Addiction, and the faux war on drugs.
Addiction has become one of those words we are so accustomed to, but we admittedly have no understanding of. For a moment I want to explain addiction and its root cause, which will differ greatly from what we have all been convinced of over the last century.
Over the last century we have fought this “War on Drugs” and in recent times it has become clear that we have lost, and drugs have won this battle. Why? We are fighting the wrong thing. We are assigning blame and punishment to a disenfranchised group of people who are begging for help. Our prisons are filled with the addicted, and we tell ourselves that we are rehabilitating when in fact, we have no intention of doing so.
Brace yourselves; our prisons are not designed for rehabilitation. They are designed to segregate who we have deemed unfit for society. We punish them in hopes that they will respond with changed behavior, but that is never the case. We see a modicum of compliance, but punishment will never bring real change. Punishment exists to further convince the addict that they are as worthless in the eyes of the world as they have already convinced themselves they are.
Addicts become such because they are seeking a connection with something, with anything, as they have not found it in the people closest to them. Some form of temporary joy to keep their pain at bay for another moment.
My first memory of the war on drugs was seeded into my head through an old Different Strokes episode. You may remember it as well: Nancy Reagan came to visit Arnold’s school, and we all got our first introduction to one of the most powerless phrases ever uttered; “Just Say No”. Remember that? I do. I remember people wearing pins on their lapels, T-shirts that echoed the phrase, and most notably the drug dealers who wore the pin to either divert attention, or to mock the movement.
We took what had become a national epidemic and covertly delivered the message that we all believe to this day: to the addict “this is all your fault!”. You made this decision and the fault of it lies squarely on your shoulders. Because after all, you could have just said “NO”.
But here’s the thing we never talk about:
Let me set up the origins of our misunderstanding first. Years ago in the 20th century, scientists conducted a series of lab experiments. In each of these experiments there was a controlled environment that consisted of one rat, one cage, and two bottles of water. One bottle of water held clear, pure drinking water and the other was laced with cocaine or heroin. In each of the cases the rat would always gravitate towards the bottle that was laced with drugs and drink until it overdosed and died. The conclusion? Drugs are solely responsible for said addiction. Sounds believable. We all believe that, right? It’s what we have always been taught, and we don’t question it.
That is where we have rested our view of addiction for a century. We believed that drugs are highly addictive and anyone who chooses to engage in such activity is solely and wholly to blame for their addiction.
Later in the century we had the equivalent of a human experiment along these same lines; the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam war somewhere around 20% of our troops did heroine on almost a daily basis. After all, that is where we get most of the worlds’ heroine supply so it was in abundance and accessible. Given the nature of their posting it’s understandable why any temporary escape from the norm would be desired. People stateside knew of this and were terrified that when the war came to an end we would bring back thousands of heroin addicts. After all, Drugs are “solely responsible” for addiction and these men had been taking heroin for months and months. According to scientific evidence we could expect nothing less than a pack of zombies to return home.
Yet, a study was conducted to follow these troops home after the war to see what would happen. What the study found was that 95% of the troops who were doing heroin immediately stopped. They did not need rehab, nor did they go into massive withdrawals. They just stopped doing heroin. This did not fit our narrative. According to our lab studies these men should have required treatment, yet they did not. Why?
Drugs are not the main cause of addiction. Sounds crazy, I know, but follow along.
When you go into the hospital and need relief from extreme pain you are giving a substance called diamorphine. Diamorphine is heroin. Actually, more powerful because it isn’t diluted with the impurities drug dealers use to cut it with on the street. Yet, Grandma did not come out of the hospital as an addict when she had her hip replacement. Why? Diamorphine is the strongest heroin available, but Granny didn’t get hooked?! Stay with me.
With this information on hand a psychologist set out to do his own study. Taking what he knew about the original study on rats he took a different approach. Dr. Alexander built what he called “Rat Park”. Rat park was the equivalent of an amusement park for rats. There were balls to play with, tunnels to scamper through, and most importantly, many rats. The original study isolated one rat in an environment with no means of social interaction. In Rat Park these rodents could socialize, play, and have plenty of rat sex. To test his theory he also placed two water bottles in the cage. One was filled with clean water and one with drug laced water, as the earlier experiment had.
What he found was that in Rat Park none of the rats drank from the drugged water more than a few times and not one rat overdosed or died from the drugged water. It was a surprise to many, but not to Dr. Alexander. Why? What was the defining characteristic of Rat Park that allowed these creatures to exist without becoming addicted to drugs?
The difference was companionship. The difference was that the rats were not alone.
The key characteristic that made rat park different was not the water, but the cage itself. That is what we have to understand about an addict. They are not choosing drugs over companionship, they are choosing drugs as a way to cope with lack of companionship and acceptance. Either they are alone in life, or they are surrounded by people who make them feel that way. We, as a society, enforce on them that they are not equal to us because were they, they would not need addiction or an escape from reality. We punish them with isolation and then blame them for coping. We put them into prisons and treat them as outcasts. The sad irony to that is that they already possessed that mentality, and we are reinforcing it. We make no effort to truly rehabilitate, but to segregate. Then we ask ourselves why they keep going back to the drug, or the drink, or whatever addiction they have chosen to battle each day.
Until our Justice system becomes educated on the psychology of the brain and the effects of trauma we will never do anything but isolate and shame those who become addicts.
The addict needs someone to take an interest in who they can be, not simply who they are. We treat addicts like they are nothing more than just that. Sometimes the simplest skill can be a road map to overcoming addiction. They need a reason to not reach for the drug, but we only give them shame to work with. Shame is what landed them here and you can not heal a trauma brain by labeling them what they already believed themselves to be, worthless.
If you know an addict please understand that you will never help them overcome their addiction until you ask the proper question. The question is not how do you stop, but what caused you to reach for this coping mechanism in the first place? Empathy goes a long way, but most people don’t have an empathetic spirit. Most people are sympathetic, and sympathy does nothing to help.
Remember, addiction is not caused by the drugs in the cage, it is caused by the cage itself.
Addiction Hotline — (888) 485–0417
Keep Rockin \m/
Jeremy
