Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction.
Johann Hari
That’s the Nature theory – that we are wired to prefer sugar or drugs. But, what else did the rats have to do in the cage?
[Dr. Bruce Alexander] comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
So there’s the nurture idea – what social environment were the rats in? How did they adapt?
We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need.
Anxiety and depression are such common complaints these days. People cannot bear their lives. They feel isolated. They want an escape.
Where is our Rat Park? What creative, engaging, grow-oriented activities are available to us? What bonds do we have? What bonds do we nurture – the bond to people or stuff?
Is it all stuff – the technology, the toys, the keeping up with the Joneses?
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things not people.”
— Johann Hari
What happens when we have access to friends, family, those who love us? Connection is a strong motivator of human behavior, it is an essential need. What happens when we prioritize connection over stuff?
Furthermore, the deepest connection we can have is with ourselves. In my opinion, our inner life, knowing ourselves and our relationship with a higher power is more appealing than any addiction. Look within and it will be revealed.
