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Addicted from Birth

Children who are exposed to substances before they are born are sometimes
at an even more substantial disadvantage from the very beginning. The Na-
tional Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare estimates that 15 per-
cent of babies born each year have been exposed to alcohol or illicit drugs in
utero. This comes with a host of developmental and health problems for the
substance-exposed babies. For example, prenatal exposure to cocaine leads
to an increased risk of depression, heart disease, seizures, schizophrenia, and
Parkinson’s disease in adulthood. Prenatal exposure to heroin can lead to poor
spatial recognition, poor memory recall, hyperactivity, and lower IQ. Newborn
babies exposed to opioids in utero can further experience life-threatening with-
drawal symptoms.
Exposure to illicit substances in utero also heightens the risk of devel-
oping addictions in the future. Studies examining the long-term effects of
illicit substance exposure in utero have found that drugs affect dopamine
and serotonin pathways in the brain, thereby potentially hijacking the babies,
reward centers before they are born.
Finally, exposure in utero means that those children are often being raised
by addicts from day one. There is hope though. Recent long-term studies of
adopted children who were exposed to heroin in utero indicate that “the
outcomes of children who were adopted by non-addicted parents greatly
improved over those children who remained in compromised environments,”
according to Addiction Campuses. This means that there is promise of over-
coming drug exposure; being nurtured in a healthy family environment can
signi cantly bene t a child’s health and well-being.

Addiction Campuses, “Drug Addiction and Babies: Long Term Effects,” Addiction Campuses Blog, October 4, 2019.
www.addictioncampuses.com.

cans who used an addictive substance before age eighteen be-
came addicted. The center also notes that young people who
began using addictive substances before age fi fteen were almost
seven times more likely to develop a substance abuse problem
than those who did not use until they were over twenty-one. Of

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