Q: I am a 22-year-old student. I am worried that I may become addicted to marijuana. Is it true that if your parent is an alcoholic, that you can inherit some type of addiction? I am not an alcoholic, but my father is one, even though he hasn’t had a drink for about six years. I smoke pot several times a week and it seems to help me relax and cope with stress.
A:Up to half of the children of alcoholics either become alcoholics or become addicted to other drugs. The type of drug that is abused may vary, but the
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dependent personality type appears to be inherited.
It is interesting that many children of alcoholic parents marry alcoholics, even if they don’t drink themselves. You would think living with a parent who drinks too much would turn them off being around anyone with the same problem.
Whether the tendency to behave the same way as the parent is due to heredity or environment has yet to be determined.
I won’t lecture you on the fact that pot smoking is illegal, except in cases when a person is suffering from an incurable and painful illness. My concern is that the active ingredient, THC, can cause irreversible brain damage in some cases. It will interfere with your ability to concentrate on your studies and you could end up a permanent inmate of a long-stay mental hospital with an illness that is clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia, known as drug-induced psychosis.
Back in the 1980s there were studies that showed no permanent ill effects from marijuana. But the plants grown today have been selected to produce much higher concentrations of THC than in earlier decades.
I have seen CT scans of patients who are heavy pot smokers that showed holes in the brain. Psychological tests also prove there is organic brain damage.
