I remember from college my Econ 101 textbook had a sidebar on heroin use by military personnel in Vietnam - apparently (according to my memory of an unattributed source) 90% of personnel stationed in Vietnam tried heroin at least once, and then 89% of them stopped when they left.
Why an economics textbook? The authors were trying to illustrate 1) the role of substitutes on consumption of a particular good - there was no TV, no bridge club, no women except prostitutes to go out with, so heroin "cornered the market" on recreational activities, and 2) the fact that people will adjust consumption of almost any good in response to its changing price - heroin was incredibly cheap, so people took more of it.
Anyway, I always looked skeptically at claims that trying it once guarantees addiction after that.
Heroin has properties attractive to people in a hopeless, brutal war beyond what they can get from bridge club. Self-medication is not exactly recreation.
You should also look skeptically at claims that having unprotected sex with possible HIV carriers guarantees that you will get HIV. But you should still put a goddamn condom on.
It's not so much try it once and you're hooked, but for a certain percentage of those who do try it can get hooked in the first try. For many or most others, it takes persistent use (which will often happen when the first try doesn't get them hooked).
Illicit drugs are not immune to the placebo effect, either. When people are bombarded with messages that illicit drugs are irresistibly pleasurable, they are primed to overrate the effects when they try them. Reality is always complicated.
Anything that has to be spread to "The Masses" through marketing, propaganda or public education campaigns need a simple message to work. Simple, clear, strong messages with no room for debate. Just say no. Just Do it. The Real Thing.
Exaggeration is absolutely essential if you want to get people to react. You cannot rely on reality to provide the necessary frightening statistics.
So for example, almost everyone (including smokers) overestimates the risk of lung cancer caused by smoking by an order of magnitude. The danger of second hand smoke by even more. Cigarettes are unhealthy, but people are too irrational to react to that. In order to get a reaction, the dangers must be multiplied.
Another good example is HIV transmission. Most people assume the transmission rate is close to 100%. Someone who has had sex with a HIV+ partner and survives dodged a bullet. In reality, transmission rates after a single exposure are very low. It depends on the sex act and viral load but even for high risk activities like anal sex, infection rates are in the low single digits. They are estimated around 0.1% per exposure for vaginal penetrative sex.
Campaigns that made you think of how many people are 5 shags removed from you (your ex & her exes & his exes..) implied that infection rates were near 1%. People bought it. They started using condoms. The spread slowed or stopped. A 0.1% risk would not have done that.
So yeah. Marketers lie. So do propagandists. The layman public simplify. It's how shoes get sold. it's how public opinions are changes.
And yet many times when savvy people notice that they are being lied to they discount the entire message and can end up engaging in more destructive behavior than they would have otherwise. Public health messaging should never contain exagerations or lies even of ommision.
One aspect to the "instantly hook a user" theory that I have not seen mentioned here is the following:
Taking a potent drug like heroine or cocaine for the first time is described by some users as "pushing open a door to a very enjoyable place you did not know existed". Once this door is open, you will always know that this place exists, you can not "unknow" the experience.
While some people might be able to handle the knowledge of this enjoyable place and are able to choose when and if to go back, some might not be able to. Therefore I believe it makes sense to tell people not to open the door at all.
I also can imagine that the first time with these potent drugs is a positive experience for many, unlike the first cigarette or the first beer a person ever tries. The second cigarette is not smoked because the first was so good.
I have previously commented on this topic on HN, but since it's back i'll go again.
As a medical student I was taught that addiction is a spectrum. Each drug falls somewhere on that spectrum in terms of addiction potential, (And as GotAnyMegadeth comments, Nicotine is more addictive than Heroin) and every person has some prior probability of becoming addicted, due to the complex interplay of social/biological factors that go into the nature of an addiction).
Okay - so Heroin is less addictive than Nicotine. We know this. People understand this if they think about the nature of addiction. Doctors are taught this at medical school. Community mental health, nurses and doctors talk to lots of people who have tried hard drugs and never got into them.
But what is the destructive potential of trying heroin and becoming addicted?
Obviously much greater than with nicotine (Although nicotine products may well result in your death one day too).
