Those whom don’t understand addiction will tell themselves that they should disconnect from the addict in their lives. They might even fuel the stigmas around addiction. They would believe that change won’t happen until the addict hits “rock bottom”. Punish an addict or make them suffer; and that would give them the incentive to stop the addictive behaviors.
What if this thinking is hurting our loved ones more than helping?
Johann Hari is a New York Times best selling author many times over, a writer for many of the world’s leading newspapers, and has many awards around writing, journaling and speaking.
According to Johann Hari’s Ted Talk, Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong, “Disconnection is the major driver of addiction”.
Johann explains an experiment by Bruce Alexander, a professor of psychiatry in Vancouver. Professor Alexander conducted a Rat Park experiment that reveals the nature, the animal instinct, of addiction.
Alexander’s Experiment
Alexander reinvigorated a series of experiments done in the early 1900’s with rats. Two rats were solitarily put into separate cages. Both rats had two water bottles. One bottle contained plain water. The other bottle was laced with drugs. The rats preferred the drug water and died by overdose.
The experiment was the foundation of the old-school teachings we know so well, that we become addicted to the chemicals in drugs therefore develop a dependency on them. Until the next experiment…
Fast forward to the 1970’s, Professor Alexander did the experiment again, however in a different way.
This time, the rats were put into what he called a “rat park”. The cage was filled with other rats ( male and female ), toys, cheese, tunnels to run through, and the same two bottles of water; One bottle contained plain water. The other bottle was laced with drugs.
The rats in the Rat Park cage completely ignored the drug-laced water. Feeling connected and busy, the rats chose the clean water over the drug-laced water, almost completely. And not one rat overdosed.
What were the findings?
100 percent of the rats overdosed when they were isolated and 0 percent of the rats overdosed when they were happy and connected with other rats.
When rats are provided with stimulation, interest and connection they didn’t even desire the drug water even though it was just as accessible as drinking the clean water.
Human beings have a natural innate need to bond. When we don’t bond and connect with other human beings due to trauma or mental illness, then “we will bond with something that gives some relief, and often that will be a substance or anything that takes the pain of isolation away”. (Johann Hari)
Similar experiments were conducted on humans. British psychologist and psychotherapist John Bowlby’s 1950’s research on the Attachment Theory revealed a similar pattern.
Bowlby studied child-parent relationships. He found infants, toddlers and small children who were close to their parents growing up were better able to forge connections later in life. They became happy, well-adjusted adults.
On the other hand, people who don’t form strong bonds with their parents early on struggle to connect with others as adults. And the lack of connection makes people more likely to turn to drugs, alcohol or other addictive behaviors.
Johann Hari noticed that society has typically put barriers between addicts and the ability to connect into society again. There was no forgiveness, creating more isolation, thus resulting in more addiction. The country, Portugal took a novel approach to its drug problem.
The Portugal experiment
Portugal was once a country plagued by addiction. In 1999, Lisbon was nicknamed the “heroin capital of Europe”. HIV reached an all-time high.
After decades of following the American way and only seeing more rise in addiction, the Portugal government decided to decriminalized all drugs to keep addicts out of the prison system. More importantly, they redirected all the funds typically allocated to the prisons and dedicated the funds towards creating jobs, helping with salaries, and awarding micro-loans to open businesses. As a result, drug use went down by 50%. HIV cases, overdoses, and addiction were drastically reduced.
Hug our addicts
Individualized recovery is not enough. Societal recovery will create the big change. As Hari stated in his talk, “We’ve created a society where life is more of the isolated cage and a lot less of the rat park.”
If there’s an addict in your life, hug them. Because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.
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