12 ms·

It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

163 points by worez 3y ago

cyberax 3y ago
2017. That was before fentanyl and meth onslaught.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  That was well after both, meth by decades, fentanyl by years
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Indeed. Breaking Bad launched in 2008 and the meth problem was long-established before that.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    Not quite. Fentanyl and meth existed, but they were not nearly as available. You can see the results of this: https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od-death-rates-2.jpeg https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od... (from https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd... ). You can see that modern fentanyl is very different from previous iterations of drugs.
- denimnerd42 3y ago
  don't think meth or fentanyl changes his hypothesis. if you see the interviews of those in bandos in Baltimore or on the street in Kensington, they have endured trauma their entire lives. Whether it's societal induced trauma like racism, poverty, family trauma, violence, or whatever else. These people are choosing to escape their "cages" with these drugs.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    And yet plenty of people without major life trauma have succumbed to addiction as well. I have no doubt that traumatic life experiences can exacerbate addiction, make it harder to quit, and/or increase propensity to becoming addicted (maybe even increasing propensity to try hard drugs in the first place). But the notion that the addictiveness of heroin, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, etc. is purely a psychosocial phenomenon is at best a fairy tale.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Trauma + extremely high availability. My understanding is that highly addictive substances will be consumed ≈ to their availability. Makes sense, given the social dynamics of addicts. It’s useful to find people who you can drag into your despair with you, so there’s an inherent virality alongside the high “retention rate” powered by the chemical itself.
    - girvo 3y ago
      > without major life trauma Who are you to say what is and isn’t major trauma?
  - niemandhier 3y ago
    There are drugs that cause neural rewireing in animals after a single use e.g. cocaine. If you have a stable social group and a fulfilled life you will probably not become dependant on thc, you should still avoid crack.
    - Nowado 3y ago
      Everything causes neural rewiring in animals after a single use. That's what experience is. This sentence says nothing.
      - beebeepka 3y ago
        I'd argue that the entire post is just preachy gibberish.
- refurb 3y ago
  Meth was a problem in the 70’s. Heroin was a problem then too. Not much has changed.
- Nursie 3y ago
  "Faces of Meth" was a thing in 2004. The meth epidemic has been going on a long time.
loeg 3y ago
Another rehashing of Rat Park, a dubious study which has never replicated. I’m pro legalization, but this isn’t a good angle for arguing that case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  Your link doesn't provide any evidence that the study was dubious. If anything the counter arguments seem dubious.
  - loeg 3y ago
    I was providing the link as context and a jumping off point for further reading, if you were curious (which is encouraged here). If you're looking for criticisms of Rat Park, I suggest starting with the "Criticisms" section on the Wikipedia article.
    - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
      It was the criticisms section specifically that I found unconvincing.
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  The strongest conclusions from Rat Park should be that rodent studies are complicated by lab conditions. This probably doesn't sound too controversial (by now anyway). But because of the ideological or personal issues at play, it's easy to draw conclusions about humans from Rat Park. Put another way, placebo studies show that attention and treatment alone get some level of result and that science is hard, not that sugar pills are a panacea.
- Kalium 3y ago
  Rat Park is an excellent example of how people pick studies that show the things they're looking for. When people point to it uncritically, it says more about them than about the world.
petermcneeley 3y ago
Some articles express a confused position with such clarity that I cannot help but to upvote.
hyperific 3y ago
The title should have (2017) at the end
philothrow 3y ago
Capitalist Society and Its Consequences? The drive for ever more productivity and efficiency causes us to eschew things which — on the surface and by measurable metrics — are inefficient, unproductive, and “not good,” but serve incorporeal purposes, like keeping us sane.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Relevant quote: > "Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness." - TK
xrd 3y ago
I've got a friend who recently was hospitalized for fentanyl addiction. Twenty years ago he was my first investor in my first startup. He was the guy that taught me about mediation. He was the first vegetarian I knew. He owned four cab licenses in Portland. Then Uber came in and shredded his retirement plan. The cab company forced him out so he wouldn't even capitalize on the partial ownership of the land they owned. He lost everything. He has nothing left. He discovered some awful things about his father. His brother died in a gruesome car crash at 25. I remember him telling me about oxycotin (edited: I misremembered it as oxycodone), this "miracle drug" without the addiction of morphine. He got on that. Ten years later he was using heroin. Then fentanyl more recently. I'm pretty angry at the Sakler family. I'm mad at the drug cartels. I'm not mad at my friend. He's a generous and loving person. Everyone has a story. I'm sure some are full of awful actions that led them to where they are, but I don't see my friend in that way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- refurb 3y ago
  Oxycodone was always known to be addictive. It’s right on the label from day one. “Also at the time of OxyContin’s approval, FDA product labeling warned of the danger of abuse of the drug and that crushing a controlled-release tablet followed by intravenous injection could result in a lethal overdose. There was no evidence to suggest at the time that crushing the controlled-release capsule followed by oral ingestion or snorting would become widespread and lead to a high level of abuse.” https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-drug-class/timeline-selected-fda-activities-and-significant-events-addressing-substance-use-and-overdose https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-drug-class/timeline-se...