This information isn't particularly new, and certainly hasn't been buried by the powers that be in an attempt to strengthen anti-drugs arguments (at least in Australia)
Like lots of folks I drink a bit, and I smoke the occasional celebratory cigar. I'm fortunate to not have found myself addicted to anything though (that I'm aware of at least).
However, I have family members who have deep addiction problems. Life affecting. One thing that I've noticed is that even when they get off of the substance, the addictive personality traits are still there -- years later.
One of my relatives, for example, managed to get herself off of drinking and smoking completely and was in counseling. The addictions, and the kinds of behaviors that come with maintaining addictions (all kinds of dissociative, anti-social, manipulative weirdness) were ruining her life. Strange thing was, after removing the substance, the behaviors persisted.
Many months later, after quitting drinking and smoking, we found that she was latching onto other activities in an addictive way. For example, she found a puzzle game on her phone that she would play obsessively* -- forgetting to eat, sleep, show up for work, having basic human interaction and even requiring physical therapy at one point for the muscle strain of sitting in the position to play the game for hours on end. Crippling physical pain wasn't even enough to get her to stop -- it was what was providing her "fix". She would sit, literally for days straight and play it. Counseling eventually got her to recognize this addiction, but it was harder for her to stop since she had her phone on her at all times.
Then one day she stopped and we all breathed a sigh of relief -- she started sending emails again and generally became more communicative. A few weeks later the behaviors started again, but it wasn't with her phone. Turned out she had just found a computer game she liked more and switched off the phone game.
Today she manages a bit better, but she went through a smoking binge for a while. She's "quit" again, but now just habitually chews nicotine gum. Apparently the nicotine helps keep her off of other more destructive behaviors (like playing phone games obsessively). When she feels stressed, she just chews some nicotine gum and that seems to get her through the craving. She's back working a regular job now and doing okay, but the idea that she'll find some other, better, satisfier, scares everybody.
* - obsession is outright scary when you see it in another human for real. It makes a mood swing look like a flat affect. A person who's addictively obsessed with something is almost feral, operating on instinct -- except with human level brain power to alter their environment to maintain the obsession.
The book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is an astoundingly good illustration of this. He follows characters as they use work, tennis, video entertainment, and even addiction recovery itself as addictions. I feel as if my understanding of addiction and its depths was deepened a great deal. The older I get the more healing from addiction seems like an actual real miracle.
This is the rule, not the exception, among addicts. Every recovery program (12-step or not) emphasizes that drugs are not a drug addict's only problem. Obviously they are a very destructive part of the problem, but every addict who stops using long enough learns that -- surprise! -- they're still a self-centered, fear-driven, manipulative, obsessive person. That stuff doesn't just go away when you stop using; if anything, it flares up in other ways (as you've seen firsthand).
For example, she found a puzzle game on her phone that she would play obsessively
Actually an interesting observation on how difficult it is to draw the line between obsession and passion. It seems that she (can devlop) an extremely high level of focus, something that what would probably regarded by many as a trait for becoming successful in a specific discipline.
You seem to be suggesting an initial addiction caused an addictive personality, but are you sure your relative wasn't prone to addictive behavior to begin with?
Pretty sure you are addicted to oxygen. You are probably addicted to hackernews also. This is not meant to be a banal comment. Addiction is not necessarily a bad thing. You could be addicted to hard work, for example. You could be addicted to your family. Being so addicted to your family that you would be willing to die in order to protect them is not necessarily a bad thing.
Thanks for sharing. I have never seen the type of addiction you described first hand. Firstly, I wonder how prevalent this "level" of addiction is. Secondly,what type of environmental and genetic factors influence it
Is this post a joke, or are people actually so completely out of touch with reality that they become "rabid nicotine junkies", and their families see them as in need of help?
Has she been robbing people to pay for her habit? Selling herself?
This is the real question. I think there are only three choice categories:
* Reject everything. This is basically the path of the Yogi.
* Assign meaning to something. It could be your kids, your spouse (I wouldn't recommend that one), philanthropy, a "vision," or whatever. If people ask why it's important to you, don't explain in logical terms. "I decided that it would be."
