“I love you.” These three words may be the solution to a problem that has existed for well over 100 years. Many believe drug addiction occurs because of chemicals in the drugs that have addictive properties. However, new evidence suggests that addiction is caused by our environment, not chemicals.
First, addiction has a few definitions. It is the inability to abstain from something, or the craving and desire for something. Addiction is also associated with a diminished recognition of serious problems, and changes to one’s normal behavior and emotions.
In many classic addiction studies, rats were put in a cage with 2 water bottles, one laced with heroine and one with just water, and they almost always chose the bottle laced with the drug. Though this seems logical, Bruce Alexander, a professor of psychology in Vancouver, found an error in this experimental design. The rats were placed in the cages alone. Alexander thought that maybe this addiction came from animal’s innate need to bond to something, and not having anything else to bond to. To see if his thoughts were valid, he designed a group of experiments known as the Rat Park Experiments. These experiments concluded that rats that were in a loving environment (Rat Park) did not become addicted to heroine (a drug believed to have chemical properties of addiction), when given the choice between heroine-laced water, and plain water. Rat Park was Alexander’s loving environment he created for the rats. It had lots of cheese, tons of space, and most importantly, lots of other rats to have friendships and sexual relations with.
In one specific study done by Alexander, he supports this hypothesis that addiction stems from one’s environment, not the chemicals. The rats were separated into four groups: a group that lived in a lab cage, a group that lived in Rat Park, a group born and raised in the lab cages and then switched to Rat Park at the beginning of the experiment, and a group that was born and raised in Rat Park an then switched to the lab cages at the beginning of the experiment. The rats’ addiction was measured by the weights of the two water bottles (drug bottle and plain water bottle) at the ned of each day.
What Alexander found was that the rats that were caged drank 19 times more heroine-laced water than the group of rats in Rat Park! It also seemed that where the rat was born did not have much influence on whether or not they became addicted to the heroine. The only time there was an exception to these findings was when the experimenter diluted the heroine-laced water. When the heroine-laced water was diluted, rats that lived in Rat Park but were born in the lab cages drank just as much of the drug water as the rats that spent their entire lives in the lab cages. I cannot think of any logical reasoning as to why that is. Maybe someone can share their thoughts in the comments.
A view of Rat Park
Honestly, there was not much to critique about Alexander’s experimental design. I could not find sample sizes of this specific experiment, but I know he repeated all of his studies with Rat Park multiple times. This has been Alexander’s main research since 1970! But, as an informed consumer of science, since I do not know the exact sample sizes, or how many times Alexander repeated his studies, I will take his discoveries with a grain of salt. Also, his study was done on rats and not humans. Anytime a study is tries to conclude things about the human population but doesn’t test on humans, there is a bit more uncertainty involved. I would propose running a similar experiment on humans, but I do not believe it is ethical to drug humans!
My only complaint with this series of experiments is the fact that the findings are limited to saying it was a “loving environment” that caused the reduced drug addiction. Since Rat Park had many components in it, it is impossible to see if any one of these variables had a direct causal relationship with decreased drug water use. Like I mentioned before, Rat Park had lots of cheese, tons of space, and most importantly, lots of other rats to have friendships and sexual relations with. It is not clear to me if one, all, or a combination of these factors were the reason for the reduced use of the heroine-laced water. For example, I would be wary to conclude that it was the extra space that caused decreased addiction to the drug because the tons of extra food, ability to have friends, and ability to have sex could all be confounding variables.
To try to pinpoint what was the exact cause to decreased drug addiction, I propose a group of experiments that tests each one of these components of Rat Park separately. This would mean having one experiment that gives one group of rats more space than the control group, another experiment that gives one group of rats more cheese than the control group, another experiment that gives one group of rats friends while mice in the control group are isolated, and a final experiment that gives one group of rats an even split of males and females to have sex, and the control group of rats with either all males or all females. This will help find which part of Rat Park, if any individual part at all, is causing the reduced drug addiction.
However, it may just be the combination of these factors that is causing the reduced drug addiction. This would mean it was the “loving environment” causing the reduced drug addiction, just as Alexander hypothesized. As the research stands right now, Alexander’s hypothesis of a “loving environment” causing decreased addiction to supposed “addictive drugs” seems pretty convincing to me.
So what does this all mean? It means that we need to stop punishing people for their addictions, and instead recognize why their addictions exist. If this study is correct, we need to realize people have these addictions because they are missing key bonds (especially social) normally present in a loving environment. These addicts are bonding to the drugs instead. So, next time you see an addict you care about, say, “I love you.” It may just make all the difference.
Watch this TED Talk given by Johann Hari. It goes into more depth on the consequences to the way we as a society currently treat addiction.
Also, if the specific study of Rat Park wasn’t convincing enough, I found this video that shows how Alexander drugged the rats for 57 days before the experiment, and the rats in Rat Park still did not go for heroine-laced water!
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This blog was very interesting to me because I thought the study that you talked about was very well conducted. The researchers accounted for third variables and completed different experiments to keep testing their hypothesis. This article is interesting and talks about what may be some psychological causes of addiction.