Monday, January 26, 2015

The New Face of Addiction and Why We Need To Stop the War on Drugs

First, let me just say, that I am not "for" drugs. I barely drink (and was well over 30 before I ever had any alcohol at all), have never smoked (anything), and am fairly resistant to taking even painkillers (which my wife thinks is insane). Basically, unless the doctor has told me to take it, I'm not much for putting drugs into my body. I'm part of the "war on drugs" culture that came out of the 80s. You know, that whole egg-frying-in-a-pan-that's-really-your-brain thing.

BUT!

We have the wrong idea about addiction and what it means, and the way we've been warring against drugs for the past few decades obviously hasn't worked. Of course, most people, especially old, rich, white dudes in politics strongly believe in doing the same thing over and over and over and over with the hope that, at some point, it will suddenly work. Einstein's definition of insanity.

For a long time, we've know that some personalities are more prone to addiction than others, you know, weak people. At least that's how we've always termed it culturally. Weak people are poor people, usually minorities, who are unable to enrich themselves, living destitute lives hooked on drugs and alcohol. If only they were better, stronger people, they wouldn't have problems with the drugs.

But that's all wrong, and that's not what it means when we say that some personalities are more prone to addiction than others. [For a discussion of personality, you can take a look at my "Exploring Personality" series.] Now, I'm not going to get all clinical, and I'm not going to cite a bunch of studies and include a lot of links that no one is going to look at anyway. This is going to be a very general overview of some recent studies and what I think they mean. So, sure, the conclusions are my own, but I think they are valid.

One thing we know is that some people are more prone to addiction than others, but let me re-frame that statement:
Under the right conditions, all people are prone to addiction. Some people are more prone, but all people are susceptible. And it doesn't even have to do with the actual drugs.

See, if you put a rat, alone, in a small cage with nothing in it but the rat, well, it doesn't make the rat happy. If you hang a bottle of water on one side of the cage and a bottle of drug-spiked water on the other side of the cage, guess which water the rat will drink. It doesn't take long before you have one addicted little rat. And I hear you thinking, "But that's just a rat..."
Wait! There's more!

If you have another cage, a large, comfortable cage full of fun, little rat toys and a whole community of rats and you have the same two bottles of water, guess what happens. The rats almost never become addicted. Some of them, sometimes, will sample the drug water, evidently just for the experience of it, but it doesn't become a cage full of drug-addicted rats. It's kind of the definition of recreational drug use. All of them try it but, mostly, they just ignore it.

What you can take from this is how rats react to their environments. Rats in a negative environment -- alone in a cramped little cage with no stimulation -- will becomes addicts if given accessibility to drugs. Rats in a positive environment -- plenty of social opportunity and things to keep them busy -- will almost never become addicts even with easy access to drugs. The reality of the situation is that it's not the drugs that are the problem; it's the environment.

Now, if you take an addicted rat, and not just an addicted rat, a heavily addicted rat, and take him out of his cramped, little cage and put him in the other cage, the one with all the rat friends and toys, a very unexpected thing happens: The rat kicks its addiction. It almost immediate, in fact. Some of them have to deal with withdrawal symptoms, but, pretty much, they just stop the drugs. Even though the drugs are right there in front of them, they give them up. Not some of the rats. All of the rats.

Because the addiction stems from the poor environment and the brain's search for (for lack of a better all-encompassing term) stimulation, not the drugs. The drugs are just the tool the brain uses to deal with what is, basically, a trap. But you take away the trap and you give the rat freedom and options and a social environment and you take away the "need" for the drug and the brain just says, "That's enough."

Do you know what this tells me? It tells me that people with addiction problems are suffering from the same condition as the rat in the tiny cage. They feel trapped and the drugs are the way they cope. We've been trying to solve the problem by taking away the drugged water supply, but the problem is that there are too many bottles of drugged water for us to ever get rid of them all. You take one down, and someone else comes by and hangs another in the same spot. Or we take the person out of the tiny cage and put him in a slightly better cage with only plain water to drink (rehab) until he breaks the addiction but, after that, we drop him right back into the cage he was in before. It's nearly impossible to break the addiction cycle with these methods.

You know what would break the cycle and cause people to just drop their addictions? If we took the billions and billions of dollars we spend on the "war  on drugs" and used it to help build better environments for the people struggling with addiction. Which includes helping them to find some purpose and work they find meaningful. They'll give up the drugs on their own that way.

We will never win the war on drugs by trying to bring down drug dealers and take down drug lords in other countries. There's too much money to be made. The only way to break the cycle is to remove the need the for the addiction.

20 comments:

  1. Basically, give them a positive environment with stimuli and others they can interact with, and they kick the habit. If you think about it, that really should be common sense. Put something in place of the drugs, don't just take them away.

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    1. Alex: It should be common sense, but, as a society, we don't tend to operate with much of that.

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  2. But that is a lot harder and there's no profit in it for the military industrial complex.

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  3. That would probably work in some cases. I tend to believe for some addicts, though, it would be more a matter of rearranging the environment in their head than the furnishings/opportunities around them.

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    1. L.G.: Rearranging the environment in their heads is part of the process. It's all about giving purpose and meaning to the individual.

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  4. So despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in cage?

    (I'm sorry. I just had to do that)

    And I've never been one for drugs so I can't comment on what addiction is like, but I do certainly think that shoving a drug addict off into prison for a few years isn't the answer. It's been proven time and time again that it doesn't work, and yet we still do it.

