Another example of this dates back to Vietnam. In the war there were a shocking number of solders addicted to Morphine and people were sure it was going to be a disaster when all of those drug addicted GIs returned home. Morphine has an insanely high recidivism rate and the general consensus was that once hooked on it you were basically hooked for life.
But then something strange happened, these GIs returned and most gave up the drugs and stayed off of them. Simply changing the circumstances (from hellish war torn tropical jungle to typical American life) managed to break the cycle of addition. It suggests that our system of sending âcuredâ drug addicts back into the same system that had them try drugs in the first place may not be the best.
(a) Rock stars are not a representative sample of humanity.
(b) Genuine rock stars are often under a tremendous amount of stress, particularly while on tour. Thatâs where these guys pick up their habits, when theyâre on the seventh straight day of playing their heart out all night and trying to catch some sleep on the bus during the day and they just donât have the energy to go on. âRichâ doesnât always mean âhappy.â
Great lead picture, Cory, I hadnât seen that one before!
My cynical friend King Red says âyouâre going to be addicted to something, at the very least air and water. The key is to make sure all your addictions are both legal and readily available.â Heâs got a point, but itâs not the point Rat Park is addressing.
Social isolation, at least in their own minds, has been the common characteristic of every suicide and self-destructive drug addict Iâve ever known. Humans are pack animals; the people who are not properly socialized or incapable of social integration can only function well as outsiders or top-of-pyramid leaders - we call these people antisocial or sociopathic (respectively) and itâs understood that these are abnormal conditions that usually create unhappiness.
The experiment âignoresâ this because it has absolutely nothing to do with issue the experiment attempted to address, which was that our understanding of drug addiction issues - which in turn shapes policy - is based on severely flawed science.
When Aristarchos proved the Earth revolved around the sun, he ignored the cause of potato blight, you know, but that didnât make his experiments invalid.
A nicely balanced, yet reasonably short explanation of the experiment is in Opening Skinnerâs Box, which I recommend to you.
I donât know that the experiment even demonstrated that recovering from addiction doesnât require significant work for most rats. It did however probably support the notion that that work becomes somewhat easier, perhaps crossing the threshold from impossible into possible, if the rats have opportunities for social interaction, a reasonably pleasant environment, freedom from oppression, etc.
If by âserious addictionâ you mean, âaddiction that is socially or economically cripplingâ then thatâs certainly true.
The exact same hundred dollar a day drug requirement and 20% reduction in earning capacity is much less harmful when they come out of the golf-vacations-and-iphones budget, than when they come out of the rent-groceries-and-healthcare budget.
I think we may have individually interpreted the thrust of @doctorowâs OP differently. Here was the takeaway I was operating from:
the compulsive behavior abated to the point of disappearance â in other words, whatever ârewiringâ had taken place could be unwired by the improvement of their living conditions.
Iâm not exactly disagreeing with you, though, or with anyone else in this thread who is encouraging a general overhaul of base conditions. Itâs just that I am personally aware that there are â sometimes mystifying â factors that encourage addiction, regardless of the âoutsideâ reality. And that an improvement of that reality is not a magic bullet.
I know that my attempt to beat back a crippling addiction problem could well have turned out differently if I hadnât lucked into a significant improvement of circumstances (new locale, new and rewarding job with an actual living wage and benefits, etc.) at just the right time. But it took a minimum of two years, and much hard work, to really make progress on my mental wiring, even though my existence was objectively better.
That does seem like a bit of a stretch. Iâm pretty sure that is Coryâs take on it, not the conclusion of the researchers.
whatever ârewiringâ had taken place could be unwired given the improvement of their living conditions seems a bit better - doesnât assume the rats didnât have to work on it, just notes that whatever the internal process was, their morphine consumption decreased and level of overall functioning increased when their circumstances improved.
