7 ms·

Rat Park Experiment: A New Theory of Addiction

146 points by rfreytag 13y ago

greenyoda 13y ago
This doesn't seem to add anything new to the article about drug addiction and "Rat Park" that was posted and extensively discussed two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6379522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6379522 "So, if Rat Park is to be believed, drug addiction is a situation that arises from poor socioeconomic conditions. From literally being a rat in a cage. If you're a rat in a park, you'd rather hang out with your friends and explore the world around you." It's a pretty big leap to extrapolate from research on rats in cages to socioeconomic conditions in human societies. For one thing, poor humans don't live in cages, and thus have a lot more freedom and much richer environments than rats in a lab. Also, poverty doesn't seem to lead to drug addiction across all human societies and cultures, so there are probably other factors involved.
- cardiffspaceman 13y ago
  The argument should be, is the DARE propaganda misrepresenting the science or not? The "other" FA actually covered some nuance, but the news, for those of us who did not know about this study 35 years ago even though they were actively reading things, is that rats might need a bad environment to be prone to prefer morphine to food. Which is not what the prevalent message was over the past 3 decades.
- BIair 13y ago
  Source: My brother died of chronic alcoholism at 42, and http://www.drugscience.org/dl/dl_comparison.html http://www.drugscience.org/dl/dl_comparison.html Addiction rates: Marijuana 9-10%, Alcohol 15%, Cocaine 15-20%, Tobacco 20-30%, Heroin 23-25% Dependence (ordered higher to lower): Nicotine, Heroin, Cocaine, Alcohol, Caffeine, Marijuana When first seeing these stats, I was surprised how low the additication rates were for heroin and cocaine. Growing up in the DARE era, I thought simple consumption was enough for everyone become an addict. Instead it appears a game of roulette based in genetic makeup. The more one researches, the more one realizes the the legal drugs of nicotine and alcohol are more dangerous than those targeted by the "war on drugs".
  - astral303 13y ago
    The difference (from what I remember from an NPR interview) is that cocaine is a drug that is used much less frequently (a few times a week) than nicotine (which is used several times a day). Frequent use leads to the brain getting that much more frequent reinforcement of the drug.
  - gnaffle 13y ago
    Yet, nicotine don't destroy families and make people lose their jobs (unless they smoke it for many years), so there is a real difference in the consequences for the people who do get addicted to alcohol or the harder drugs. So grading drugs on a simple "danger scale" isn't very helpful.
    - chimeracoder 13y ago
      > Yet, nicotine don't destroy families and make people lose their jobs (unless they smoke it for many years) That's a pretty big "unless". As for the immediate effects, nicotine is easier to come by - you don't have to go to a sketchy dealer in an alley to pay an outrageous markup to get your cigarette fix. Also, heroin doesn't have this effect either, contrary to popular belief. Look up the success rates of diacetylmorphine maintenance programs - programs in which chronic drug users are given a steady supply pure, uncut heroin (ie, no fiberglass/etc.). These people are able to hold steady jobs while using heroin only at night, the same way a habitual drinker might have a shot of whiskey every night. The incidence rate of negative social externalities (such as crime) has actually dropped for people who are enrolled in such programs.
      - waps 13y ago
        Ever since I was 8 I've seen both of these camps every now and then. One side claiming drugs are extremely evil and you can never touch them even once. Other side claiming that any kind of addiction is perfectly fine to indulge in, some of them even if it hurts others to varying degrees. These were long stupid discussions, and like every 8 year old, I was on the side of "why not ?". And then, you know, you start studying, never giving it a second thought. And then I visited a "home" (a prison, really) for the mentally ill (where they keep addicts here, perhaps that should be mentally ill and criminal), and had a few (mandatory - grmbl) talks with them to see and analyse their reaction patterns (lots of paper writing after the visit). They had an addict that had only arived the day before, which we had to talk to. There was no more doubt after that in my mind. Cocaine heroin and other opiate addictions are indeed evil itself. You get addicted and overdose, or you lose interest. If you get addicted. Either that kills you, or it leaves you addicted, attempting