Fruit Flies on Crack
 

This article talks about research about using fruit flies with mutated genes to test the reaction to crack cocaine specifically but with implications to all addictions.
I still think a lot of addiction is social/psychological, at least at it's inception, but further cracking of the gene code may show why some people are hopelessly trapped by addiction.
Of course not all addictions are a bad thing.....like being addicted to the Cellar. :biggrin:

Spoken like a man who has never woken up with QWERTY imprinted on his forehead and IOTD on his screen...

This is just recreational for me, I can quite any time I want. :worried:

huh.. interesting.. I mean I knew I was screwed up and all.. this is going to take some thinkin'

That would not be me. Don't forget the glasses bent and smeared. :lol:

I've heard that children of addicts are predisposed to becoming addicts themselves. I don't mean crack babies. I mean like, if your parents are alcoholics, you're more likely to become an alcoholic, or addicted to something else.

I think it has something to do with the pleasure threshhold. A higher threshhold means that the organism has to try harder to achieve the same amount of pleasure that normal organisms do.

For instance, I had to deal with alcoholic family members. After high school, I took two years off to do my partying before college. I did a lot of drinking, mostly because when my friends and I went out, it was usually to play pool a the bar. Luckily, I hate the taste of alcohol, so I didn't become addicted. I was also a bartender for 7 years, and I can't stand messy, obnoxious, or mean drunks.

But I definitely have the propensity towards addiction. I'm addicted to cigarettes. I'm addicted to coffee. I can live without coffee for a little while, but if I don't get my cigarettes, I can be a fire-breathing bitch.

I'm sure that environment is a factor in addiction--I hate the taste of booze, so even though I lived with alcoholics, that didn't become my drug of choice--but I also think that you have a hell of a lot higher chance of becoming addicted if there is a family history than if there isn't, because of that higher than normal pleasure threshhold.