What Causes Substance Use Disorders?

Every attempt at Substance Use Disorder (SUD) prevention or treatment is based on cause. Excluding 12 step groups, the usual suspects are the drugs themselves (agent), or places (environment). Neither the agent nor environment are necessary or sufficient to explain causality. So what is? This missing piece is the host.

Recent outcome research on a university campus (Moore, 2016) uncovered a difference between those students who develop SUDs and those who do not. Simply put, SUD outcomes are based on perception of fear.

At the foundation of any dysfunction is the perception of either too much or too little fear. What determines this perception? The answer is perception development. This is nothing new. Every significant leader in the history of the world has written some form of the same message; appearances can be deceiving. Likewise the solution has always been related to pay more attention or straighten up and fly right. Thanks to the latest research on affective risk response systems, we can do better.

Understanding the attributes that determine perception development is the breakthrough. They are called perception risk factors. These factors cannot be learned. They are not cognitions. Perception risk factors are part of the human condition. Everyone has them.

It is now possible to demonstrate the following: Perception development is a function of perception risk factor sequence. This is the difference between those students who develop SUDs (25% of a convenient sample) and those who do not (75% of the same sample). This is what over 5000 freshmen were trying to tell me - I almost missed it.

Both groups are perceptive. Based on perception risk factor order, one group uses perception in service of judgment. This pattern results in autonomy. The others, without knowing it, use perception as judgment. This pattern results in dependence. Showing students how this works in terms of their own experiences over time proved effective based on student comments and campus safety outcomes.

Armed with causality creates new objectives to end Substance Use Disorders. Inform the low risk as they are developing - before indication of SUDs. Identify and intervene on the high risk. Inform Severe SUD clients how to stop one kind of development in order to start another. Any of these objectives are measurable through the Prehab presentation and MAPP model. Find out more at www.duncanparkpress.com.

The era of waiting for indication of a disease process in order to treat it is coming to an end.