* Stop thinking about it. Chase the dopamine. I think most people do this, even the most thoughtful people. It might even be impossible to escape attachment and emotion.
In the end, attachment and emotion are truly illogical experiences. Do we embrace that illogic completely, try to "control" it, or struggle to reject it entirely?
I think it's silly to try to subscribe to a set of rules that just aims to get rid of all the bad stuff. It makes more sense to me to simply balance the consumption of these "drugs" (narcotics, alcohol, food, games, children, sports, etc). In fact, don't even call them "drugs"; call them "desire satisfiers". Satisfying any given desire has a cost and a benefit, and we all exist in this huge, messy web of conflicting desires that have varying and dynamic costs/benefits. The challenge of living is trying to balance the satisfaction of all our various desires.
They aren't taken away. You can still experience those great things, but don't make those experiences the purpose. The result is emotional balance and fulfillment.
Does anyone really think "one try ... is enough to get us hooked"? They can't know any overt functional drug users if that's the case. Cocaine in particular isn't instantly addictive. If anything on the few occasions I've used it, it actively put me off.
Nicotine itself (without the byproducts that happen when burning tobacco) is not even that bad [1] (deadly in relatively low amounts but unless you take it concentrated it's very hard to reach those levels). Unhealthy? Yes, but probably not much worse than caffeine [2].
Besides, Nicotine itself is not that addictive "Technically, nicotine is not significantly addictive, as nicotine administered alone does not produce significant reinforcing properties. However, after coadministration with an MAOI, such as those found in tobacco, nicotine produces significant behavioral sensitization, a measure of addiction potential." [3]
[1]: There are a few studies that look at nicotine excluding cigarettes on Google Scholar.
I worked in a neuroscience lab for years - our rats were housed in pairs, in extremely small cages. They were required to have "environmental enrichment" by LAR (Lab Animal Resources), which for us meant a small stick for it to chew on. So yes, a lot of research is done on animals that are not exactly what I'd consider healthy or normal.
"Drug, Set and Setting" by Norman Zinberg is another classic. Andrew Weil has talked about it (search YouTube). His thesis was on nutmeg as an addictive drug. Almost anything can be addictive given the right setting.
"Addiction is a Choice" by Jeffrey Schaler. Saying it is a choice is not at all meant to cast blame, but to emphasize that to use drugs is a choice given one's life circumstances, and is influenced by many variables. To focus on the drug use itself is to neglect real "problems of living" (as Thomas S. Szasz called them). By viewing it as a choice, one is also empowered to end their addiction, but it must be voluntary and not coerced by family members or the state.
I sometimes think of unhealthy addiction as being trapped in a local minimum of pain -- given limited resources, including limited personal strength to change the circumstances or environment one is in (e.g., job, marriage, housing), then addiction to a substance, or even a non-drug activity, can become a local minimum of pain, all avenues out of which produce, short-term, more pain than the status quo.
So it can be philosophically argued that addiction is a rational decision given the circumstances and the resources available. The key to successful addiction treatment is not behavior modification or "education", but providing resources so that one may escape local minima, and without punishing them for any behavior which does not harm others (hurt feelings doesn't count).
If the drug use is focused on and punished, even criminally, it never addresses the underlying issues which led to drug use being an escape from pain in the first place.
In the current system, harsh punishment for drug use, or paternalism over one's life in the name of "protecting one from himself", becomes more important than the principles of improving happiness or avoiding coercion against fellow humans.
We acknowledge that the drug addiction is a complex issue and with our current understanding of human psychology it's hard to generalize the rationals behind the addition.
With regard to the law system, it basically boiled down to this: if such a behavior or activity does have the potential to threaten recipients in their well-being and the others around them, then it's probably better to ban it to allow a more harmonic society. Such as jay-walking, it is also illegal.
However, do people still jay-walk? Of course they do, because it provides convenience, a sense of accomplishment -> dopamine. So is it similar to drug use? Of course. The difference is that jaywalking laws are enforced way less than hard core drug uses.
