In classrooms across Canada, addiction prevention is getting personal.

Instead of warning students about the dangers of drugs, a program called PreVenture teaches students about themselves — and it’s working.

Developed by Canadian clinical psychologist Patricia Conrod, PreVenture helps young people recognize how traits like risk-taking or negative thinking shape their reactions to stress.

“When you intervene around these traits and help people learn new cognitive behavioural strategies to manage these traits, you are able to reduce their substance use,” said Conrod, who is also a professor at the Université de Montréal.

By tailoring addiction prevention strategies to individual personality profiles, the program is changing how we think about addiction — from something we react to, to something we might stop before it starts.

And now, scientists say the potential for early intervention is going even deeper — down to our genes.

Personality and addiction

PreVenture is a personality-targeted prevention program that helps young people understand and manage traits linked to a higher propensity for future substance use.

The program focuses on four core traits — anxiety sensitivity, sensation seeking, impulsivity and hopelessness — that shape how individuals experience the world and respond to stress, social situations and emotional challenges.

“They don’t only predict who’s at risk,” said Conrod in an interview with Canadian Affairs. “They predict what you’re at risk for with quite a lot of specificity.”

Anxiety sensitivity shows up in people who feel overwhelmed by physical symptoms like a racing heart or dizziness. People with this trait may ultimately turn to alcohol, benzodiazepines such as Xanax, or opioids to calm their bodies.

Sensation seeking is characterized by a desire for excitement and novel experiences. This trait is associated with a higher likelihood of being drawn to substances like cannabis, MDMA, psilocybin or other hallucinogens.

“[Cannabis] alters their perceptual experiences, and so makes things feel more novel,” said Conrod.

Sensation seeking is also associated with binge drinking or use of stimulants such as cocaine.

The trait of impulsivity involves difficulty controlling urges and delaying gratification. This trait is associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in risky behaviours and an increased risk of addiction to a broad range of substances.

“Young people with attentional problems and a core difficulty with response inhibition have a hard time putting a stop on a behaviour once they’ve initiated it,” said Conrod.

Finally, the trait of hopelessness is tied to a pessimistic, self-critical mindset. People with this trait often expect rejection or assume others are hostile, so they may use alcohol or opioids to dull emotional pain.

“We call it negative attributional style,” said Conrod. “They have come to believe that the world is against them, and they need to protect themselves.”

These traits also cluster into two broader categories — internalizing and externalizing.

Anxiety sensitivity and hopelessness direct distress inward, while sensation seeking and impulsivity are characterized by outward disinhibition.

“These traits change your perception,” said Conrod. “You see the world differently through these traits.”

Conrod also notes that these traits appear across cultures, making targeted addiction prevention broadly applicable.

Personality-based prevention

Unlike most one-size-fits-all drug prevention programs, PreVenture tailors its prevention strategies for each individual trait category to reduce substance use risk.

The program uses a brief personality assessment tool to identify students’ dominant traits. It then delivers cognitive-behavioural strategies to help users manage stress, emotions and risky behaviours associated with them.

Recreation of the personality assessment tool based on the substance use risk profile scale — a scale measuring traits linked to reinforcement-specific substance use profiles. | Alexandra Keeler

Students learn to recognize how their dominant trait influences their thoughts and reactions — and how to shift those patterns in healthier directions.

“We’re trying to raise awareness to young people about how these traits are influencing their automatic thinking,” said Conrod. “You’re having them be a little more critical of their thoughts.”

Hopelessness is addressed by teaching strategies to challenge depressive thoughts; those high in sensation seeking explore safer ways to satisfy their need for stimulation; anxiety sensitivity is managed through calming techniques; and impulsivity is reduced by practicing pausing before acting.

Crucially, the program emphasizes the strengths of each trait as well.

“We try to present [traits] in a more positive way, not just a negative way,” said Sherry Stewart, a clinical psychologist at Dalhousie University who collaborates with Conrod.

“Your personality gets you into trouble — certainly, we discuss that — but also, what are the strengths of your personality?”

While a main goal of the program is preventing substance use disorders, the program barely discusses substances.

“You don’t really have to talk about substances very much,” said Conrod. “You talk more about how you’re managing the trait, and it has this direct impact on someone’s motivation to use, as well as how severely they experience mental health symptoms.”

The workshops make it clear, however, that while substances may offer temporary relief, they often worsen the very symptoms participants are trying to manage.

The genetic angle

Catherine Brownstein, a Harvard Medical School professor and geneticist at Boston Children’s Hospital, says genetic factors also help explain why some people are more vulnerable to addiction.

“A lot of personality is genetic,” she said in an interview with Canadian Affairs.

Her research has identified 47 locations in human DNA that affect brain development and shape personality traits.

While substance use risk cannot yet be detected genetically, certain gene variants — like SHANK3, NRXN1 and CRY1 — are linked to psychiatric disorders that often co-occur with substance use, including ADHD and schizophrenia.

Brownstein also says genetic variations influence pain perception.

Some variants increase pain sensitivity, while others eliminate it altogether. One such gene, SCN9A, may make individuals more likely to seek opioids for relief.

“If you’re in pain all the time, you want it to stop, and opioids are effective,” said Brownstein.

While we cannot yet predict addiction risk from genetics alone, Brownstein says she thinks genetic screening combined with psychological profiling could one day personalize prevention even further.

Expansion and challenges

Conrod’s personality-targeted intervention program, PreVenture, has proven highly effective.

A five-year study published in January found that students who participated in PreVenture workshops were 23 to 80 per cent less likely to develop substance use disorders by Grade 11.

Stewart says that the concept of PreVenture began with adults with substance use disorders, but research suggests earlier intervention can alter life trajectories. That insight has driven PreVenture’s expansion to younger age groups.

Conrod’s team delivers PreVenture to middle and high school students, UniVenture to university students and OpiVenture to adults in treatment for opioid dependence.

PreVenture has been implemented in schools across the U.S. and Canada, including in B.C., Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. Five Canadian universities are participating in the UniVenture study.

However, currently, Canada’s flagship youth prevention strategy is based on the Icelandic Prevention Model — a 1990s framework that aims to reduce youth substance use by focusing on environmental factors such as family, school and peer influence.

While the Icelandic Prevention Model has shown success in Iceland, it has serious limitations. It lacks a mental health component, does not specifically address opioid use and has demonstrated mixed results by gender.

Despite strong evidence for personality-targeted prevention, programs like PreVenture remain underused.

Conrod says education systems often default to less effective, generic methods like one-off guest speakers. She also cites staffing shortages and burnout in schools, along with insufficient mental health services, as major barriers to implementing a new program.

Still, momentum is building.

B.C. has aligned their prevention services with the PreVenture model. And organizations such as the youth wellness networks Foundry B.C. and Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario are offering the program and expanding its reach.

Conrod believes the power of the program lies in helping young people feel seen and understood.

“It’s really important that a young person is provided with the space and focus to recognize what’s unique about [their] particular trait,” she said.

“Recognize that there are other people in the world that also think this way [and tell them] you’re not going crazy.”

This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.