Are You Genetically Predisposed to Developing an Addition?

Well, the short answer is a rather scary and compelling “yes,” but we won’t simply leave it at that as our aim is to educate and inform, and not to make the job of the fear mongers easier than it already is. You’re genetically predisposed to developing an addiction because everybody is. It’s a basic characteristic built into basic human instinct, but even if like everybody else you are indeed predisposed to developing an addiction, it doesn’t mean you have developed one and it doesn’t mean you will indeed develop one in the future.

Addiction is a biological mechanism of survival

If you were to speak to a professional from an alcohol treatment center or a specialist, they would tell you that there are a whole host of reasons for individuals developing dependencies, and not all of them are our own conscious decisions. The reason why we’re all genetically predisposed to some kind of addiction is that it’s an in-built survival mechanism we all possess. We may not be aware of it because we often refer to it as a routine and from the moment we’re born we’re in a sense conditioned to transition towards an existence that’s governed by some kind of routine.

Anything you do regularly forms part of your routine, be it waking up at a certain time in the morning (and alternating that during-the-work-week time with sleeping-in on weekends), eating your meals at certain times of the day, hitting the gym etc. These and other elements of a routine don’t necessarily have to be at a specific time each day, but if they form a regular part of your existence then they are constituents of a routine.

Good versus bad addictions

This brings us into the two different types of addition, namely good addictions and bad addictions. The good addictions are those which form part of the routine you cycle through as part of your basic survival, e.g. waking up at a certain time so that you will be on time for work, which of course is something that funds your existence, etc. Something like maintaining a healthy eating and fitness regime naturally also falls under good addictions.

Bad addictions are those which probably don’t need to be explicitly mentioned, like substance abuse that may require a visit to somewhere like West Coast Recovery Centers to get people back in control of their lives again, plus the likes of excessive consumption of porn, etc. Geo-location and the subsequent lifestyle appear to have a huge bearing on what people are most likely to get addicted to, e.g. in the Philippines there lots of gym rats and fitness buffs, while in Japan and South Korea you’d find lots of people addicted to gaming.

What are you addicted to?

Simply looking at your routine over a considerable period of time will put into perspective what your addictions are, which you would do well to classify as good or bad. Focus on what it is you commonly and repeatedly do as oppose to when you do it…

Taking control of your addictions, good or bad

Sometimes all it takes is aligning certain elements of your routine to take control of your addictions, good or bad. For example, snacking on CBD worms equates to one indulgence action that caters to two possible addictions, namely sugar and the effects of any amount of the active agent contained in cannabis products.