Influence Of The Family Environment On Drug Use

During childhood and adolescence, parents play a fundamental role in developing social values ​​and adopting prosocial attitudes and healthy lifestyles. But this has little to do with addiction -classified as a disease by the Health Organization itself as early as 1952-for the development of which there is a genetic vulnerability that leads to neuronal dysfunction.

A separate case is the importance of the family environment to teach children the proper education, teaching and values ​​that perhaps keep them away from drugs. But the development of the addiction will not depend on any of these factors, as we have previously pointed out.

A five-year follow-up study revealed that addicts who overcame the disease had family support. Similarly, some authors associate dysfunctional family relationships with continued drug use. Thus, it seems that the absence of family intervention, the dysfunction of relationships and the lack of skills to solve problems with children are related to drug use -not to being addicted-.

Drug Use In Adolescence

There is enough information to support that adolescents are the most vulnerable to the consumption of legal and illegal substances and medical drugs; since their identity is formed during this stage, in addition to the variation of moods that sensitizes them to experiment and seek new sensations.

The family environment is the main setting for the initiation of consumption of alcoholic beverages (36.5% of cases), followed by friends from the neighbourhood (24.3%) and fellow students (23.8% of cases). As to the annual incidence rate of alcohol, more than 230,000 schoolchildren each year start consuming alcoholic beverages.

In conclusion, family intervention, such as the presence of conflictive relationships between the parents, the low-quality relationship between them and the adolescent, a deteriorated perception of the adolescent regarding them, the lack of positive reinforcement, the resistance of the young person to assimilate the values ​​transmitted and the absence of limits in their education are family variables associated with drug use.

Recovery Treatment

Addiction is a chronic mental illness for which there is recovery treatment. One does not stop being addicted, but the disease is treated to appease its symptoms and learn to live a full life away from drugs.

The most effective way to recover from addictions is to follow specialized treatment in this field. Overcoming addiction involves understanding the disease, acceptance, and changes in behaviour and attitudes that require a lot of involvement from the patient and the therapeutic team.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy To Treat Addiction

The responses given to surveys on consumption habits obviously cannot be generalized. Drug addiction is too complex for a socioeconomic variable to affect the entire population similarly concerning all substances and consumption patterns. Consistent with this reality, the investigations tend to limit their object of analysis to specific groups and substances.

Influence Of Income Level On Consumption

If we look at the level of income and drug use factor and take these precautions into account, most of the studies examined maintain that the level of individual and family income has a certain relationship with drug use. That is, the level of income affects:

On the probability of initiating consumption.

To maintain certain consumptions over time.

To become more or less easily involved in risky practices or to abandon consumption trajectories that have already started.

Indeed, most of the reviewed studies show evidence that allows considering income level as a factor that influences drug use in its different facets, albeit in conjunction with or modulated by other variables. In adulthood, various investigations show that people with higher incomes drink more frequently but in smaller amounts. What in principle can be interpreted as a protective guideline directly derived from a higher income level; or, more likely, of the elements that underlie a greater disposition of income.

The Genetic Key

Is drug addiction explainable through the simple association of drugs and the brain?

The only way to explain the maintenance of addictive behaviour is as follows:

• attending to the case of the particular subject.
• the historical, contextual, and cultural circumstances surrounding their drug use.

But one of the factors that, to a greater extent, justify a dependency is the genetic predisposition. That is the organism’s permeability to stimulation by a psychoactive substance. By coming into contact with it, it precipitates the development of the disease of addiction.