THE DISEASE model tells us that one's genetic makeup may determine how prone one is to an "addictive" substance, and how easily attached one may become to a pleasurable routine. Several studies have also observed that addictions often come together with other mental illnesses. In the 1920s, Lawrence Kolb, the pioneer in addictions research, had found that most addicts had psychological problems well before their addictions. He observed, "The neurotic and the psychopath receive from narcotics a pleasurable sense of relief from the realities of life that normal persons do not receive because life is no special burden to them."

Here's also what we know so far: addictions are inextricably linked with violence. Police blotters across the globe are filled with cases of people under the influence of drugs or alcohol who got violent. Yet while addicts may engage in violence to get money to buy drugs especially, violent behavior often comes before the use of drugs.

We know as well that victims of violence often turn to drugs and alcohol to numb their pain. Medical research has shown that victims of sexual abuse and severe physical abuse are many times more likely to get addicted to opioids than other people. Those working to heal women know that women who were abused in the past — or those still stuck with an abusive partner — often use alcohol or other drugs to deal with their pain, anxiety, and fear. Many survivors of child abuse also use substances to deaden the pain of past memories.

In 1985, clinical psychiatry professor Edward John Khantzian of Harvard University wrote a paper in which he said many of the people who experimented with heroin and cocaine and then became hooked suffered from chronic or severe depression, anxiety, or physical pain.

"If the pain is sufficiently intense, people who become aware of the analgesic or tranquilizing effects of heroin or cocaine are likely to cling to the drug to relieve this pain, in spite of all the difficulties that this entails," he pointed out. This "self-medication" hypothesis has since been supported by several succeeding research in clinical and research psychiatry. In 1988, for instance, U.S. psychiatrists led by T.M. Keane found, unsurprisingly enough, that Vietnam combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder were abusing drugs and alcohol.

My own late father was an alcoholic, and his addiction turned him into a monster on far too many occasions. What personal horrors he had to undergo to make him act out the way he did, I will never know. And maybe I don't want to know; I would rather recall the few times when he was sober and would show me the butterflies and the ladybugs in our garden, or get me to help him build stools without nails.

My lola did tell me one story about my dad as a little boy. My grandfather, a guerilla, had to go off to fight against the Japanese in World War II. Before he left, he gave my dad a gun. Lolo said that should Japanese soldiers catch up with the fleeing villagers, my dad's duty was to shoot his mom and his younger sister, before anything happened to them. This was the time before instantaneous communication, and there were only whispered rumors of the Rape of Nanking. My dad was then just seven years old.

I think of this now while reading psychologist Alexander's speech before the Canadian Senate. Alexander had said of the self-medication theory: "If this interpretation were correct, the drug would not be the cause of addiction, but instead the pre-existing pain and the person's desperate attempts to control it would be."

"It would be assumed that if the pain were removed," he had added, "the person would abandon their compulsive use of the drug."

Danilova Molintas wants it known that she has not had the urge to abuse any substance since her teens. Except perhaps for chocolates, although her single-mother budget bars her from indulging herself even in that.