  - xrd 3y ago
    I remember with distinct anger that my friend told me information to the contrary. He probably got that phrasing from that doctor who got a free trip to Barbados to push it. I wasn't there but i remember him telling me that and it makes my blood boil. I do share other people's skepticism of the medical industry as you might be able to tell. He should have done more research, agreed.
benreesman 3y ago
It’s obviously better when there’s good data. People like myself who frequent HN often do because they want to hear an expert cut through the propaganda with the inside baseball on the real science. And I hope someone does on this thread. But in the absence of a qualified expert interpreting the inside data laypeople are as always thrown back on the thoughtfulness arbitrary creative force gave a rock and anecdata. And this rings insanely true. My life never changed back from COVID lockdown, maybe that says more about me than the biggest natural experiment in arbitrary and sweeping human confinement probably ever: but I use more of everything from nicotine to caffeine to adderall now than when I was partying with a purpose ten years ago. More substances more screen time more all of it. Being trapped on an island with 100 people sounds like a vacation from either the glass box I live and work in or the empty-seeming bars and coffee shops and comedy clubs in the half dozen cities I’ve traveled to this past year. Lockdown was boom time for screen companies. Anyone got a vested interest in leaning on the delicate pressure points of really resuming IRL life?
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  It sounds trite but just do it. Go out. Go to bars, go to the gym, go to the coffee shop, go to wherever people are congregating. Living cooped up in a box is no way to live. Unsurprising that the study in TFA found that creatures living in unhappy circumstances seek mood-altering substances more than those living more freely and naturally.
  - benreesman 3y ago
    As I said: maybe I’m an outlier and my N=1 study is one of those dots in the corner. But historically I’m a rabid extrovert on paper in terms of coffee shops and bars and comedy clubs and music shows. Before the risk was that I’d meet some cool people and talk until I had to race to the morning’s first meeting. And when I say “empty-seeming” I don’t mean there are no people exactly, but rather that walking up to someone and introducing yourself seems to go over about as well everywhere as it historically has in Paris. Now one random guy having a bad time socially isn’t data, but I thought it was worthwhile to throw out in case I wasn’t the only one.
dang 3y ago
Related threads. I know there have been others - anybody have time to find them? Rat Park - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19928803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19928803 - May 2019 (2 comments) Addiction: The View from the Rat Park (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605524 - Nov 2015 (1 comment) Rat Park - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039039 - Feb 2015 (70 comments) Rat Park drug experiment cartoon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7742950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7742950 - May 2014 (22 comments) Rat Park experiment upturns conventional wisdom about addiction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6565426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6565426 - Oct 2013 (10 comments) Rat Park Experiment: A New Theory of Addiction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391701 - Sept 2013 (42 comments)
skilled 3y ago
Indeed, it's not the chemicals. It's that one innocent friend of yours who has you wrapped you around his finger. ;-) -- Downvotes? How about learning to ask some questions on such a "controversial" topic? What do you think, the chemicals just fall into your lap from the sky? And yes, I have firsthand experience with addiction, for many years actually. I am sorry for being so intelligent that I am able to narrow it down to the actual root problem in a single sentence.
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
I’m not sure why it can’t be both. Also, I’m not really sure that giving rats all the cocaine or heroin water they can drink is the same as a down on his luck homeless guy or a manager of a club or a good time college student… if you want to say it’s the cage, then you should probably theorize about how the deeper you get into drugs, typically the stronger the cage gets. I like the idea that it’s not the addict’s fault for feel good reasons, but I’ve known enough addicts to know that the cage or the drug it isn’t kept at bay without hard work and discipline and the latter was typically already lacking to become an addict in the first place.
- daseiner1 3y ago
  I've met many, many incredibly successful, intelligent, disciplined, kind, impressive people with incredibly serious addiction issues. 10s-100s of millions in net worth. These aren't lazy people. Recovery does take an immense amount of hard work and discipline, albeit in a very different way than, say, reading legal briefs, writing code, performing surgery.
stan_kirdey 3y ago
I strongly disagree with the article. I work in the space and been involved in this topic for the last 20 years. While the article claims that jails only worsen addiction, correctional facilities in the U.S. provide medically-supervised drug rehabilitation programs that have high success rates. Folks with substance use disorder are given medication for withdrawal and co-occurring mental health issues. There are withdrawal monitoring and detox programs at every facility. Some facilities started to offer MAT, which is currently gold standard of treatment. The article fails to consider how addictive substances themselves, especially opioids, undermine one's autonomy and ability to connect with others. Opioids activate reward centers in the brain, inducing a sense of euphoria and pleasure that is difficult to resist (Volkow et al. 2014). Even a small dose of fentanyl, for example, can trigger an addiction with continued use (Kounang 2018); it is disingenuous to blame the "cage" alone when the substance itself chemically hijacks the brain. Genetics also predispose certain individuals to higher addiction risk, as addiction correlates highly with hereditary factors (Ducci et al. 2012). The rise of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs has made "escaping the cage" of addiction nearly impossible for some. In some cities int he U.S. in 2023, a pill of fentanyl would cost as little as 50c. Counterfeit opioid pills containing fentanyl are extremely cheap, potent, and deadly, yet addictive to a point when a single pill can completely change direction of one's life.
