What Causes Addiction?

What do you think that the cause of addiction is? Most people think that it is the chemical hooks in the drugs; however, Johann Hari may have found the likely cause of addiction and it's probably not what you think. When I first began my journey to find out all about addiction, I thought that some people just decided to do drugs because of things such as peer pressure, or just trying to fit in/be cool, and some people didn't because they were more sensible. I figured what kept them addicted was the drugs themselves and what they were made out of. Nevertheless this is not the case, take a look at the rat park experiment facilitated by Professor Bruce Alexander in the 1970's. When scientists used to do rat experiments on addiction they would a rat in a cage all alone and give it two water bottles, one with just water and the other water laced with cocaine or heroin. When this occurred the rat would always choose the water laced with the drugs and drink it until it ended up killing itself. Professor Alexander noticed a flaw in this experiment. The rats were in a cage all by themselves, the only they had to do was take the drugs, so they did. That is when he built rat park, rat park was made in a lush cage where there were colored balls for the rats to play with, the best rat food, tunnels to scamper down and plenty of friends to play with, but it also had the two water bottles like in the previous experiments; however, when they tried the drugged water they didn't like it.

When Professor Alexander first did this experiment he just thought it was the quirk of rats, but what he didn't realize that the human version of rat park was happening right in front of his eyes called the Vietnam war. When the vets were in Vietnam 20% of the U.S soldiers had become addicted to heroin, they said it was as common as chewing gum. The government was worried as so many people were coming back into there country hooked on a deadly drug costing them a lot of money. Although this was not the case at all, 95% of the addicted soldiers just simply stopped when they returned home and very few had to go to rehab. This making them like the rats, Vietnam being the bad and terrifying cage and America being the lush and pleasant cage. This goes the same for when your in the hospital, they could give you diamorphine which is just the medical type of heroin, you could be given it for days, but you can stop it at any time and be unaffected. Meanwhile if you got it off the streets and took it for the same amount of time you would be hopelessly addicted. The only explanation is that although the drug may be the same, the environment is different; therefore, the unlikely cause of addiction is not the chemical hooks or the drugs but the environment you are taking the drugs in. You will begin to take the drugs because of the environment or living conditions you are in and you will be able to stop when you return to your own version of rat park. This theory can also go for all types of addiction, as other types of addiction are just an escape from your life and your living environment just like drugs. For the original article go to: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html

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