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Are you familiar with the rat park experiment? You’re making claims directly supported by its findings. One of the most interesting was that happy rats who had
by justwalt 7y ago
Are you familiar with the rat park experiment? You’re making claims directly supported by its findings.
One of the most interesting was that happy rats who had pleasant quarters and social interaction would choose not to take drugs (morphine, iirc) even if they had used them previously. Pretty interesting stuff.
- blackflame 7y agoThe opposite of addiction is connection.
- npo9 7y agoAddiction is a disease of loneliness.
- bduerst 7y agoAvoiding and staying out of HALT situations is an addiction recovery motto: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
- strbean 7y agoWorking on quitting nicotine right now, the only problem is when I don't have it I'm all of those besides Lonely.
- sho 7y agoAny other useless platitudes you'd like to share?
- toasterlovin 7y agoYour comment is needlessly hostile, FWIW. If you disagree with what they're saying, write a substantive response, even if only a couple of sentences.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't be a jerk on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sho 7y agoParrotting Hari I see. I like him, but it's more complicated than his series of picture-perfect anecdotes and name-dropped professors in every country he could persuade his publisher to send him to. Naltrexone has substantially resolved hundreds of thousands of alcohol addiction presentations worldwide. Pharmacological remedies do exist. Connection is important, yes, but it is far from the whole picture. I do like Hari, like I said, but I feel like he is interested in selling himself and his story more than any particular desire to actually help.
- sho 7y agoJohann Hari has written extensively on the subject in his book Connections. I am a little nervous to link to joe rogan here but fuck it, here's a good interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM I do not 100% agree with Hari, who focuses almost exclusively on environmental factors. They are important but not the complete picture, IMO - there are physiological components too; alcohol dependency to me appears to be a clear-cut malfunctioning of the brain's reinforcement-based learning system. Environment exacerbates this, yes, but is perhaps not the root cause, or at least is not the sole actor in what is a pretty complicated drama.
- twic 7y agoMy understanding is that the Rat Park experiment couldn't be replicated, and is now not taken very seriously: https://theoutline.com/post/2205/this-38-year-old-study-is-still-spreading-bad-ideas-about-addiction https://theoutline.com/post/2205/this-38-year-old-study-is-s... And Johann Hari is universally understood to be an incorrigible charlatan.
- philwelch 7y agoRat Park is one of those popular-science findings that doesn’t really consistently replicate or even hold up under scrutiny: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/25/against-rat-park/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/25/against-rat-park/