Addiction and Its Genetic Encoding

10.16.2010

One of the biggest, strongest and most serious reasons I don’t want to bring a child into this world is addiction. I’ve been open about my addiction to food and my issue with trich, but in addition to just my own vices that are genetic, there are issues such as smoking, alcoholism, and depression that exist between Rob’s family and mine. To have one addiction makes things hard enough. Our future child has 5 major ones working against him/her. I struggle with food and trich on a daily basis. The slightest rise in anxiety triggers one or the other and, occasionally, both at the same time. If I’ve had a good food week, it usually means my pulling wasn’t or vice versa. The trich alone is something that I will genetically pass down to our child and he/she has a 50/50 chance of it triggering at some point. If not the trich or in addition to, our future child will most likely have a predisposition to being overweight because of both of our families. And I don’t have to go into the statistics for smoking and alcoholism. As for depression, I recently learned that fathers who have children later in life (after 35) have a higher chance of having a child who will become depressed. I’ve had problems with depression in the past myself so I’m sure the statistic shoots up more.

With all these realities milling about in my mind, I ask myself, how fair is it to bring a child into this world who has an at least 50% chance of getting any one of the 5 addictions aforementioned. I would bring a child into this world who would observe my habits and, like I did with my own mother, adopt some of those unhealthy habits because I’m not strong enough to overcome them. How do I teach a child to be a better person when I can’t even be good enough for me? I can’t stand myself for having these addictions and I dislike seeing someone close to me with theirs despite my understanding of them. It kills me to know that someday our child will see the aftereffects of me physically altering myself because of my trich and copy me or become addicted to smoking or drinking or food because that’s what he/she sees around him/her. I know that no one is perfect and I know that part of living life is learning, and that it’s about falling down and getting up to try again. I know this. But it terrifies me to face so many addictions at once and know that the high likelihood of our child inheriting one or all of them that may ultimately destroy him/her psychologically/emotionally/spiritually and/or actually kill him/her makes me queasy and nervous. It’s difficult to wrap my head around that.