ABSTRACT
The central message of the previous chapter is fairly clear; whatever else drug and alcohol use and abuse may be, it cannot be disputed that these practices are embodied in the sense that the experience is grounded biologically and that certain traits are inherited. However, as the evidence has shown, this is only one part of a more complex whole. The fact that the incidence of alcohol-related problems amongst certain groups of twins may occur at a rate 3.5 times higher than the general population is an important finding, but caution is needed in the interpretation of such statistics. Although this can be used correctly as evidence for the heritability of alcohol problems, the data also allow for the possibility that the environment may play as great or even a greater role in determining individual outcomes. The finding by Valliant (1983) that children who grow up in households with an alcoholic parent are as a group on average as likely to become teetotal as develop alcohol problems is important in this respect. As noted in Chapter 1, Crabbe and Goldman (1992) concluded that: ‘As children growing up in alcoholic households have an increased risk of becoming either alcoholic or abstinent, it seems that increased risk of alcoholism depends partly on how a person reacts to his or her environment’ (p. 299; italics in the original). What we really need to know is what proportion of a person’s actions stem from their biological self prior to any external input, and what arises in consequence of experience and the environment. In other words, how much is nature and how much nurture?
