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“A Walk on the Wild Side” of Addiction
Published in Hanna Pickard, Serge H. Ahmed, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction, 2019
The Rat Park experiment is often cited as evidence that rats can forego drugs and avoid self-destructive drug use if offered different choices. However, according to the researchers who conducted this seminal experiment, a more likely, albeit still unproven, hypothesis is that rats chose to forego morphine in Rat Park because it would have brought about negative social consequences without significant, if any, drug benefit. If true, this hypothesis raises a paradox. How could rats be able to refrain from using a continuously available drug to avoid its negative consequences in some experiments (i.e., the Rat Park experiment), but not be able to refrain from self-injecting a drug to avoid inanition and death in other experiments (i.e., those where lone rats are offered a continuous choice between a drug and nondrug reward, both of which can be sampled as much or as little as they choose)? This paradox is all the more troubling given that the oral route of drug self-administration used in the Rat Park experiment is associated with longer delays of effects than the IV route used in other experiments, and that rats, as anticipated long ago by Spragg, have a limited ability to form delayed associations (Ahmed 2017). Rats are biologically predisposed to learn to avoid foods that make them subsequently ill (Garcia et al. 1974), but this conditioned food aversion is unlikely to explain why Rat Park rats as opposed to socially-isolated rats did not take morphine.
Beyond Self-Care to Life Enrichment
Published in Lisa D. Hinz, Beyond Self-Care for Helping Professionals, 2018
Through this series of experiments, the research group demonstrated that the majority of rats who had the chance to “change their cages” and live an enriched life in the Rat Park did not become addicted (Alexander, 2010). Other investigators have replicated the studies to further demonstrate the positive effects of an enriched environment on reducing the propensity for addiction (Deehan, Palmatier, Cain, & Kiefer, 2011; Galaj, Manuszak, & Ranaldi, 2016). Further, even short-term exposure to an enriched environment has a stress-reducing effect on the brain and body. This is why we return from a vacation feeling refreshed and reinvigorated (Ashokan, Hegde, & Mitra, 2016). The long-term benefits of life enrichment are even greater and longer lasting than the short-term effects of a holiday.
Achievement Linked to Recovery from Addiction: Discussing Education, Vocation, and Non-Addict Identity
Published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 2019
Daniel Alan Crutchfield, C. Dominik Güss
If a self-identity overhaul is what is clandestinely behind success stories, it is reasonable to examine secondary hypotheses regarding potential components of this new identity as well, such as social support. Generally speaking, Baumeister and Leary (1995) explored the importance of the need to belong and the negative effects of a lack of interpersonal attachments. Alexander, Coambs, and Hadaway (1978) built “Rat Park” after observing that previous drug studies involving rats until that point had only used isolated conditions. They found that rats who were provided the benefits of socialization (e.g., a large, open environment with toys, exercise, food, and contact with other rats) were far less likely to consume morphine. Evidence has also been found to suggest that social support is a critical component of recovery from other medical outcomes as well (Gurung, Sarason, & Sarason, 1997).
On Addiction, Complexity, and Freedom: Toward a Liberation-Focused Addiction Treatment
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2019
Alexander (2015) has long argued for a social understanding of addiction. In his famous Rat Park experiment (Alexander 2010), he found that rats who lived in a rich and highly social environment consumed lower amounts of morphine than those who lived in isolation or situations that were highly stressful to them. Moving to the human condition, he argued that humans have always been driven to make connections to other human beings and to social institutions. He called this form of connectedness psychosocial integration. However, the possibilities of forming these bonds can be disrupted by social forces, institutional policies and agendas, and/or problematic family experiences; the individual is then at risk of falling into a state of dislocation. Dislocation brings great pain and people will seek to escape this by finding ways to access psychosocial integration.