So What Is the Connection Between Addictions and Attention Deficit Disorder?

In David Miller's personal, professional and clinical experience he had begun to wonder  if there was a connection between ADHD, stimulus augmentation (a hypersensitivity to one's own environment, i.e., noise, light, touch, etc.) and addiction. His further research showed that:

1. Significantly more children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) develop problems with alcoholism or drug addiction than do children without ADHD.

2. Alcoholics frequently have a history of childhood hyperactivity.

3. People who become alcoholics show a much higher frequency of symptoms of ADHD as children than those who do not become alcoholics.

4. Children of alcoholics have been shown to perform poorly on tests measuring attention, memory, perceptual-motor coordination, motor speed, spatial sequencing, and language capacity.

5. Studies show that alcoholics have impaired verbal learning and memory and exhibit various other deficits similar to what has been observed in children of alcoholics. This indicates that these impairments may have preceded drinking onset.

6. Many people with ADHD are children of alcoholics and ADHD is common in the relatives of ADHD children.

7. Sons of alcoholics have been found to magnify perceptual input.

8. In alcoholics, stimulus augmentation has been demonstrated to be related to a strong motivation or craving to obtain alcoholic beverages.

9. Up to one-third of alcoholics meet the criteria for a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder.

10. Children of alcoholics are at high risk of becoming alcoholics.

11. Sensory information is often amplified in addicts before they start taking drugs.

12. Stimulus augmentation is common in children of alcoholics.

With all of this related evidence it seemed reasonable to believe that, in many cases, ADHD and addiction were connected genetically. David's search eventually took him to Dr. Kenneth Blum who was doing research on brain chemistry and addiction. He found that Dr. Blum had come to the same conclusion from scientific research that he had come to from clinical experience: There is a large group of people who have both conditions and it is likely that in many cases the conditions are genetically connected.

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