Now laws aren't always black and white, judgment is often involved. Outside of law, mentally should we be more accepting and acknowledge drug use instead simply putting it down? Sure why not. As long as you can safely understand that it won't cause harm to you or your surrounding. But can anyone be absolutely certain of that? Afraid not.
"when stories about the effects of drugs on the brain are promoted to the neglect of the discussion of the personal and social contexts of addiction, science is servicing our collective anxieties rather than informing us."
This.
"When Alexander’s rats were given something better to do than sit in a bare cage they turned their noses up at morphine because they preferred playing with their friends and exploring their surroundings to getting high."
Well, AFAIK, this doesn't happen with most humans struggling with addiction to hard drugs. Addicts will neglect everything, namely social activities, in order to get what they need.
Addiction is a topic that has been poisoned by deliberate Drug War propaganda. Almost everything about drugs on TV shows, which are paid to include it in their content, is government approved propaganda.
But wait, it gets worse: Non-addicted people are sent for "treatment," in order to avoid jail. So there is a whole industry of quack medicine diluting and poisoning the real science of addiction.
The Drug War is the foundation on which most of the prison industry, and most of the budgets of police departments rests on, plus whole federal law enforcement agencies, large segments of Homeland Security, etc. Truth is a low priority. Question everything you think you know.
As far as you know. Firstly, the study is about the onset of addiction from one single experience with the drug. People that take a drug once and decide to not do it again don't attract the same social and media attention as heavy users. Similarly, if functional users of hard drugs exist, you are unlikely to hear about them. This is one of the effects of the drug prohibition: it hides a lot of data.
More worryingly, science becomes compromised when researchers cannot attract funding to explore unpopular hypothesis.
>Well, AFAIK, this doesn't happen with most humans struggling with addiction to hard drugs. Addicts will neglect everything, namely social activities, in order to get what they need.<
Do you have any tangible data to support your claim?
I didn't. I was what they call a "functional" addict, hooked on heroin. I have been off heroin and on suboxone for a year, after being addicted since I was 16. I held down a normal life, achieved a lot, and still used.
I stopped because of existential issues. I decided that having a chemical have that much power in my life, even if I kept it somewhat at bay, wasn't worth it. That was a very personal thought and decision.
What you will find, is no two addicts are the same, and broad generalisations don't hold very well. That's something that good councilors accept and work with :)
Addiction is not just about the substance (alcohol, cocaine, heroine) or the behavior (Sex, gambling, video games).
A person is an addict even before that person has that first try. There are many other factors that condition someone to become an addict. There are genetic factors, environmental factors, other underlying mental issues, etc.
This is a misunderstand intentionally propagated by the 'treatment' system. Sure there are plenty of factors that can play into a pre-disposition, but it is the act or the chemicals that begin a physical re-wiring of the brain. It is because of having new additional receptors, or having blocked receptors, or a number of other changes that we have what we call 'physical addiction', and that doesn't happen until "that first try".
It is also, in almost all cases, reversible. The receptors adapt, pathways change, hormonal sensitivities reset.
True, that's why you should try to recognize your addictions before falling trapped. Like if you're super hooked to boost from caffeine, it might not be good idea to try meth.
My question is this: if the rats knew that taking the morphine after moving to the park would keep the withdrawals away, would they have still taken the water?
Yeah good question! Reading that story, I understood first that rats like sweet things and hate bitter things. Second that rats are usually willing to take Hobson's choice, and the point of the article being that most scientists don't realize that's what they've actually been testing.
I understand that heroin withdrawals are pretty terrible, I've even heard said that "you'd do anything" to make them stop, but they can't kill you in a sort of way that alcohol withdrawals can.
It sounded from my reading more like toward the end of the experiments though it was becoming clearer that the rats in Rat Park genuinely did not like the effects of the drug on their normal lives, and when they had the other option of socializing, they were only still taking the drug to get at the delicious sucrose.