- johnea 3y ago
  And if every addict had good opportunity for a prosperous life, do you think the number of overdoses would increase or descrease? The brain highjakcking still occurrs in a context. While some people simply use for kicks, many others are trying to escape some intractable situtaion. Improving life opportunities would only help reduce extreme addiction and overdose...
  - stan_kirdey 3y ago
    I think opportunities might help people avoid taking the drug in the first place, but from observations, even folks with seemingly great jobs and families often fall to opioids once they try them.
MavisBacon 3y ago
These are interesting studies mentioned, no doubt, but the assertions made feel very heavy-handed to me. We have to take into consideration things like bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder when dealing with humans. Also a bit skeptical of their conclusion based on the Vietnam vet studies, where we need to consider access to heroin in Vietnam vs wherever soldiers went home to. Worth keeping in mind that this is a non-profit organization that sold fentanyl test strips at ridiculous markup for years (they have some novel strip now that i'm unsure of bulk pricing on). These were the same exact BTNX strips most fellow harm reductionists were handing out for free or at low cost. I was paying 75 cents per strip as a fairly small harm reduction organization, DanceSafe sold them for $2 (their novel strips are same price) and I can only imagine they got significantly better pricing through the biotech company we all were going through due to how many strips they must move.
reliablereason 3y ago
You have to use a very strange definition of "cause" for the articles title to be true. If there was no chemical the addiction to the chemical would not be there. It is obvious. The existence of the chemical is part of a hugely complicated causal tree that leads to addiction. The argument laid out in the article is a false dichotomy, which is denying one part of the causal tree(the existence of the drug) by pointing to one part of another part of the causal tree(social factors). Real change (the end of the war on drugs) should come from facts not poorly laid out rhetorics.
- mordae 3y ago
  > If there was no chemical the addiction to the chemical would not be there. It is obvious. From my experience, users would find another way to compensate. Maybe gambling. Maybe self harm. Maybe hurting others.
zephrx1111 3y ago
I disagree with this article, not because of it's correctness, which I don't care. It is more about the perspective. This kind of "explanation", has nothing good to solve the problem. It is just yet another aftermath "excuse research". In east Asia, we had an infamous example: Chang Hsueh-liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%20Hsueh-liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%20Hsueh-liang . The problem is clear here: if we could find an excuse for him, then we could for anybody. Let's ask ourselves this question: do we want our kids addicting to drugs, or do we want ourselves addicting to drugs? If the answers are no, still the question will be, going forward what we can do, which this article has little advice.
- criddell 3y ago
  > this article has little advice What about this part: > The war on drugs we have been fighting for almost a century now has made everything worse. Instead of helping people heal and getting their life together, we have cast them out from society. We have made it harder for them to get jobs and become stable. We take benefits and support away from them if we catch them with drugs. We throw them in prison cells which are literally cages. We put people who are not well in a situation that makes them worse and then hate them for not recovering. […] We have to build a society that looks a lot more like Rat Park and a lot less like those isolated cages. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection.” That seems like pretty solid advice to me.
- tacocataco 3y ago
  I want to be free to do what I want with my own body. I want justice system reform. I want the drug supply to be as clean and safe as possible.
davelondon 3y ago
It's a nice story but it's actually a load of rubbish... 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... "Despite his claims of a revolutionary breakthrough, Alexander had trouble finding a journal to publish his results. Both Science and Nature rejected the study for publication, likely due to significant problems with the methodology and results. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior published the results in 1981 with little response and the funding for Rat Park was canceled shortly thereafter." "When scientists tried to replicate the Rat Park study, they got mixed results. In 1996, a study attempted to precisely replicate the conditions in Alexander’s Rat Park, down to the breed of rat. The researchers conducted two experiments to see if they could replicate the Rat Park study’s results. In the first experiment, the happy, social rats consumed slightly more of the morphine liquid, in the second experiment, the isolated rats drank slightly more. Neither experiment reflected the Rat Park’s results, which had the isolated rats drinking up to seven times the amount of the morphine liquid as the social rats."
- pas 3y ago
  why is it a load of rubbish? it's inconclusive. it seems there's no strong independent evidence either for or against the strong addiction model.
  - stillbourne 3y ago
    Science operates on a system of checks and balances, not a free speech model. If your paper can't pass peer review then your paper is what is clinically referred to as bullshit. Now there are people who bypass the system of checks and balances by publishing on pay to play journals but scientist came up with a solution to that too, Impact Factor. They took all the journals and rated them by how much of the content that they publish has an high impact on science and how much of it is bullshit. If you can't get your paper to publish in a journal with an impact factor higher than say 3.5 then you're probably bullshit.
    - nebulousthree 3y ago
version_five 3y ago
