The Likely Cause Of Addiction Has Been Discovered, And It Is Not What You Think

[medmanmike]

Interesting article and new thinking around addiction.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html

 

Excerpt.

 

The experiment is simple. Put a rat in a cage, alone, with two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with heroin or cocaine. Almost every time you run this experiment, the rat will become obsessed with the drugged water, and keep coming back for more and more, until it kills itself.

 

The advert explains: “Only one drug is so addictive, nine out of ten laboratory rats will use it. And use it. And use it. Until dead. It’s called cocaine. And it can do the same thing to you.”

 

But in the 1970s, a professor of Psychology in Vancouver called Bruce Alexander noticed something odd about this experiment. The rat is put in the cage all alone. It has nothing to do but take the drugs. What would happen, he wondered, if we tried this differently? So Professor Alexander built Rat Park. It is a lush cage where the rats would have colored balls and the best rat-food and tunnels to scamper down and plenty of friends: everything a rat about town could want. What, Alexander wanted to know, will happen then?

 

In Rat Park, all the rats obviously tried both water bottles, because they didn’t know what was in them. But what happened next was startling.

 

The rats with good lives didn’t like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did.

[GregS]

No kidding. Self medicating for psychic pain is common. Some use alcohol, some religion, and we are blessed with using cannabis for our physical conditions with the added benefit that it helps us with the frustration that they bring.

[pic book]

My conclusion:  the way to rid society of unhappy inhabitants and to raise the overall level of satisfaction with life in society as a whole is to legalize cocaine imbued water.   The unhappy will eliminate themselves, a self-cleansing of society's undesirables.

[GregS]

My conclusion:  the way to rid society of unhappy inhabitants and to raise the overall level of satisfaction with life in society as a whole is to legalize cocaine imbued water.   The unhappy will eliminate themselves, a self-cleansing of society's undesirables.

That's harsh.

[trichcycler]

My conclusion:  the way to rid society of unhappy inhabitants and to raise the overall level of satisfaction with life in society as a whole is to legalize cocaine imbued water.   The unhappy will eliminate themselves, a self-cleansing of society's undesirables.

Considering our workforce is largely comprised the unhappy people you refer too, your plan may not be as desirable as you propose?

you could consider, as a money and time saving means to the end, freely hand out secobarbital to jails first, maybe nursing homes, then mental institutions too ?

[GregS]

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

[YesMichigan]

My conclusion:  the way to rid society of unhappy inhabitants and to raise the overall level of satisfaction with life in society as a whole is to legalize cocaine imbued water.   The unhappy will eliminate themselves, a self-cleansing of society's undesirables.

 

Many allege that this was the Republican plan that started in the early 1980's.

[trichcycler]

its working, sort of...maybe that's why crack houses are left alone?

[GregS]

"Now and then it's good to pause in the pursuit of happiness and just be happy". - Guillaume Apollinaire

[medmanmike]

Many allege that this was the Republican plan that started in the early 1980's.

Having lived through it, it really started with the Nixon triumvirate in the early 70s.