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    1. ABftS: Exactly. And, theoretically, prison -should- be the perfect small cage with no drugs in it that would enable someone to get sober.

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  5. I agree with what you are saying here, but I think it speaks to my politics as well. We need to redistribute wealth in this country. The top 1% has too much and the bottom has too little. I would love to live in a country where income inequality had been addressed and people were still celebrated to succeed but not to obscene levels. In other words, I want even the poorest among us to have reliable health care and to make a living wage. I think your insights are pretty genius in this article (at least how I come to interpret them).

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    1. Michael: I agree with that. We live in a society of dragons hoarding their gold like Smaug. Where's Saint George when you need him?

      But, yeah, if you took that wealth and used it to develop better "cages" for everyone else, there would be a lot fewer problems.
      (Maybe, I'll also talk about how all of this relates to terrorism, at some point.)

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  6. Very well put, Andrew, "the way to remove the cycle is to remove the need for the addiction." I do think that our environment does play a big role in addition. Having a reason to get up and do something one enjoys and give one a satisfying purpose and results is another way to break the cycle.

    I do think there will always be those few, regardless of environment or purpose they have before them they will choose the drug water.

    Regardless of the cage we're in, attitude and persception plays a big part in creating a drug/alcohol free life style. People, in my opinion, don't take enough time to appreciate what they do have. To take joy in the small things. Take time to rejoice over the good things. Instead, they drop what they have and run after the next shiny thing. The next thing that they must have to be happy. Happiness and contentment has little to do with what we have and everything to do with appreciating what we do. How we percieve our life.

    So, it's not just the environment (although that does help) we live in, it's our the inner environment or mindset. How we view things.

    In treating drug addiction successfully, there is the thought of not only changing the addict's friend circle, but presenting a different way to deal with what life throws and teaching skills to cope. Some simply don't want to avail themselves of those lessons. And it has to come from within, they have to want to change and move beyond the drug water.

    But I do agree the *war* on drugs has not been successful.

    I enjoyed your article. :-)

    Sia McKye Over Coffee

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    1. Sia: It's true that just changing the environment will not work with some people. As I said in the post, some people have a greater need for stimulation than others, and drugs will always have some sort of draw with them. For those, you would really have to work to find out what it is that would make them not feel trapped. However, for the overwhelming majority, taking them out of poverty and conditions in which they feel like they have no hope, they would suddenly find they no longer had a need for drugs.

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    2. Yes, being in a hopeless environment is a perfect setup for addiction to dull the oppressive landscape of life.
      How do we do that? There is the thought you mentioned about redistributing money spent on war on drugs to improve lifestyles. Ideally, sure that would be great, although the implementation of such funds would be a battle. Yes, there also are those that have the money to help more, and I saw mention in the comments about the top 1% tier, but again, attitudes, prejudgement, and all sorts of bias comes into play with that. There is a resistence and a certain apethic attitude to helping others anymore. It's a prevailing attitude that cuts across the social-economic category. And it's sad. How do you pull people together to look at each other as part of a human family that matters? How do you make them see the need to do something? Give them a compelling reason? Wish I had the answers for those questions.

      We may not be able to change the attitudes around us or engender that generosity of spirit (which id more than allocating money) but those of us who do care and feel the need to help can do so in their small part in their world and community. It does make a difference. Giving of our time to help another or a group of others is a step. We can't control what others to do, we can only control what we choose to do.
      I think about these things, too, and totally enjoy seeing your thoughts here and reading all the comments.

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    3. Sia: Well, I think the answer is -not- to just give people money. People who are given money for no reason tend to make very poor decisions with it.
      However, if the money was put into programs designed to involve communities in improving their neighborhoods -and- paying them a wage for the work they do, it could make a huge difference. It's not only improving the physical environment, but it gives the people involved some purpose and some hope.

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  7. My mother devoted a decent portion of her career to drug and alcohol abuse prevention. She would agree with a great deal of what you say. And so do I.

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    1. TAS: It's too bad the more people working with addicts can't see the underlying causes.

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  8. So, why are so many VERY rich people addicted to drugs?

    I agree with the sentiment, but the problem statement and solution are over simplified. I don't personally believe you can tell anything about human motivations or behaviors by studying rats.

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    1. dolorah: Well, actually, there aren't that many rich with addictions, especially not in comparison to the number of people suffering from addiction who are below the poverty line.

      But it is true that people are more complex than rats, so there are many other variable that can cause a human to feel trapped and turned to drugs to escape that; however, that doesn't make the basic premise incorrect.

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  9. I've never taken much stock in issues of addiction. Heroin maybe, but then maybe I fell for the hype on that even. I hear people acting like they're addicted to coffee and just have to have a cup in the morning or there is no way to kick a tobacco habit for them. I think it's all a mental thing and we can do anything we really want to as far as substance dependency.

    Circumstances undoubtedly have a great deal to do with these addictions, but once again some people overcome the circumstances and avoid addictions. I agree about "weakness" but this comes from conditioning and perception. I don't know that changing environments will be the absolute solution since a lot of it is a head thing. And that can get very complex with no one definite solution that will work.

    Good thoughts here.

    Arlee Bird
    A to Z Challenge Co-host
    Tossing It Out

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    1. Lee: Well, yes, a lot of it is a head thing, which is why it's pretty straightforward with rats. It's the things that make us feel trapped (in our heads) that lead to addictive behaviors. However, the physical environment influences that greatly, as we can see in the high concentration of addicts in poverty areas. Improving those areas would be an ideal place to start if we really want to fight addiction.

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