Research into the effects of adverse childhood experiences
There was a number of large-scale studies in the United States, done by brilliant researchers, called the ACE studies, A-C-E, adverse childhood experiences. An adverse childhood experience stems from a child being abused, or from violence in the family, or from a parent being jailed, or from the extreme stress of poverty, or from a rancorous divorce, or from a parent being addicted, alcoholic and so on.
It turns out that if a child has a number of these adverse childhood experiences, his chances of becoming a drug addict later on, or any kind of an addict, go up exponentially. In fact, a male child with six such adverse childhood experiences sustains a 4,600% increase in the risk of becoming an injection-using substance addict, as compared to the chances of a male child with no such experiences. In other words, there is a 46-fold increase in risk.
Interestingly enough, those adverse childhood experiences also exponentially increase the risk of cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, and a whole range of other diseases, as well as suicide and early death. In other words, there's a real connection between early childhood adversity and a) how a person lives their lives and b) the later appearance of addiction and diseases, both physical and mental.
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Dr. Gabor Matà © is the Vancouver-based physician and bestselling author of four books:
- When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection;
- Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do about It;
- Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers; and his latest,
- In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.
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