Just want to mention my experience quitting smoking (which is notably hard, but I have no point of reference having not used other drugs). Physical addition is easy. With nicotine there are not really strong symptoms anyway, irritability mainly and inability to focus. I know other drugs are worse but in principle, battling withdrawl is not that tough, people are good at physical hardships. For nicotine it's a few days. It's the rest of your life that's the problem, because you know that something that has an effect you enjoy immensely (and you tend to view use nostalgically though rose colored glasses) and you could do it any time if you wanted to. You need to deal with that forever. And if you slip you're back on the thick of things - like why alcoholics can't have a social drink. So anyway, I sort of agree with the article, because it's easier to quit when you have something going on (I started walking and then running, which is what I attribute to success). Though I also think humans are complex enough that making a "rat paradise" for someone is not at all tenable. Edit: and just to conclude, I smoked for 15 years and quit 12 years ago. I still want to smoke, I still dream about it, I still know I would enjoy it. I will never do it and I've learned to cope, but wanting to is something I'll live with forever. That's what makes addiction hard. If it was just a couple sweaty nights tied to a bed, things would be very different.
- generalizations 3y ago
  > because you know that something that has an effect you enjoy immensely > And if you slip you're back on the thick of things - like why alcoholics can't have a social drink. I know someone who prescribes naltrexone for alcohol addiction, which has the specific purpose of blocking the positive effect of the alcohol. So you can have the drink, and you won't enjoy it, and it's easier to live with.
  - daseiner1 3y ago
    The Sinclair Method does have impressive results, and I've have some success with it in the past. For alcoholics at a certain level (thinking of myself here – yes, anecdotal), there is the necessary accountability to take the naltrexone tablet and "deprive" one of the euphoria, which can be difficult to maintain over a long period of time. With Vivitrol (an injectable form of Naltrexone that lasts ~1 month per injection), it is not difficult to simply "drink through it". Results in an absolute horrible hangover – sure – but that's not necessarily enough to stop the motivated alcoholic. Overall though, MAT is a valuable tool in the toolbox.
denton-scratch 3y ago
The author's contention is that "addiction" is a result of circumstances, not of substances. He cites a rat study, and that's about it. I don't think that's correct. I do think that addiction results from circumstances, and it's impossible to quit if the circumstances are wrong; but depending on the substance, withdrawal can mean life-threatening seizures. Suggesting that the primary (author implies "sole") cause of addiction is circumstances enables all these claims of sex addiction, chocolate addiction, sugar addiction and so on. Author says at the end that the word "addiction" is outdated; I agree, because it's been hijacked to refer to any kind of obsessive or repetitive behaviour. We need a new word for a chemical dependency that threatens withdrawal symptoms more serious than feeling rather down.
- throwaway1492 3y ago
  My only encounter with drugs (pain killers) for the past 10 years was fentanyl as part of colonoscopy. That was no joke. Just one dose had noticeable effects for a few days later. I felt fucking great waking up from that colonoscopy but man, the day or two after sucked.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Wow, fentanyl for a colonoscopy? I've had three. They'd usually offer NO2 or diazepam, but only if you have someone to take you home. Which I didn't. So I've never had drugs for a colonoscopy. It's an unpleasant, uncomfortable experience, makes me groan out loud, but I wouldn't describe it as painful.
bionhoward 3y ago
If not for the drug, you cannot be addicted to the drug. QED drugs “cause” addiction.
- daseiner1 3y ago
  Necessary but not sufficient. If not for alcohol, there would be no alcoholics but the vast majority of drinkers are not alcoholics. Drug + ?? ==> Addiction
belorn 3y ago
There are an alternative interpretation of the same data. The rat park may provide protection against addition, while the rat cage makes the rats more vulnerable to addition. This model is often use with illnesses such as chronic stress, depression and ptsd. A "rat park" has many major health benefits, and aspect of it is measured with organ donations in order to determine which patients has the highest probability of surviving. A way to see it is that in order for a negative outcome you need three things to be true. Be exposed to a trigger, while being vulnerable, and lacking protection.
golemiprague 3y ago
[dead]
tacocataco 3y ago
Fentanyl in the heroin supply is a direct result of prohibition. You could put people in prison and they'll still be able to get drugs. Is it worth the erosion of our civil liberties to tell people what to do with their own bodies? Perhaps this erosion was the entire purpose of the War on Drugs. Hopefully people sick with addiction will some day have access to clean drugs of a known potency.
DiscourseFan 3y ago
One day I might find myself addicted to some substance which I was supposed to avoid but some situation in my life made me fall back on the drug over and over again until I couldn't live without it--this is something that could happen to any of us. But I know that there is more to addiction than poor social circumstance--and many users of addictive substances do it as part of their social-world, most drug-use is social to some extent. Bars, smoke-breaks. Homeless heroin users are usually hanging out together while high. I host dinner parties and get really drunk with my friends. Drugs, addictive ones, are a part of the fabric of our society. People get high, they drink coffee/tea, they take something to help them sleep, they use poppers during sex, they smoke to destress from work. When a corporation understands this, they can engineer a drug and insert it into society such that the nature of its use becomes embedded in peoples' day-to-day lives to reap massive profits. Its the same as an iPhone, Instagram, Silicon Valley writ large. It's the model of so-called "late capitalism." And even when someone gets clean, they probably are involved in a world still where their friends use, when they are always close to the drug. After a while, the neurophysiological changes are so extreme that it is practically impossible to get someone to stay sober for long. I accept that I could become a lost cause one day, just like so many unfortunate addicts in our society. I could become a burden on my friends and family and ruin my life. Sometimes you can't help people.

