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From what I understand, addiction is a sort of complex mix of genes and environment. You have a given number of genes, let's just say 8, for the sake of discussion, that can be turned off or on for addiction. Then you throw in environmental factors on top of that. So a person who is born with all 8 addiction genes turned off could be raised by a couple of drunks, loose their entire family in a car wreck, be homeless on the street and still not turn to alcohol. On the other hand, someone born with all 8 genes turned on could be raised somewhere where alcohol doesn't even exist, travel out to the real world at age 21, have one drink and be addicted from that time on. Most of us fall in the middle of those two extremes. I think that how it works, anyhow.
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