As with many diseases, they vary and are different for each individual. Although everyone is susceptible to substance use disorder (SUD), specific risks and protective factors influence an individual's likelihood of developing SUD. The more risk variables a person has, the greater the likelihood that drug use will result in addiction. People have different risk factors that make them more vulnerable to developing SUD. Each of these factors can be broken into two classes: individual or environmental.
The availability of drugs in the area, exposure to violence, trauma, and poverty in the community are all environmental factors. While the individual factors include age of first use or genetics which account for about half of a person’s likelihood of developing a substance use disorder. Understanding personal risk factors as well as the risk of specific substances is critical to empowering people to prevent drug and alcohol use from progressing toward SUD and addiction.
There is a protective factor corresponding to each risk factor, making a person less vulnerable to the disease of addiction and less likely to misuse drugs. Protective factors are characteristics associated with a lower likelihood of adverse outcomes or that reduce a risk factor’s impact. Protective factors may be seen as positive countering events. Some risk and protective factors are fixed and do not change over time. Other risk and protective factors are considered variable and can change over time.