163 points by worez 3y ago

cyberax 3y ago

2017. That was before fentanyl and meth onslaught.

readthenotes1 3y ago
That was well after both, meth by decades, fentanyl by years
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Indeed. Breaking Bad launched in 2008 and the meth problem was long-established before that.
- cyberax 3y ago
  Not quite. Fentanyl and meth existed, but they were not nearly as available. You can see the results of this: https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od-death-rates-2.jpeg https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od... (from https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd... ). You can see that modern fentanyl is very different from previous iterations of drugs.
denimnerd42 3y ago
don't think meth or fentanyl changes his hypothesis. if you see the interviews of those in bandos in Baltimore or on the street in Kensington, they have endured trauma their entire lives. Whether it's societal induced trauma like racism, poverty, family trauma, violence, or whatever else. These people are choosing to escape their "cages" with these drugs.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  And yet plenty of people without major life trauma have succumbed to addiction as well. I have no doubt that traumatic life experiences can exacerbate addiction, make it harder to quit, and/or increase propensity to becoming addicted (maybe even increasing propensity to try hard drugs in the first place). But the notion that the addictiveness of heroin, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, etc. is purely a psychosocial phenomenon is at best a fairy tale.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Trauma + extremely high availability. My understanding is that highly addictive substances will be consumed ≈ to their availability. Makes sense, given the social dynamics of addicts. It’s useful to find people who you can drag into your despair with you, so there’s an inherent virality alongside the high “retention rate” powered by the chemical itself.
  - girvo 3y ago
    > without major life trauma Who are you to say what is and isn’t major trauma?
- niemandhier 3y ago
  There are drugs that cause neural rewireing in animals after a single use e.g. cocaine. If you have a stable social group and a fulfilled life you will probably not become dependant on thc, you should still avoid crack.
  - Nowado 3y ago
    Everything causes neural rewiring in animals after a single use. That's what experience is. This sentence says nothing.
    - beebeepka 3y ago
      I'd argue that the entire post is just preachy gibberish.
refurb 3y ago
Meth was a problem in the 70’s. Heroin was a problem then too. Not much has changed.
Nursie 3y ago
"Faces of Meth" was a thing in 2004. The meth epidemic has been going on a long time.

loeg 3y ago

Another rehashing of Rat Park, a dubious study which has never replicated. I’m pro legalization, but this isn’t a good angle for arguing that case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

lowbloodsugar 3y ago
Your link doesn't provide any evidence that the study was dubious. If anything the counter arguments seem dubious.
- loeg 3y ago
  I was providing the link as context and a jumping off point for further reading, if you were curious (which is encouraged here). If you're looking for criticisms of Rat Park, I suggest starting with the "Criticisms" section on the Wikipedia article.
  - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
    It was the criticisms section specifically that I found unconvincing.
kevinmchugh 3y ago
The strongest conclusions from Rat Park should be that rodent studies are complicated by lab conditions. This probably doesn't sound too controversial (by now anyway). But because of the ideological or personal issues at play, it's easy to draw conclusions about humans from Rat Park. Put another way, placebo studies show that attention and treatment alone get some level of result and that science is hard, not that sugar pills are a panacea.
Kalium 3y ago
Rat Park is an excellent example of how people pick studies that show the things they're looking for. When people point to it uncritically, it says more about them than about the world.

petermcneeley 3y ago

Some articles express a confused position with such clarity that I cannot help but to upvote.

hyperific 3y ago

The title should have (2017) at the end

philothrow 3y ago

Capitalist Society and Its Consequences? The drive for ever more productivity and efficiency causes us to eschew things which — on the surface and by measurable metrics — are inefficient, unproductive, and “not good,” but serve incorporeal purposes, like keeping us sane.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Relevant quote: > "Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness." - TK

xrd 3y ago

I've got a friend who recently was hospitalized for fentanyl addiction. Twenty years ago he was my first investor in my first startup. He was the guy that taught me about mediation. He was the first vegetarian I knew. He owned four cab licenses in Portland. Then Uber came in and shredded his retirement plan. The cab company forced him out so he wouldn't even capitalize on the partial ownership of the land they owned. He lost everything. He has nothing left. He discovered some awful things about his father. His brother died in a gruesome car crash at 25. I remember him telling me about oxycotin (edited: I misremembered it as oxycodone), this "miracle drug" without the addiction of morphine. He got on that. Ten years later he was using heroin. Then fentanyl more recently. I'm pretty angry at the Sakler family. I'm mad at the drug cartels. I'm not mad at my friend. He's a generous and loving person. Everyone has a story. I'm sure some are full of awful actions that led them to where they are, but I don't see my friend in that way.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
refurb 3y ago
Oxycodone was always known to be addictive. It’s right on the label from day one. “Also at the time of OxyContin’s approval, FDA product labeling warned of the danger of abuse of the drug and that crushing a controlled-release tablet followed by intravenous injection could result in a lethal overdose. There was no evidence to suggest at the time that crushing the controlled-release capsule followed by oral ingestion or snorting would become widespread and lead to a high level of abuse.” https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-drug-class/timeline-selected-fda-activities-and-significant-events-addressing-substance-use-and-overdose https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-drug-class/timeline-se...
- xrd 3y ago
  I remember with distinct anger that my friend told me information to the contrary. He probably got that phrasing from that doctor who got a free trip to Barbados to push it. I wasn't there but i remember him telling me that and it makes my blood boil. I do share other people's skepticism of the medical industry as you might be able to tell. He should have done more research, agreed.

