Sunday is Mother’s Day, Just in time for a debate about nature, nurture, alcohol, and drugs, right?

You may have wondered if alcohol and drug abuse has a genetic component. We all probably know families that have many people who struggle with problems relating to alcohol or drugs, or we may even be part of these unfortunate families ourselves.

Alcohol and drug abuse does in fact have genetic links … maybe. Scientists believe that genetics might contribute to a person’s likelihood to experience alcohol-related problems about 50 percent of the time.

But that statistic doesn’t mean that if you come from a family with many alcoholics, there’s a 50 percent change that you, too, will be automatically become an alcoholic. Scientists believe that you might have a greater likelihood, but not a certainty, that you’ll be facing those kinds of substance use disorder problems.

There’s also the question of nurture. If your parents and others around you are alcoholics, you might become more accustomed to such behavior, but again, that doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically become an alcoholic yourself. Obviously not.

If children grow up one way, it doesn’t mean that they will definitely behave the same way as adults, although, again, it often appears that children exposed to alcohol-heavy environments as children often struggle with alcohol as adults. Nurture (or environment) might also contribute to substance use disorder in other ways. Some people might have greater access to drugs and alcohol and thus be more likely to use them due to their proximity. For others, external factors, such as stressful jobs, might contribute to substance use disorder.

As you’ve probably noticed, this blog uses words such as “likelihood,” “might,” and “probably.” It mentions things that could happen, not things that probably will. That’s because researchers are still tying to understand the complexity of alcohol and drug abuse, its causes and effects. Given the advances in understanding substance use disorder and developing treatment, it appears that these studies could succeed in determining how biology and environment affect alcohol and drug abuse.