by worez on 6/11/23, 4:55 PM with 146 comments
by davelondon on 6/11/23, 7:27 PM
https://theoutline.com/post/2205/this-38-year-old-study-is-s...
"Despite his claims of a revolutionary breakthrough, Alexander had trouble finding a journal to publish his results. Both Science and Nature rejected the study for publication, likely due to significant problems with the methodology and results. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior published the results in 1981 with little response and the funding for Rat Park was canceled shortly thereafter."
"When scientists tried to replicate the Rat Park study, they got mixed results. In 1996, a study attempted to precisely replicate the conditions in Alexander’s Rat Park, down to the breed of rat. The researchers conducted two experiments to see if they could replicate the Rat Park study’s results. In the first experiment, the happy, social rats consumed slightly more of the morphine liquid, in the second experiment, the isolated rats drank slightly more. Neither experiment reflected the Rat Park’s results, which had the isolated rats drinking up to seven times the amount of the morphine liquid as the social rats."
by xrd on 6/11/23, 6:00 PM
Twenty years ago he was my first investor in my first startup. He was the guy that taught me about mediation. He was the first vegetarian I knew.
He owned four cab licenses in Portland. Then Uber came in and shredded his retirement plan. The cab company forced him out so he wouldn't even capitalize on the partial ownership of the land they owned. He lost everything. He has nothing left.
He discovered some awful things about his father. His brother died in a gruesome car crash at 25.
I remember him telling me about oxycotin (edited: I misremembered it as oxycodone), this "miracle drug" without the addiction of morphine. He got on that.
Ten years later he was using heroin. Then fentanyl more recently.
I'm pretty angry at the Sakler family. I'm mad at the drug cartels. I'm not mad at my friend. He's a generous and loving person.
Everyone has a story. I'm sure some are full of awful actions that led them to where they are, but I don't see my friend in that way.
by stan_kirdey on 6/11/23, 6:54 PM
While the article claims that jails only worsen addiction, correctional facilities in the U.S. provide medically-supervised drug rehabilitation programs that have high success rates. Folks with substance use disorder are given medication for withdrawal and co-occurring mental health issues. There are withdrawal monitoring and detox programs at every facility. Some facilities started to offer MAT, which is currently gold standard of treatment.
The article fails to consider how addictive substances themselves, especially opioids, undermine one's autonomy and ability to connect with others. Opioids activate reward centers in the brain, inducing a sense of euphoria and pleasure that is difficult to resist (Volkow et al. 2014). Even a small dose of fentanyl, for example, can trigger an addiction with continued use (Kounang 2018); it is disingenuous to blame the "cage" alone when the substance itself chemically hijacks the brain. Genetics also predispose certain individuals to higher addiction risk, as addiction correlates highly with hereditary factors (Ducci et al. 2012).
The rise of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs has made "escaping the cage" of addiction nearly impossible for some. In some cities int he U.S. in 2023, a pill of fentanyl would cost as little as 50c. Counterfeit opioid pills containing fentanyl are extremely cheap, potent, and deadly, yet addictive to a point when a single pill can completely change direction of one's life.
by loeg on 6/11/23, 5:49 PM
by version_five on 6/11/23, 8:12 PM
Physical addition is easy. With nicotine there are not really strong symptoms anyway, irritability mainly and inability to focus. I know other drugs are worse but in principle, battling withdrawl is not that tough, people are good at physical hardships. For nicotine it's a few days.
It's the rest of your life that's the problem, because you know that something that has an effect you enjoy immensely (and you tend to view use nostalgically though rose colored glasses) and you could do it any time if you wanted to. You need to deal with that forever. And if you slip you're back on the thick of things - like why alcoholics can't have a social drink.
So anyway, I sort of agree with the article, because it's easier to quit when you have something going on (I started walking and then running, which is what I attribute to success). Though I also think humans are complex enough that making a "rat paradise" for someone is not at all tenable.
Edit: and just to conclude, I smoked for 15 years and quit 12 years ago. I still want to smoke, I still dream about it, I still know I would enjoy it. I will never do it and I've learned to cope, but wanting to is something I'll live with forever. That's what makes addiction hard. If it was just a couple sweaty nights tied to a bed, things would be very different.
by dang on 6/11/23, 6:20 PM
Rat Park - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19928803 - May 2019 (2 comments)
Addiction: The View from the Rat Park (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605524 - Nov 2015 (1 comment)
Rat Park - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039039 - Feb 2015 (70 comments)
Rat Park drug experiment cartoon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7742950 - May 2014 (22 comments)
Rat Park experiment upturns conventional wisdom about addiction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6565426 - Oct 2013 (10 comments)
Rat Park Experiment: A New Theory of Addiction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391701 - Sept 2013 (42 comments)
by benreesman on 6/11/23, 6:08 PM
And I hope someone does on this thread.
But in the absence of a qualified expert interpreting the inside data laypeople are as always thrown back on the thoughtfulness arbitrary creative force gave a rock and anecdata.
And this rings insanely true. My life never changed back from COVID lockdown, maybe that says more about me than the biggest natural experiment in arbitrary and sweeping human confinement probably ever: but I use more of everything from nicotine to caffeine to adderall now than when I was partying with a purpose ten years ago.
More substances more screen time more all of it. Being trapped on an island with 100 people sounds like a vacation from either the glass box I live and work in or the empty-seeming bars and coffee shops and comedy clubs in the half dozen cities I’ve traveled to this past year.
