An animal can go its whole life not wanting heroin until it’s exposed to some. Then suddenly heroin becomes extraordinarily motivating and it will preferentially choose shots of heroin to food, water, or almost anything else
Summary: An experimenter thought drug addiction in rats might be linked to being kept in distressing conditions, made a Rat Park to test the idea, and found that the rats in the enriched Rat Park environment ignored the morphine on offer.
EDIT: apparently the study had methodological issues and hasn’t been replicated, making the results somewhat suspect, as pointed out by Yvain below
I hate to admit I get science knowledge from Reddit, but the past few times this was posted there it was ripped apart by (people who claimed to be) professionals in the field—riddled with metholodogical errors, inconsistently replicated, et cetera. The fact that even its proponents admit the study was rejected by most journals doesn’t speak well of it.
I think it’s very plausible that situation contributes to addiction; we know that people in terrible situations have higher discount rates than others and so tend to short-term thinking that promotes that kind of behavior, and certainly they have fewer reasons to try to live life as a non-addict. But I think the idea that morphine is no longer interesting and you can’t become addicted when you live a stimulating life is wishful thinking.
Well, like I said, all I have to go on is stuff people said on Reddit and one failed replication study I was able to find somewhere by a grad student of the guy who did the original research. The original research is certainly interesting and relevant and does speak to the problems with a very reductionist model.
This actually gets to the same problem I’m having looking up stuff on perceptual control theory, which is that I expect a controversial theory to be something where there are lots of passionate arguments on both sides, but on both PCT and Rat Park, when I’ve tried to look them up I get a bunch of passionate people arguing that they’re great, and then a few scoffs from more mainstream people saying “That stuff? Nah.” without explaining themselves. I don’t know whether it’s because of Evil Set-In-Their-Ways Mainstream refusing to acknowledge the new ideas, or whether they’re just so completely missing the point that people think it’s not worth their while to respond. It’s a serious problem and I wish that “skeptics” would start addressing this kind of thing instead of debunking ghosts for the ten zillionth time.
Rats don’t always choose drugs over everything else
Summary: An experimenter thought drug addiction in rats might be linked to being kept in distressing conditions, made a Rat Park to test the idea, and found that the rats in the enriched Rat Park environment ignored the morphine on offer.
EDIT: apparently the study had methodological issues and hasn’t been replicated, making the results somewhat suspect, as pointed out by Yvain below
I hate to admit I get science knowledge from Reddit, but the past few times this was posted there it was ripped apart by (people who claimed to be) professionals in the field—riddled with metholodogical errors, inconsistently replicated, et cetera. The fact that even its proponents admit the study was rejected by most journals doesn’t speak well of it.
I think it’s very plausible that situation contributes to addiction; we know that people in terrible situations have higher discount rates than others and so tend to short-term thinking that promotes that kind of behavior, and certainly they have fewer reasons to try to live life as a non-addict. But I think the idea that morphine is no longer interesting and you can’t become addicted when you live a stimulating life is wishful thinking.
Damn. Oh well, noted and edited in to the original comment.
Well, like I said, all I have to go on is stuff people said on Reddit and one failed replication study I was able to find somewhere by a grad student of the guy who did the original research. The original research is certainly interesting and relevant and does speak to the problems with a very reductionist model.
This actually gets to the same problem I’m having looking up stuff on perceptual control theory, which is that I expect a controversial theory to be something where there are lots of passionate arguments on both sides, but on both PCT and Rat Park, when I’ve tried to look them up I get a bunch of passionate people arguing that they’re great, and then a few scoffs from more mainstream people saying “That stuff? Nah.” without explaining themselves. I don’t know whether it’s because of Evil Set-In-Their-Ways Mainstream refusing to acknowledge the new ideas, or whether they’re just so completely missing the point that people think it’s not worth their while to respond. It’s a serious problem and I wish that “skeptics” would start addressing this kind of thing instead of debunking ghosts for the ten zillionth time.