“We cannot hope to fully understand the human brain and mind because the tool that we must use is the very thing that we want to understand.” – Doug Cwienk
I apologize for being MIA for so long. I said that I would write again when I had something meaningful to say but the truth is, I have had something to say, just not the will to sit down and write it. As you know, we lost our youngest son two and a half years ago to opiates. Grief is an odd thing, just when I thought that I was handling things, it smacked me upside the head and stole much of my drive. I am trying to take that control back now and get back in the habit of writing.
We know that genetics has a very strong impact on addiction, so understanding genetics can help us understand the impacts of addiction. For that reason, I have been trying to understand genetics in a broad sense, so this post is somewhat scientific but not beyond the reach of anyone. This then begs the question, “if we understand genetics so well, why can’t we fix the impact of genetics on addiction?”. Actually, we have learned a lot about genetics but the more we learn, the less we understand.
I also want to point out that while I believe that genetics plays a large role in addiction, I do not believe that it is the only factor. The likelihood of developing a substance use or behavioral disorder is also influenced by environmental factors, such as how and where we were raised, how we were treated and particularly trauma. While genetics can help us understand a great deal about addiction, I do not believe that any one thing can solve the very complex riddle of addiction.
The Science Nerd Cannot Remain Hidden
I read an article about a professor of Neuroscience at Bucknell University that has also been in recovery for many years. I reached out to her, hoping to get some good feedback about my blog but most of what she had to say was “read my book”. I was disappointed, but I took her advice and it turned out to be very good advice.
Back in the spring, I finished the book titled “Never Enough” by Judith Grisel and I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to understand the impact of drugs on your brain. Her book discusses the neuroscience of addiction with the added benefit of the perspective of someone who has experienced addiction. I found the book and Dr. Grisel’s insights fascinating and enlightening. I did not; however, write this post to gush about this book and its author. Instead, I want to talk about some new insights that I have gained by reading this book and digging a little more into genetics.
The book supports the information that I have presented in this blog and it adds to that a more detailed discussion of the mechanisms by which many drugs impact your brain. The author provides a good deal of information about marijuana (a topic that I have avoided because of controversy), a drug with which she had a very special relationship. Near the end of the book, Dr. Grisel addresses the genetic component of addiction and our attempts to solve the addiction problem. In this discussion, she addresses the human genome project, its promise, and why it failed to solve the problems we hoped it would. This really struck me and got me thinking more about genetics, epigenetics, and how complex this really is.
Human Genome Project
Just to refresh your memory, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was a large-scale scientific undertaking that included many university researchers and laboratories from several countries. The purpose of this project was to map the entire human genome, that is to take our genes apart and understand what each segment was controlling. Before this project, we kind of looked at our genes from the whole city scale but this project would look at our genes on the individual address scale. For example, instead of just knowing that there are segments of our genes that code for hair color and which colors were dominant, the HGP would tell us the addresses of those segments. Armed with this information, we would then be able to identify genetically controlled conditions or diseases and “fix them” by editing the bad segments out.
The Human Genome Project was a huge success but rather than solve a world of genetically associated ailments, it showed us just how little we really know. The project quickly achieved its goal of mapping our genes, but it turns out that the map revealed less of what we expected and more complexity in areas that we had not considered.
Just Enough About Genetics for Our Discussion
Our genes are in part, made up of strands of DNA that provide the instruction book for what each of us will be like. Notice that I said “instruction book”. Our genes do not define us because that instruction book is interpreted based on our experiences and environment. The strands of DNA are made up of base pairs and there are three-part segments of these pairs that code for specific proteins. They are called triplets. There are also long sections of our DNA that we thought were inert, they didn’t code for anything. This is likely to be comparable to your office, some people do the work and some just take up space. Based upon the variability in humans, we were able to estimate the number of coding triplets that should be present in the DNA within our genes. Identifying the location and purpose of each triplet is where we saw the tremendous promise of the HGP. We would map all of these coding triplets and then set to work understanding each triplet and what it controlled.
As we contemplated this undertaking the theory of epigenetics that had been developed in the 1940s came back to the forefront. As we have discussed before, epigenetics tells us that our genes are not a rigid definition of who we will be. We know that environmental factors (physical or psychological) can turn-on/turn-off some genes or cause them to make a different protein. We also know that some of these changes can be passed on to our offspring in that altered state. Epigenetics would complicate our understanding of the results of the HGP but this was not too great of a hurdle.
It’s Just Not That Simple
The first thing that we discovered from the HGP is that there were far fewer base pairs that form coding triplets than we thought. In fact, we have many times fewer base pairs than a potato. That was quite a slap in the face, surely, we are much more variable and complex than a potato.
We have discovered that some segments of our DNA that we thought were inert actual do code for a protein but not in the way that we understood. Some areas in our DNA are simply repeating sequences and they do not repeat the same number of times in every person. I do not think that we have discovered the actual mechanism, but we have learned that the number of times that the sequence repeats can cause differences in people.
An example of something we expected to learn from the HGP is sickle cell anemia. We have identified the exact location within our genes that codes for sickle cell anemia and this could lead to genetically based treatment. On the other hand, we found that multiple sclerosis is much more likely in individuals that have longer repeating sections in specific places in our genes. We thought that these repeating sequences did nothing, like your coworkers, but put enough of them together and something bad happens.
Obviously, we overestimated the number of base pairs that form coding triplets because we though that they accounted for all of the variability. In reality, there are things in our genetic code that we thought did nothing that actually code for proteins in ways that we did not predict.
In a way, I guess that we were arrogant. The universe will not give up its secrets so easily. Combine the complexities of genetics and epigenetics with the even greater, hidden complexities of the human mind and it is no wonder that addiction has proved to be such a powerful adversary. BUT with support and understanding and very hard work we win sometimes. As a friend of mine always reminds me, “People succeed in recovery every day.”