Alcoholism and drug addiction are complex illnesses. Getting to the bottom of their causes isn't straightforward.

The fact that alcoholism and drug addiction is to a large degree hereditary due to genetic influences, certainly explains one of their major causes. But most significantly, we're largely shaped by our environment - parents, the media, our peers and our various experiences.

Now when looking at the role psychology plays in alcoholism and drug addiction - a large part of our psychological makeup is formed in our early childhood years. Primarily through our parents and family environment.

Generally speaking - if we come from a generally loving, stable and supportive family environment (especially in our early childhood years) - it usually means we grow up with better self confidence and are more comfortable with ourselves and who we are.

However, if our younger years are filled with some sort of trauma, instability or emotional turmoil - like there being alcoholism in the family, abuse, losing a loved one, our parents separating, or anything we regard as being traumatic - we tend to create all sorts of coping mechanisms to help us deal with that, which can then show up in our lives in a number of different ways.

This could mean you find yourself developing a whole bunch of stuff - which could be anything from depression to anger, anxiety, different kinds of eating disorders and naturally various forms of addiction, including drugs and alcohol.

It's pretty likely that if you speak to an addict or alcoholic - that there will be something that happened when they were young that effected them pretty bad. For me having an alcoholic parent was tough to deal with - also because how that impacted on our family.

It doesn't, of course, always happen like that because naturally you will find that there are lots of addicts who had stable and loving upbringings. But when trying to understand the psychology of alcoholism and addiction, hopefully what I've shared with you will help.