I hope there's more studies done like this. I have always
felt there's a lot of false information about drug addiction
out there--even among Psychiatrists. I know that there's
many addicts out there who are literally afraid of quitting
a drug; especially opiates and alcohol. 'I'm not going to get dope sick', 'my doctor wants me to spend my last 30 grand on rehab', 'I was told I will have the DT's.' I have found with most drugs-- tapering off works. This is especially true with alcohol, and opiates. No,
it's not simple, but many of you don't need to wipe out
your savings on hysteria. Most MD's won't talk about
tapering because of liability, but if you don't have the money for a fancy rehab, many of you can taper off alcohol,
and opiates, and even benzodiazepines.
[+] [-] ArbitraryLimits|12 years ago|reply
Why an economics textbook? The authors were trying to illustrate 1) the role of substitutes on consumption of a particular good - there was no TV, no bridge club, no women except prostitutes to go out with, so heroin "cornered the market" on recreational activities, and 2) the fact that people will adjust consumption of almost any good in response to its changing price - heroin was incredibly cheap, so people took more of it.
Anyway, I always looked skeptically at claims that trying it once guarantees addiction after that.
[+] [-] pekk|12 years ago|reply
You should also look skeptically at claims that having unprotected sex with possible HIV carriers guarantees that you will get HIV. But you should still put a goddamn condom on.
[+] [-] snom380|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtdewcmu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netcan|12 years ago|reply
Exaggeration is absolutely essential if you want to get people to react. You cannot rely on reality to provide the necessary frightening statistics.
So for example, almost everyone (including smokers) overestimates the risk of lung cancer caused by smoking by an order of magnitude. The danger of second hand smoke by even more. Cigarettes are unhealthy, but people are too irrational to react to that. In order to get a reaction, the dangers must be multiplied.
Another good example is HIV transmission. Most people assume the transmission rate is close to 100%. Someone who has had sex with a HIV+ partner and survives dodged a bullet. In reality, transmission rates after a single exposure are very low. It depends on the sex act and viral load but even for high risk activities like anal sex, infection rates are in the low single digits. They are estimated around 0.1% per exposure for vaginal penetrative sex.
Campaigns that made you think of how many people are 5 shags removed from you (your ex & her exes & his exes..) implied that infection rates were near 1%. People bought it. They started using condoms. The spread slowed or stopped. A 0.1% risk would not have done that.
So yeah. Marketers lie. So do propagandists. The layman public simplify. It's how shoes get sold. it's how public opinions are changes.
[+] [-] guelo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oneofthose|12 years ago|reply
Taking a potent drug like heroine or cocaine for the first time is described by some users as "pushing open a door to a very enjoyable place you did not know existed". Once this door is open, you will always know that this place exists, you can not "unknow" the experience.
While some people might be able to handle the knowledge of this enjoyable place and are able to choose when and if to go back, some might not be able to. Therefore I believe it makes sense to tell people not to open the door at all.
I also can imagine that the first time with these potent drugs is a positive experience for many, unlike the first cigarette or the first beer a person ever tries. The second cigarette is not smoked because the first was so good.
[+] [-] robbiep|12 years ago|reply
As a medical student I was taught that addiction is a spectrum. Each drug falls somewhere on that spectrum in terms of addiction potential, (And as GotAnyMegadeth comments, Nicotine is more addictive than Heroin) and every person has some prior probability of becoming addicted, due to the complex interplay of social/biological factors that go into the nature of an addiction).
Okay - so Heroin is less addictive than Nicotine. We know this. People understand this if they think about the nature of addiction. Doctors are taught this at medical school. Community mental health, nurses and doctors talk to lots of people who have tried hard drugs and never got into them.
But what is the destructive potential of trying heroin and becoming addicted? Obviously much greater than with nicotine (Although nicotine products may well result in your death one day too).
This information isn't particularly new, and certainly hasn't been buried by the powers that be in an attempt to strengthen anti-drugs arguments (at least in Australia)
[+] [-] bane|12 years ago|reply
However, I have family members who have deep addiction problems. Life affecting. One thing that I've noticed is that even when they get off of the substance, the addictive personality traits are still there -- years later.
One of my relatives, for example, managed to get herself off of drinking and smoking completely and was in counseling. The addictions, and the kinds of behaviors that come with maintaining addictions (all kinds of dissociative, anti-social, manipulative weirdness) were ruining her life. Strange thing was, after removing the substance, the behaviors persisted.
