint the one thing that causes addiction, we now understand that a constellation of factors contributes to a person being more or less at risk for addiction. Notions of a pathologized self, deeply enmeshed with personal identity, may lead an individual to internally negotiate a relationship between the self and the brain (Dumit 2003). It may further challenge understandings of “accepted” identities, such as health seeking and rational, as opposed to “contested” identities, such as addict, intoxicated, and at-risk (Fry 2008). The latter may compromise an individual’s sense and experience of free will, being-in-the-world, perceptions of personal responsibility, and view abnormalities in dopamine pathways as fatalistic.
Advances in addiction research are increasingly being applied to gain deeper knowledge about the impact of drug use on brain structure and functioning, capacity, autonomy, free choice and decision-making, behaviour, treatment, and symptom reduction. While research of this kind raises important issues about identity, and notions of health and illness, the outcomes have implications for drug policy, health care systems and delivery, and treatment for substance use problems. The biopsychosocial systems model is grounded in systems theory in which knowledge occurs at the intersection of the subjective and the objective, and not as an independent reality. This is a radical departure from the traditional positivist epistemology, which relies on empirical study and material proof (Bunge 1979; Heylighen, Cilliers, and Gerschenson 2007).
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Accordingly, this cybernetic brain-environment interaction may trigger strong somatic signals such as desire, urge and anticipation (Verdejo-Garcia and Bechara 2009). In effect, this process may limit autonomy as it allows for “preference reversals” (Levy 2007a) to occur in situations where an individual would rather not use. There are several processes that actively contribute to substance use with inputs and outputs on biological and psycho-social levels. One example is drug craving that may be experienced as strong, intense urges for immediate gratification that may impair rational thought about future planning (Elster and Skog 1999). Factors such as drug availability within the environment can increase craving and consequently the vulnerability for relapse (Weiss 2005).
Psychological factors
Individuals who are genetically predisposed for addiction enter the world with a greater risk of becoming addicted at some point in their lives. Addictions subvert this normally helpful process and grow stronger over time, as the reward circuits in the brain are high-jacked. The Compass Of Pleasure explains this new complex understanding clearly, but without dumbing it down. The deontological principle of respect for persons is a characteristic feature of harm reduction efforts such as HAT. This ethical principle is justified and framed as a matter of human rights, which maintains that injection drug users, for example, have the right, like other less stigmatized members of society, to access medical and social services. This claim coincides with a recent emergence of a https://thecinnamonhollow.com/a-guide-to-sober-house-rules-what-you-need-to-know/ global advocacy movement that seeks to construct the use of drugs as a human right (Elliott, Csete, Wood, and Kerr 2005; Lines and Elliott 2007).
Understanding addiction requires a comprehensive approach that considers biological, psychological, and social factors—known collectively as the biopsychosocial model (Masiak, 2013). This model provides a holistic framework for exploring the causes, progression, and treatment of addiction. Realizing a neurobiological or genetic susceptibility to addiction could empower life planning and the avoidance of high-risk scenarios.