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"Mom" and Addiction

Shreya Singh 


Alcohol addiction and substance abuse is as issue dealt with and made the central theme in various movies and television shows. The accuracy of the depiction, however, may vary. This blog post looks to present an argument in support of the accuracy of the portrayal of Alcohol use disorder (AUD), the causes for it, and the repercussions it has in the Television show Mom.
The paper “Neurotransmitters in alcoholism” (Genet, 2014) discusses the role of neurotransmitters in alcohol addiction because of their imbalance in the brain. Alcohol addiction either involves a positive reinforcement in which the environment has a rewarding stimulus that encourages the behaviour. Or it may be due to a negative reinforcement, in which case alcohol ingestion is being encouraged as it allows the person to avoid aversive stimulus. This causes widespread neuroadaptations in the brain. The paper goes on to talk about the dopamine pathway. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in the mesolimbic system. The consumption or even the anticipation of alcohol causes a release of dopamine in the brain which is involved in the reward system pathway.
This blog post is going to elaborate on the three main features of AUD and their accurate depiction in the show Mom. It will first discuss the heritability aspect of addiction. Then it will move on to discuss the role the environment, epigenetics plays and how it is related to the hereditary factor. Finally it will talk about reward deprivation and how it factors into the larger picture of alcohol addiction.  
Mom is a show about 2 generations of woman in a family, the mother and the daughter, who are in an Alcoholics Anonymous program. The show focuses on the recovery of these women while giving us glimpses into their past and telling us how their addiction affected them and their relationships with their children and grandchildren.
A research paper, “Epigenetics of drug abuse”, (Nielson, 2012) discusses the vulnerability of addiction and how it is influenced by convergent biological, social, environmental and genetic factors. It mentions twin studies according to which there are common heritable genetic components that predispose an individual to drug addiction and these contribute 20-50% to the variance of developing an addiction where the other half is impacted by the environment and social factors. It also elucidates the importance of the interaction between biological factors and the biosocial influences. In Mom, the oldest woman Bonnie becomes an addict at an early age as she bounced around in foster homes after having been abandoned by her mother at the age of 4. She conceived her daughter Christie in a concert and did not know who the father was the next day. Due to her addiction, she was an absent mother where she disappeared for days and Christie had to grow up being the adult herself. This caused her to fall into drinking and drugs and drop out of high school. She then ended up becoming a stripper and an alcoholic herself. Christie also has a daughter, Violet, in her teen years and Violet also grows up in a parentless household where she has to mother her younger half-brother from Christie’s failed marriage. This storyline clearly shows the role the hereditary aspect of addiction plays, where 3 generations of women from the family suffer because of it.
The hereditary nature of the disease is linked with epigenetics and the environment. “Addiction” in Psychology Today mentioned the role environmental factors play. The lack of parental supervision along with a parent or sibling/s with an addictive disorder increases the risk. Early exposure to adversity and trauma can also increase the likelihood of addictive disorders. Also mental health problems like Attention deficit Disorder and PTSD play a big role. In Mom, Bonnie is diagnosed with ADD in the latter seasons and if considered along with her life story explain her fall into drinking and drugs at an early age. This also illustrates how the genetic and the epigenetic factors played a part for Christie. Growing up in a home with a mostly absent and reckless mother added epigenetic factors to an already present predisposition for addiction.
Finally the role reward deprivation plays in addiction is described in “Neuroscience of Alcohol” (Preedy, 2019) which elaborates on how there is sub optimal reward processing in alcoholism. It discusses how limited access to natural rewards can be a maintaining factor for AUD. In Mom this is demonstrated again through the parental neglect cycle which is seen. There is no support or encouragement of any form that Christie or Violet got from their parents which caused them to seek the acceptance and feeling of achievement elsewhere.
Considering these factors, it can be said that Mom portrays accurately the different aspects of AUD and the causes and affect that it can have. It takes into consideration that a predisposition for addiction is hereditary and the ways in which it is involved with epigenetic factors and reward deprivation.




Works Cited:
Banerjee, N. (2014, January). Neurotransmitters in alcoholism: A review of neurobiological and genetic studies. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4065474/

Nielsen, D. A., Utrankar, A., Reyes, J. A., Simons, D. D., & Kosten, T. R. (2012, July). Epigenetics of drug abuse: predisposition or response. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463407/

Addiction. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/addiction

Neuroscience of Alcohol. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128131251/neuroscience-of-alcohol





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