Many months later, after quitting drinking and smoking, we found that she was latching onto other activities in an addictive way. For example, she found a puzzle game on her phone that she would play obsessively* -- forgetting to eat, sleep, show up for work, having basic human interaction and even requiring physical therapy at one point for the muscle strain of sitting in the position to play the game for hours on end. Crippling physical pain wasn't even enough to get her to stop -- it was what was providing her "fix". She would sit, literally for days straight and play it. Counseling eventually got her to recognize this addiction, but it was harder for her to stop since she had her phone on her at all times.
Then one day she stopped and we all breathed a sigh of relief -- she started sending emails again and generally became more communicative. A few weeks later the behaviors started again, but it wasn't with her phone. Turned out she had just found a computer game she liked more and switched off the phone game.
Today she manages a bit better, but she went through a smoking binge for a while. She's "quit" again, but now just habitually chews nicotine gum. Apparently the nicotine helps keep her off of other more destructive behaviors (like playing phone games obsessively). When she feels stressed, she just chews some nicotine gum and that seems to get her through the craving. She's back working a regular job now and doing okay, but the idea that she'll find some other, better, satisfier, scares everybody.
* - obsession is outright scary when you see it in another human for real. It makes a mood swing look like a flat affect. A person who's addictively obsessed with something is almost feral, operating on instinct -- except with human level brain power to alter their environment to maintain the obsession.
[+] [-] techtalsky|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotAnEngineer|12 years ago|reply
Source: many years clean in NA
[+] [-] 1337biz|12 years ago|reply
Actually an interesting observation on how difficult it is to draw the line between obsession and passion. It seems that she (can devlop) an extremely high level of focus, something that what would probably regarded by many as a trait for becoming successful in a specific discipline.
[+] [-] jere|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dusklight|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JTon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jesushorse|12 years ago|reply
Has she been robbing people to pay for her habit? Selling herself?
[+] [-] AznHisoka|12 years ago|reply
We should not look to eating for pleasure, just for health.
We should not look to our career as a source of fulfillment - it's just a means to an end.
We should not look to our mates as a source of salvation - we should focus on giving.
We should not look to our kids as objects to make us whole - we should focus on giving...
Ok, so if we're gonna take away all these things as "drugs", what's left?
[+] [-] delluminatus|12 years ago|reply
* Reject everything. This is basically the path of the Yogi.
* Assign meaning to something. It could be your kids, your spouse (I wouldn't recommend that one), philanthropy, a "vision," or whatever. If people ask why it's important to you, don't explain in logical terms. "I decided that it would be."
* Stop thinking about it. Chase the dopamine. I think most people do this, even the most thoughtful people. It might even be impossible to escape attachment and emotion.
In the end, attachment and emotion are truly illogical experiences. Do we embrace that illogic completely, try to "control" it, or struggle to reject it entirely?
[+] [-] vdaniuk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BashiBazouk|12 years ago|reply
You should not look at any of these as a sole path but enjoy all of them in moderation.
[+] [-] cholmon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dscrd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x__|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3voices|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ziomislaw|12 years ago|reply
christian I presume?
[+] [-] rwmj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GotAnyMegadeth|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Dependence_and_withdra...
[+] [-] Semaphor|12 years ago|reply
Besides, Nicotine itself is not that addictive "Technically, nicotine is not significantly addictive, as nicotine administered alone does not produce significant reinforcing properties. However, after coadministration with an MAOI, such as those found in tobacco, nicotine produces significant behavioral sensitization, a measure of addiction potential." [3]
[1]: There are a few studies that look at nicotine excluding cigarettes on Google Scholar.
[2]: Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Pharmacology and http://www.energyfiend.com/harmful-effects-of-caffeine
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Psychoactive_effects
[+] [-] mumbi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madaxe|12 years ago|reply
Nasty things.
Time for a cigarette break.
[+] [-] jmcgough|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcvarmint|12 years ago|reply
"Addiction is a Choice" by Jeffrey Schaler. Saying it is a choice is not at all meant to cast blame, but to emphasize that to use drugs is a choice given one's life circumstances, and is influenced by many variables. To focus on the drug use itself is to neglect real "problems of living" (as Thomas S. Szasz called them). By viewing it as a choice, one is also empowered to end their addiction, but it must be voluntary and not coerced by family members or the state.
