Accepted research now shows that some people have vulnerabilities to addiction and has established a three-factor standard for vulnerability to drug addiction: genetic factors, environmental factors, and repeated exposure to drugs of use.[7] Being vulnerable to addiction means there is a factor that makes one individual more likely to develop an addiction than another individual. Additionally, many in the science community agree that addiction is not simply just a result of desensitized neural receptors but also a corollary of long-term associated memories (or cues) of substance use and self-administration.[8] Vulnerability to addiction has both physiological and biological components.

Genetic factors

Contemporary research in neurobiology (a branch of science that deals with the anatomy,[9] physiology, and pathology of nervous system) of addiction points to genetics as a major contributing factor to addiction vulnerability. It has been estimated that 40–60% of the vulnerability to developing an addiction is due to genetics.[10][11] One…