benreesman 3y ago

It’s obviously better when there’s good data. People like myself who frequent HN often do because they want to hear an expert cut through the propaganda with the inside baseball on the real science. And I hope someone does on this thread. But in the absence of a qualified expert interpreting the inside data laypeople are as always thrown back on the thoughtfulness arbitrary creative force gave a rock and anecdata. And this rings insanely true. My life never changed back from COVID lockdown, maybe that says more about me than the biggest natural experiment in arbitrary and sweeping human confinement probably ever: but I use more of everything from nicotine to caffeine to adderall now than when I was partying with a purpose ten years ago. More substances more screen time more all of it. Being trapped on an island with 100 people sounds like a vacation from either the glass box I live and work in or the empty-seeming bars and coffee shops and comedy clubs in the half dozen cities I’ve traveled to this past year. Lockdown was boom time for screen companies. Anyone got a vested interest in leaning on the delicate pressure points of really resuming IRL life?

SoftTalker 3y ago
It sounds trite but just do it. Go out. Go to bars, go to the gym, go to the coffee shop, go to wherever people are congregating. Living cooped up in a box is no way to live. Unsurprising that the study in TFA found that creatures living in unhappy circumstances seek mood-altering substances more than those living more freely and naturally.
- benreesman 3y ago
  As I said: maybe I’m an outlier and my N=1 study is one of those dots in the corner. But historically I’m a rabid extrovert on paper in terms of coffee shops and bars and comedy clubs and music shows. Before the risk was that I’d meet some cool people and talk until I had to race to the morning’s first meeting. And when I say “empty-seeming” I don’t mean there are no people exactly, but rather that walking up to someone and introducing yourself seems to go over about as well everywhere as it historically has in Paris. Now one random guy having a bad time socially isn’t data, but I thought it was worthwhile to throw out in case I wasn’t the only one.

dang 3y ago

Related threads. I know there have been others - anybody have time to find them? Rat Park - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19928803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19928803 - May 2019 (2 comments) Addiction: The View from the Rat Park (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605524 - Nov 2015 (1 comment) Rat Park - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039039 - Feb 2015 (70 comments) Rat Park drug experiment cartoon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7742950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7742950 - May 2014 (22 comments) Rat Park experiment upturns conventional wisdom about addiction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6565426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6565426 - Oct 2013 (10 comments) Rat Park Experiment: A New Theory of Addiction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391701 - Sept 2013 (42 comments)

skilled 3y ago

Indeed, it's not the chemicals. It's that one innocent friend of yours who has you wrapped you around his finger. ;-) -- Downvotes? How about learning to ask some questions on such a "controversial" topic? What do you think, the chemicals just fall into your lap from the sky? And yes, I have firsthand experience with addiction, for many years actually. I am sorry for being so intelligent that I am able to narrow it down to the actual root problem in a single sentence.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago

I’m not sure why it can’t be both. Also, I’m not really sure that giving rats all the cocaine or heroin water they can drink is the same as a down on his luck homeless guy or a manager of a club or a good time college student… if you want to say it’s the cage, then you should probably theorize about how the deeper you get into drugs, typically the stronger the cage gets. I like the idea that it’s not the addict’s fault for feel good reasons, but I’ve known enough addicts to know that the cage or the drug it isn’t kept at bay without hard work and discipline and the latter was typically already lacking to become an addict in the first place.

daseiner1 3y ago
I've met many, many incredibly successful, intelligent, disciplined, kind, impressive people with incredibly serious addiction issues. 10s-100s of millions in net worth. These aren't lazy people. Recovery does take an immense amount of hard work and discipline, albeit in a very different way than, say, reading legal briefs, writing code, performing surgery.

stan_kirdey 3y ago

I strongly disagree with the article. I work in the space and been involved in this topic for the last 20 years. While the article claims that jails only worsen addiction, correctional facilities in the U.S. provide medically-supervised drug rehabilitation programs that have high success rates. Folks with substance use disorder are given medication for withdrawal and co-occurring mental health issues. There are withdrawal monitoring and detox programs at every facility. Some facilities started to offer MAT, which is currently gold standard of treatment. The article fails to consider how addictive substances themselves, especially opioids, undermine one's autonomy and ability to connect with others. Opioids activate reward centers in the brain, inducing a sense of euphoria and pleasure that is difficult to resist (Volkow et al. 2014). Even a small dose of fentanyl, for example, can trigger an addiction with continued use (Kounang 2018); it is disingenuous to blame the "cage" alone when the substance itself chemically hijacks the brain. Genetics also predispose certain individuals to higher addiction risk, as addiction correlates highly with hereditary factors (Ducci et al. 2012). The rise of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs has made "escaping the cage" of addiction nearly impossible for some. In some cities int he U.S. in 2023, a pill of fentanyl would cost as little as 50c. Counterfeit opioid pills containing fentanyl are extremely cheap, potent, and deadly, yet addictive to a point when a single pill can completely change direction of one's life.

johnea 3y ago
And if every addict had good opportunity for a prosperous life, do you think the number of overdoses would increase or descrease? The brain highjakcking still occurrs in a context. While some people simply use for kicks, many others are trying to escape some intractable situtaion. Improving life opportunities would only help reduce extreme addiction and overdose...
- stan_kirdey 3y ago
  I think opportunities might help people avoid taking the drug in the first place, but from observations, even folks with seemingly great jobs and families often fall to opioids once they try them.

