A great deal of speculation has been centered around the causes of addiction.   Is addiction genetic?  Is it a “disease”?  Is addiction a mishap of teenage recklessness?   The rates of addiction in our country have been a source of growing concern, legislation and education programs.   These programs have directed much of their efforts towards educating young people on the dangers of drugs.   However, the changes in addiction rates as a result of these programs have been very small.  An educational approach assumes that young people become addicted because they try drugs, alcohol or tobacco out of curiosity and peer pressure, and then get “hooked” and can’t stop.

New research suggests that this is not the most common mechanism of addiction, and that educational programs are missing the root of the problem.  Recent research from the ACE studies shows an extremely high correlation between addictive behaviors and childhood trauma.  How high is this correlation?   In its most dramatic manifestation—illegal injected drug abuse—the chance of a man abusing drugs increases steadily as the number of childhood trauma events increases—reaching a forty-fold increase if a man experienced six or more categories of trauma events in his childhood.

Dramatic correlations between addiction and trauma have been demonstrated in many kinds of addiction smoking, obesity, alcoholism and promiscuity, as well as drug abuse.   As many adolescent therapists have learned, young people who become addicted are often in so much emotional pain that they don’t care about the risks.   Some they don’t care if they die.   They just want to stop hurting for a little while, and drugs are the fastest relief they have found.  This suggests that the best solutions to reducing addiction are about reducing child abuse and resolving emotional trauma.

This program explores in detail the dynamics and the research behind the relationship between trauma and addiciton, and the best evidence-based therapies for resolving both.