by Mr.Samsa wrote:Agrippina wrote:Thanks Mr S. I appreciate that. Morpheus? Any ideas.
I'm interested because it seems to me that the children of drunks seem to go either one way or the other, they become drunks themselves or they go to the other extreme and make comments like "I don't want to start drinking because alcoholism runs in my family."
Yeah the problem with that kind of relationship is that it's a prime example of "correlation does not equal causation". That is, it may be true that children of alcoholics are significantly more likely to become alcoholics themselves and for it to have absolutely nothing to do with genetics. For example, it could be that living in poorer conditions (due to the family struggling to pay it's way as a result of the parent's addiction) causes the child to becomean alcoholic. Or it could be an associated third variable which produces the effect - so it could be that both parent and child have inherited some disorder like depression which makes them more likely to drink (self-medication). Here we would find the same correlation, but genetics would not be the cause of addiction, instead the depression would be.
True. I know a few families with fathers who are serious drunks and who themselves are perfectly normal social drinkers like the rest of us. And other families where the parents don't drink at all and the kids are alcoholics and drug addicts. I don't think it's genetic, I simply want to know what experts think.
