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An acquaintance of mine runs a rehab center for addicts. I really like his view on addiction. It's that addicts often had traumatic experiences, eg during child
by mherrmann 9y ago
An acquaintance of mine runs a rehab center for addicts. I really like his view on addiction. It's that addicts often had traumatic experiences, eg during childhood, and that drug abuse is a way of "self medication" to cope with them.
- jacquesm 9y agoI've known quite a few addicts (> 10, this is a direct consequence of living in Amsterdam and the attraction the city has on drug users and the fact that pushers would hand drugs to school children when I was in high school, though fortunately it seems - to me at least - as if the Heroin epidemic is past its peak). Not a single one of them would fit that category. Most of them were perfectly ordinary people before sliding into addiction. It was a series of smaller steps or thrill seeking behavior in all of those cases. Some of the addicts were actually amongst the smartest people I knew before they got addicted. I'm sure there are those who use drugs as an escape route from some miserable experience early on in life but I've yet to meet them. The life expectancy of addicts is such that I only know of two people that managed to effectively beat their addiction, both are family members and even though they got out of it they never fully recovered from their encounter with hard drugs. Ugly stuff.
- mherrmann 9y agoInteresting. Thank you very much for sharing. I don't know a single addict, so really have no insight. Probably that acquaintance's institution simply focuses on such patients. I don't know.
- andai 9y agoHave you heard of Rat Park? https://imgur.com/gallery/pI8Nm https://imgur.com/gallery/pI8Nm TL;DR rats trapped in cages will self-administer drugs, often to the point of death. Rats which explore freely have a much lower (order of magnitude) rate of addiction.