Basic B*tch

Declan Lynch’s tales of addiction

Millennial dinner-party bores

In my reading around this subject, I sometimes find an academic viewpoint which sounds like something that most sensible people would have worked out for themselves anyway — and this is good.

There’s an interview with Dr Luke Clark, working out of the University of British Columbia, in which it is put to him that “there seems to be a divide within professional circles between those that believe that solely genetics cause the disease (of addiction), and those who believe that it’s only caused by the social environment. What is your take?”

Leaving aside the issue of whether it is entirely wise to describe addiction as a disease — we treated this issue in a recent episode of 50 Ways — Dr Clark responds something like this: “We talk about it a lot in the lab... Anyone who looks into brain systems of reward, or what dopamine does — well, to me it seems really obvious that the brain system is going to be affected by social context… a lot of people assume that you’ve either got brain factors, or you’ve got environmental factors. Most of the psychologists I speak to view these things as being completely complementary, and not at all at odds with each other. So I find the whole argument sort of vexing.”

Which is, broadly speaking, the right answer.

And on this nature-versus-nurture question, when he tries to offer a more precise picture, Dr Clark says: “Any behavioural disposition or trait that has been studied, ends up being about 30-to-50pc genetic, with the rest environmental...”

So it’s about half and half.

Which again sounds just about right when you consider the case of the person whose father is an alcoholic — this might suggest that the child of that parent is at risk of being an alcoholic because it’s ‘in the genes’, but then the alcoholic parent will also be creating an environment in which alcoholism is present.

It’s kinda hard to have one without the other.

There are instances though, in which you can have the environment without the genes. My father was a normal drinker who would very rarely go to the pub; my mother hardly drank at all. Nor am I aware of their fathers and mothers before them having much to do with our old friend John Barleycorn.

Perversely, I sometimes think that if I had been exposed to more disturbing situations involving drink at a younger age, it might have slowed me down a bit, when I found myself in the big smoke.

But there are environments other than the domestic one, and if, say, you were starting to work in the Dublin media in the 1980s, you could sometimes go an entire day without encountering anyone who drank less than you did

— and since you might be drinking a considerable amount, this was always going to cause some difficulty.

I do believe that Ireland was a more profoundly alcoholic country then than it is now — there were people walking around then who were not generally regarded as alcoholics, who would now be regarded as Exhibit A in that regard.

There are many things preventing a person from getting help with an addiction, but one of the most intractable is this idea that you’re not the worst, because you are acquainted with people who are indeed much worse than you — and they’re just getting on with it.

This was the environment in which I was ‘nurtured’, though of course, it was my nature that brought me there in the first place, to work and drink with journalists and other such undesirables. You don’t need to take it to the lab to know that nature and nurture is like a brandy and port — indivisible.

“I do believe that Ireland was a more profoundly alcoholic country in the 1980s than it is now”