MavisBacon 3y ago

These are interesting studies mentioned, no doubt, but the assertions made feel very heavy-handed to me. We have to take into consideration things like bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder when dealing with humans. Also a bit skeptical of their conclusion based on the Vietnam vet studies, where we need to consider access to heroin in Vietnam vs wherever soldiers went home to. Worth keeping in mind that this is a non-profit organization that sold fentanyl test strips at ridiculous markup for years (they have some novel strip now that i'm unsure of bulk pricing on). These were the same exact BTNX strips most fellow harm reductionists were handing out for free or at low cost. I was paying 75 cents per strip as a fairly small harm reduction organization, DanceSafe sold them for $2 (their novel strips are same price) and I can only imagine they got significantly better pricing through the biotech company we all were going through due to how many strips they must move.

reliablereason 3y ago

You have to use a very strange definition of "cause" for the articles title to be true. If there was no chemical the addiction to the chemical would not be there. It is obvious. The existence of the chemical is part of a hugely complicated causal tree that leads to addiction. The argument laid out in the article is a false dichotomy, which is denying one part of the causal tree(the existence of the drug) by pointing to one part of another part of the causal tree(social factors). Real change (the end of the war on drugs) should come from facts not poorly laid out rhetorics.

mordae 3y ago
> If there was no chemical the addiction to the chemical would not be there. It is obvious. From my experience, users would find another way to compensate. Maybe gambling. Maybe self harm. Maybe hurting others.

zephrx1111 3y ago

I disagree with this article, not because of it's correctness, which I don't care. It is more about the perspective. This kind of "explanation", has nothing good to solve the problem. It is just yet another aftermath "excuse research". In east Asia, we had an infamous example: Chang Hsueh-liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%20Hsueh-liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%20Hsueh-liang . The problem is clear here: if we could find an excuse for him, then we could for anybody. Let's ask ourselves this question: do we want our kids addicting to drugs, or do we want ourselves addicting to drugs? If the answers are no, still the question will be, going forward what we can do, which this article has little advice.

criddell 3y ago
> this article has little advice What about this part: > The war on drugs we have been fighting for almost a century now has made everything worse. Instead of helping people heal and getting their life together, we have cast them out from society. We have made it harder for them to get jobs and become stable. We take benefits and support away from them if we catch them with drugs. We throw them in prison cells which are literally cages. We put people who are not well in a situation that makes them worse and then hate them for not recovering. […] We have to build a society that looks a lot more like Rat Park and a lot less like those isolated cages. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection.” That seems like pretty solid advice to me.
tacocataco 3y ago
I want to be free to do what I want with my own body. I want justice system reform. I want the drug supply to be as clean and safe as possible.

davelondon 3y ago

It's a nice story but it's actually a load of rubbish... 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... "Despite his claims of a revolutionary breakthrough, Alexander had trouble finding a journal to publish his results. Both Science and Nature rejected the study for publication, likely due to significant problems with the methodology and results. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior published the results in 1981 with little response and the funding for Rat Park was canceled shortly thereafter." "When scientists tried to replicate the Rat Park study, they got mixed results. In 1996, a study attempted to precisely replicate the conditions in Alexander’s Rat Park, down to the breed of rat. The researchers conducted two experiments to see if they could replicate the Rat Park study’s results. In the first experiment, the happy, social rats consumed slightly more of the morphine liquid, in the second experiment, the isolated rats drank slightly more. Neither experiment reflected the Rat Park’s results, which had the isolated rats drinking up to seven times the amount of the morphine liquid as the social rats."

pas 3y ago
why is it a load of rubbish? it's inconclusive. it seems there's no strong independent evidence either for or against the strong addiction model.
- stillbourne 3y ago
  Science operates on a system of checks and balances, not a free speech model. If your paper can't pass peer review then your paper is what is clinically referred to as bullshit. Now there are people who bypass the system of checks and balances by publishing on pay to play journals but scientist came up with a solution to that too, Impact Factor. They took all the journals and rated them by how much of the content that they publish has an high impact on science and how much of it is bullshit. If you can't get your paper to publish in a journal with an impact factor higher than say 3.5 then you're probably bullshit.
  - nebulousthree 3y ago

version_five 3y ago

Just want to mention my experience quitting smoking (which is notably hard, but I have no point of reference having not used other drugs). Physical addition is easy. With nicotine there are not really strong symptoms anyway, irritability mainly and inability to focus. I know other drugs are worse but in principle, battling withdrawl is not that tough, people are good at physical hardships. For nicotine it's a few days. It's the rest of your life that's the problem, because you know that something that has an effect you enjoy immensely (and you tend to view use nostalgically though rose colored glasses) and you could do it any time if you wanted to. You need to deal with that forever. And if you slip you're back on the thick of things - like why alcoholics can't have a social drink. So anyway, I sort of agree with the article, because it's easier to quit when you have something going on (I started walking and then running, which is what I attribute to success). Though I also think humans are complex enough that making a "rat paradise" for someone is not at all tenable. Edit: and just to conclude, I smoked for 15 years and quit 12 years ago. I still want to smoke, I still dream about it, I still know I would enjoy it. I will never do it and I've learned to cope, but wanting to is something I'll live with forever. That's what makes addiction hard. If it was just a couple sweaty nights tied to a bed, things would be very different.