Lockdown was boom time for screen companies. Anyone got a vested interest in leaning on the delicate pressure points of really resuming IRL life?
by MavisBacon on 6/11/23, 7:15 PM
Worth keeping in mind that this is a non-profit organization that sold fentanyl test strips at ridiculous markup for years (they have some novel strip now that i'm unsure of bulk pricing on). These were the same exact BTNX strips most fellow harm reductionists were handing out for free or at low cost. I was paying 75 cents per strip as a fairly small harm reduction organization, DanceSafe sold them for $2 (their novel strips are same price) and I can only imagine they got significantly better pricing through the biotech company we all were going through due to how many strips they must move.
by zephrx1111 on 6/11/23, 7:22 PM
In east Asia, we had an infamous example: Chang Hsueh-liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%20Hsueh-liang . The problem is clear here: if we could find an excuse for him, then we could for anybody.
Let's ask ourselves this question: do we want our kids addicting to drugs, or do we want ourselves addicting to drugs? If the answers are no, still the question will be, going forward what we can do, which this article has little advice.
by denton-scratch on 6/11/23, 8:35 PM
I don't think that's correct. I do think that addiction results from circumstances, and it's impossible to quit if the circumstances are wrong; but depending on the substance, withdrawal can mean life-threatening seizures.
Suggesting that the primary (author implies "sole") cause of addiction is circumstances enables all these claims of sex addiction, chocolate addiction, sugar addiction and so on.
Author says at the end that the word "addiction" is outdated; I agree, because it's been hijacked to refer to any kind of obsessive or repetitive behaviour. We need a new word for a chemical dependency that threatens withdrawal symptoms more serious than feeling rather down.
by belorn on 6/11/23, 8:54 PM
This model is often use with illnesses such as chronic stress, depression and ptsd. A "rat park" has many major health benefits, and aspect of it is measured with organ donations in order to determine which patients has the highest probability of surviving.
A way to see it is that in order for a negative outcome you need three things to be true. Be exposed to a trigger, while being vulnerable, and lacking protection.
by photochemsyn on 6/11/23, 6:00 PM
> "Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness." - TK
by tacocataco on 6/12/23, 5:15 AM
You could put people in prison and they'll still be able to get drugs. Is it worth the erosion of our civil liberties to tell people what to do with their own bodies? Perhaps this erosion was the entire purpose of the War on Drugs.
Hopefully people sick with addiction will some day have access to clean drugs of a known potency.
by SV_BubbleTime on 6/11/23, 6:52 PM
Also, I’m not really sure that giving rats all the cocaine or heroin water they can drink is the same as a down on his luck homeless guy or a manager of a club or a good time college student… if you want to say it’s the cage, then you should probably theorize about how the deeper you get into drugs, typically the stronger the cage gets.
I like the idea that it’s not the addict’s fault for feel good reasons, but I’ve known enough addicts to know that the cage or the drug it isn’t kept at bay without hard work and discipline and the latter was typically already lacking to become an addict in the first place.
by reliablereason on 6/11/23, 7:22 PM
If there was no chemical the addiction to the chemical would not be there. It is obvious.
The existence of the chemical is part of a hugely complicated causal tree that leads to addiction. The argument laid out in the article is a false dichotomy, which is denying one part of the causal tree(the existence of the drug) by pointing to one part of another part of the causal tree(social factors).
Real change (the end of the war on drugs) should come from facts not poorly laid out rhetorics.
by DiscourseFan on 6/12/23, 7:09 AM
But I know that there is more to addiction than poor social circumstance--and many users of addictive substances do it as part of their social-world, most drug-use is social to some extent. Bars, smoke-breaks. Homeless heroin users are usually hanging out together while high. I host dinner parties and get really drunk with my friends. Drugs, addictive ones, are a part of the fabric of our society. People get high, they drink coffee/tea, they take something to help them sleep, they use poppers during sex, they smoke to destress from work. When a corporation understands this, they can engineer a drug and insert it into society such that the nature of its use becomes embedded in peoples' day-to-day lives to reap massive profits. Its the same as an iPhone, Instagram, Silicon Valley writ large. It's the model of so-called "late capitalism."
And even when someone gets clean, they probably are involved in a world still where their friends use, when they are always close to the drug. After a while, the neurophysiological changes are so extreme that it is practically impossible to get someone to stay sober for long. I accept that I could become a lost cause one day, just like so many unfortunate addicts in our society. I could become a burden on my friends and family and ruin my life. Sometimes you can't help people.
by petermcneeley on 6/11/23, 5:55 PM
by bionhoward on 6/11/23, 8:45 PM
by philothrow on 6/11/23, 5:59 PM
The drive for ever more productivity and efficiency causes us to eschew things which — on the surface and by measurable metrics — are inefficient, unproductive, and “not good,” but serve incorporeal purposes, like keeping us sane.
by hyperific on 6/11/23, 5:59 PM
by cyberax on 6/11/23, 5:44 PM
by skilled on 6/11/23, 6:25 PM
--
Downvotes? How about learning to ask some questions on such a "controversial" topic? What do you think, the chemicals just fall into your lap from the sky?
And yes, I have firsthand experience with addiction, for many years actually.
I am sorry for being so intelligent that I am able to narrow it down to the actual root problem in a single sentence.