I know this belongs in our separate "depression and addiction" discussion thread....

Yes...I'd post something there, but, sadly, most of that thread went somewhere that I wasn't willing to follow....

, but I just wanted to say that there is mounting evidence to suggest that this is largely determined by genetics. In other words, some people can take certain drugs without easily getting addicted, others will become hopelessly hooked with one snort.

I agree in the main. When I said "The question is then whether you devote the rest of your life to seeking them out." I hope I didn't imply too much about causation -- exactly why some people do/don't spend the rest of their lives...

With respect to "hopelessly hooked with one snort", though, I'm not sure whether there are examples of that in the addiction literature. Yes, people do start with one snort (of whatever), keep going, and can become addicted quickly. As with many things, I think there are a mix of factors at work and individuals don't necessarily fall into Type A or Type B. Some folks spend a lot of time actively using drugs but then manage to stop forever, while others may go for the first 40 years of their life without serious drug use then experience a serious course change and be lost to drugs until they die.

Me? I've probably had more narcotics than the average citizen (by prescription) and have administered about 500 times more than I have taken in. If there wasn't a down side (like losing employment, addiction, having to shoot up, heart valve infections, social ostracism, jail time), I suppose it would be great to get a blast of morphine once or twice a year (say on vacation, on a beach in the Caribbean), but things don't work that way. I'm one of those long-term moderately depressed folks that other posts have talked about and it could be easy to fall down the hole.

BTW, I think Bitt's post that started the depression thread/s is pretty much dead on, FWIW.