It's how you hold the power that you have that defines you, but what do you do when even your shear willpower has been stripped from you? Many people often turn to various vices in order to gain some sort of control within their life. While some may not be as severe, others can quickly become detrimental to a person's well-being.
Throughout history, there are large groups of severely oppressed people noted. From Native Americans to Irish to people of the Caribbean to African Americans to women, the list can go on indefinitely.
In America, the Native American groups, many of which are on reservations, display high numbers of both alcoholism and gambling. In the past, their land was invaded and stolen from them. This not only contributed to the death of 90% of their population, but also shattered their learned values regarding community and family because it threatened their very survival.
In some sort of glorified sense, the Irish have become a known group of alcoholics. Obviously, that's an over-generalization, but statistically, the rates of alcoholism are higher among the Irish. Oppression of the Irish can date back to the first discovery of Ireland by explorers. Like the Native Americans, they were also regarded as savages. As time progressed, the stigma evolved rather than disappeared. What began as massacres turned into isolation and shunning with time. Though they can now benefit from the "white" status in America and oppression is far rarer, trends of alcoholism remain.
Through scattered, the people of the Caribbean are unified under their past oppression due to colonization. They originate from Africa, India, China, so on and so forth. Seduced by the "freedoms" of indentured servitude, many left their homeland to a place on the other side of the world. Similar to other oppressed groups, high rates of alcoholism and drug use can be seen through today.
Oppression, even if not present at the time, is continuous throughout culture because it alters the way of life. Parents often recount their loss of hope, despair, and mistrust to their children. Stories, songs, and reactions of parents are all absorbed by kids. But how exactly does a mistrust of the world lead to alcoholism?
A key part of that is culture. How much of who you are is based on your culture? Addiction can become heritable because cultural cues are difficult to evict. It's more than just some sort of hormonal or chemical imbalance. Culture is created by memories and observation; things that cannot be healed by a mere pill or two, but addiction gives release from the learned despair and mistrust of the world.
African Americans and women are groups that have both faced oppression. Where the two overlap, victims can feel double the blow. However, these groups don't have such extensively high rates of addiction as the others mentioned. I'm not sure of the scientific basis for this if any because surely these groups have face oppression just as bad if not worst than the others. In the United States, African Americans as oppressed slaves were massive in numbers. Women, of course, are half the population. Building a sense of community can be easier with larger numbers, even within oppressed groups. Rather than leaning on a substance or behavior, getting the support of another in the same situation was more common. This inevitably allowed them to work together to fight the cultural instillment of oppression.
