The Globalisation of Addiction
February 2nd, 2009Every once in a while, Reddit redeems itself.
Via: Nthposition:
Bruce Alexander is best known – though deserves to be much better known – for the ‘Rat Park’ experiments he conducted in 1981. As an addiction psychologist, much of the data with which he worked was drawn from laboratory trials with rats and monkeys: the ‘addictiveness’ of drugs such as opiates and cocaine was established by observing how frequently caged animals would push levers to obtain doses. But Alexander’s observations of addicts at the clinic where he worked in Vancouver suggested powerfully to him that the root cause of addiction was not so much the pharmacology of these particular drugs as the environmental stressors with which his addicts were trying to cope.
To test his hunch he designed Rat Park, an alternative laboratory environment constructed around the need of the subjects rather than the experimenters. A colony of rats, who are naturally gregarious, were allowed to roam together in a large vivarium enriched with wheels, balls and other playthings, on a deep bed of aromatic cedar shavings and with plenty of space for breeding and private interactions. Pleasant woodland vistas were even painted on the surrounding walls. In this situation, the rats’ responses to drugs such as opiates were transformed. They no longer showed interest in pressing levers for rewards of morphine: even if forcibly addicted, they would suffer withdrawals rather than maintaining their dependence. Even a sugar solution could not tempt them to the morphine water (though they would choose this if naloxone was added to block the opiate effects). It seemed that the standard experiments were measuring not the addictiveness of opiates but the cruelty of the stresses inflicted on lab rats caged in solitary confinement, shaved, catheterised and with probes inserted into their median forebrain bundles.
Yet despite (or perhaps because of) their radical implications for the data that underpin addiction psychology, the Rat Park experiments attracted little attention. Alexander’s paper was rejected by major journals including Science and Nature, and eventually published only in the respectable but minor Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior. Although the experiments have subsequently been replicated and extended, they still inform the science of addiction only at its margins. The Globalisation of Addiction is Alexander’s attempt to draw out their full implications for our understanding of addiction, and to chart a course towards forms of treatment that can transform their findings into practice.
Got to thinking about it and lmao at the a possible solution to test his theory:
Chain ol’ Bruce to an engine block in the garage, give him a good shot of smack and 8 hours later do it again. A shot every 8 hours, and when he
asks for a bigger shot oblige him. After a few weeks when he’s chomping at the bit for the next shot say “hey Bruce – before you get your next hit
you gotta suck off this here dog”, or something equally degrading. Within 8 hours Rover’s gonna be wagging his tail, then give Bruce his shot and
let him go back to staring at his shoes.
That’s when you pack him on a plane to Tahiti and set him up in a hut on the beach with all the comforts, grass skirt girls to do his bidding and
lots of friendly people in on the experiment whose whole job is to be happy, friendly and helpful – but they don’t get to use any drugs. And
Bruce gets all the smack he wants. He’s told he can go back and receive great standing in the scientific community and get the Nobel prize if he
proves the validity of his theory by putting the needle down.
Bruce will be dead in less than two years.
I got my credit card statement that included the Christmas and New Year’s holidays today and I can REALLY RELATE to these rats. I bought wine and champagne at every opportunity to do so, it seems. Yup, between a rock and a hard place I’ll hit the bottle when imagination fails me, and when the beauty of nature and the great outdoors is not available. They call it CABIN FEVER.
I have other names for this existence in the Western Great Lakes region in the U.S. But for right now I can say most indisputably, WINTER SUCKS.