generalizations 3y ago
> because you know that something that has an effect you enjoy immensely > And if you slip you're back on the thick of things - like why alcoholics can't have a social drink. I know someone who prescribes naltrexone for alcohol addiction, which has the specific purpose of blocking the positive effect of the alcohol. So you can have the drink, and you won't enjoy it, and it's easier to live with.
- daseiner1 3y ago
  The Sinclair Method does have impressive results, and I've have some success with it in the past. For alcoholics at a certain level (thinking of myself here – yes, anecdotal), there is the necessary accountability to take the naltrexone tablet and "deprive" one of the euphoria, which can be difficult to maintain over a long period of time. With Vivitrol (an injectable form of Naltrexone that lasts ~1 month per injection), it is not difficult to simply "drink through it". Results in an absolute horrible hangover – sure – but that's not necessarily enough to stop the motivated alcoholic. Overall though, MAT is a valuable tool in the toolbox.

denton-scratch 3y ago

The author's contention is that "addiction" is a result of circumstances, not of substances. He cites a rat study, and that's about it. I don't think that's correct. I do think that addiction results from circumstances, and it's impossible to quit if the circumstances are wrong; but depending on the substance, withdrawal can mean life-threatening seizures. Suggesting that the primary (author implies "sole") cause of addiction is circumstances enables all these claims of sex addiction, chocolate addiction, sugar addiction and so on. Author says at the end that the word "addiction" is outdated; I agree, because it's been hijacked to refer to any kind of obsessive or repetitive behaviour. We need a new word for a chemical dependency that threatens withdrawal symptoms more serious than feeling rather down.

throwaway1492 3y ago
My only encounter with drugs (pain killers) for the past 10 years was fentanyl as part of colonoscopy. That was no joke. Just one dose had noticeable effects for a few days later. I felt fucking great waking up from that colonoscopy but man, the day or two after sucked.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Wow, fentanyl for a colonoscopy? I've had three. They'd usually offer NO2 or diazepam, but only if you have someone to take you home. Which I didn't. So I've never had drugs for a colonoscopy. It's an unpleasant, uncomfortable experience, makes me groan out loud, but I wouldn't describe it as painful.

bionhoward 3y ago

If not for the drug, you cannot be addicted to the drug. QED drugs “cause” addiction.

daseiner1 3y ago
Necessary but not sufficient. If not for alcohol, there would be no alcoholics but the vast majority of drinkers are not alcoholics. Drug + ?? ==> Addiction

belorn 3y ago

There are an alternative interpretation of the same data. The rat park may provide protection against addition, while the rat cage makes the rats more vulnerable to addition. This model is often use with illnesses such as chronic stress, depression and ptsd. A "rat park" has many major health benefits, and aspect of it is measured with organ donations in order to determine which patients has the highest probability of surviving. A way to see it is that in order for a negative outcome you need three things to be true. Be exposed to a trigger, while being vulnerable, and lacking protection.

golemiprague 3y ago

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tacocataco 3y ago

Fentanyl in the heroin supply is a direct result of prohibition. You could put people in prison and they'll still be able to get drugs. Is it worth the erosion of our civil liberties to tell people what to do with their own bodies? Perhaps this erosion was the entire purpose of the War on Drugs. Hopefully people sick with addiction will some day have access to clean drugs of a known potency.

DiscourseFan 3y ago

One day I might find myself addicted to some substance which I was supposed to avoid but some situation in my life made me fall back on the drug over and over again until I couldn't live without it--this is something that could happen to any of us. But I know that there is more to addiction than poor social circumstance--and many users of addictive substances do it as part of their social-world, most drug-use is social to some extent. Bars, smoke-breaks. Homeless heroin users are usually hanging out together while high. I host dinner parties and get really drunk with my friends. Drugs, addictive ones, are a part of the fabric of our society. People get high, they drink coffee/tea, they take something to help them sleep, they use poppers during sex, they smoke to destress from work. When a corporation understands this, they can engineer a drug and insert it into society such that the nature of its use becomes embedded in peoples' day-to-day lives to reap massive profits. Its the same as an iPhone, Instagram, Silicon Valley writ large. It's the model of so-called "late capitalism." And even when someone gets clean, they probably are involved in a world still where their friends use, when they are always close to the drug. After a while, the neurophysiological changes are so extreme that it is practically impossible to get someone to stay sober for long. I accept that I could become a lost cause one day, just like so many unfortunate addicts in our society. I could become a burden on my friends and family and ruin my life. Sometimes you can't help people.