I sometimes think of unhealthy addiction as being trapped in a local minimum of pain -- given limited resources, including limited personal strength to change the circumstances or environment one is in (e.g., job, marriage, housing), then addiction to a substance, or even a non-drug activity, can become a local minimum of pain, all avenues out of which produce, short-term, more pain than the status quo.
So it can be philosophically argued that addiction is a rational decision given the circumstances and the resources available. The key to successful addiction treatment is not behavior modification or "education", but providing resources so that one may escape local minima, and without punishing them for any behavior which does not harm others (hurt feelings doesn't count).
If the drug use is focused on and punished, even criminally, it never addresses the underlying issues which led to drug use being an escape from pain in the first place.
In the current system, harsh punishment for drug use, or paternalism over one's life in the name of "protecting one from himself", becomes more important than the principles of improving happiness or avoiding coercion against fellow humans.
[+] [-] gtr32x|12 years ago|reply
With regard to the law system, it basically boiled down to this: if such a behavior or activity does have the potential to threaten recipients in their well-being and the others around them, then it's probably better to ban it to allow a more harmonic society. Such as jay-walking, it is also illegal.
However, do people still jay-walk? Of course they do, because it provides convenience, a sense of accomplishment -> dopamine. So is it similar to drug use? Of course. The difference is that jaywalking laws are enforced way less than hard core drug uses.
Now laws aren't always black and white, judgment is often involved. Outside of law, mentally should we be more accepting and acknowledge drug use instead simply putting it down? Sure why not. As long as you can safely understand that it won't cause harm to you or your surrounding. But can anyone be absolutely certain of that? Afraid not.
[+] [-] talles|12 years ago|reply
Also, for who missed the link in the article: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/
[+] [-] jmngomes|12 years ago|reply
Well, AFAIK, this doesn't happen with most humans struggling with addiction to hard drugs. Addicts will neglect everything, namely social activities, in order to get what they need.
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
But wait, it gets worse: Non-addicted people are sent for "treatment," in order to avoid jail. So there is a whole industry of quack medicine diluting and poisoning the real science of addiction.
The Drug War is the foundation on which most of the prison industry, and most of the budgets of police departments rests on, plus whole federal law enforcement agencies, large segments of Homeland Security, etc. Truth is a low priority. Question everything you think you know.
[+] [-] TelmoMenezes|12 years ago|reply
More worryingly, science becomes compromised when researchers cannot attract funding to explore unpopular hypothesis.
[+] [-] deletes|12 years ago|reply
Do you have any tangible data to support your claim?
[+] [-] girvo|12 years ago|reply
I stopped because of existential issues. I decided that having a chemical have that much power in my life, even if I kept it somewhat at bay, wasn't worth it. That was a very personal thought and decision.
What you will find, is no two addicts are the same, and broad generalisations don't hold very well. That's something that good councilors accept and work with :)
[+] [-] TausAmmer|12 years ago|reply
And why? That is up to individual to answer, if he dares.
[+] [-] cwarrior|12 years ago|reply
A person is an addict even before that person has that first try. There are many other factors that condition someone to become an addict. There are genetic factors, environmental factors, other underlying mental issues, etc.
[+] [-] jasallen|12 years ago|reply
It is also, in almost all cases, reversible. The receptors adapt, pathways change, hormonal sensitivities reset.
[+] [-] Sami_Lehtinen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FollowSteph3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueblob|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mumbi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yebyen|12 years ago|reply
I understand that heroin withdrawals are pretty terrible, I've even heard said that "you'd do anything" to make them stop, but they can't kill you in a sort of way that alcohol withdrawals can.
It sounded from my reading more like toward the end of the experiments though it was becoming clearer that the rats in Rat Park genuinely did not like the effects of the drug on their normal lives, and when they had the other option of socializing, they were only still taking the drug to get at the delicious sucrose.
[+] [-] marincounty|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Siempre|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] PGenes|12 years ago|reply
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