to cure yourself. Even if you manage to "cure" yourself (not really possible, but yes you can learn not to touch the drug, you can't learn not to crave it), you will leave with a seriously handicapped brain, and nowhere near the emotional control you had before you started on the drug. The fresh arrivals in the clinic, fresh off the drug, are ready to kill, or rape themselves, and worse just for one more ml of the drug (a fact they claim is frequently exploited by prostitution and crime). Yes alcohol addiction is bad. Especially the medical effects are not fun. Psychologically they're not much fun either. However to claim that an alcohol addict is anywhere near the same level of addiction/danger as an opiate addict is insanity, and only illustrates your complete lack of experience on the subject. And nicotine addicts detoxing are downright pleasant people, in firm control of their emotions, nothing at all like recovering opiate addicts. And these numbers ... they're not going to convince anyone who's ever worked with these people. If they claim any opiate is harmless, or even on par with alcoholism, then there's quite simply something very wrong with your measurements.
- hollerith 13y ago
  The claim is not that poverty leads to drug addiction; the claim is that the lack of "social integration" leads to drug addiction. Many very poor communities throughout history have had very good social integration. Social integration means a sense of belonging to a community or a tradition and regular contact with people who know you and who know they are going to continue to have regular contact with you. The significant part of being stuck in a small cage is the absence of the things that usually given "meaning" to the rat's life, particularly the ability to interact with other rats.
  - AznHisoka 13y ago
    Maybe that lack of social integration leads to less dopamine, which makes us seek drugs/alcohol/sex. I know I often feel naturally "high" when I feel like I belong to a group/community. Things such as hanging out with close friends, achieving something with a friend, celebrating things together really do make me feel great about life. I mean.. why would I want to seek drugs if that was the case?
    - collyw 13y ago
      Because they can enhance it even further. They can give you insights that you wouldn't otherwise have. Many famous musicians and artists are inspired by drugs, and I think it is unlikely that they have a problem with social integration (though others probably do).
- rsheridan6 13y ago
  And being a non-poor human is not exactly playing in the park, since, unless you're born rich or have your dream job, you have to make some sort of sacrifices that involve doing non-fun work.
toadi 13y ago
I think there are to many variables to know for sure what the reason is people get addicted.
- lysium 13y ago
  I don't think we want to know 'for sure'. It's enough if we identify the variables that have the largest impact and tackle those.
- swombat 13y ago
  There are too many variables to know anything at all. Let's just give up and go back to the caves, then, right?
bjourne 13y ago
Has anyone ever tried to repeat the Rat Park study except for Bruce Alexander? Since the study only involved 16 - 20 rats, there surely could have been something in their genetic markup that made them more resistant to addiction than average rats. Also, Bruce Alexander had a hypothesis that flew in the face of common sense and set up a study that validated his hypothesis. Even assuming absolutely no foul play the result could be tainted by the researchers hopes.
- gcb0 13y ago
  I doubt after week 1 that there were only 16-20 rats. Those things reproduce exponentially if left with space/food/mates.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    If it's because of some genetic immunity to drug addiction, the children are likely to benefit as well.
    - tomjen3 13y ago
      The rats that were made addicted to the heroin did experience minor withdrawl symptoms so they are able to get addicted.
      - duaneb 13y ago
        Withdrawal is a symptom of physical dependence, not addiction (which is harder to define/identify).
rlwolfcastle 13y ago
There have been criticisms of the study’s design and the few attempts that have been made to replicate the results have been mixed. It's tempting to read too much into these types of results when they are not reproducible.
gcb0 13y ago
So, it is not that middle aged woman like farmville games... it is because their house/apartments are small?
- Gravityloss 13y ago
  Or that in general their life is not satisfactory on some level, so they escape into that world. Escapism and why we do it, all that.
- speeder 13y ago
  The women that I met that expended too much time (as in: it bothers other people) in slot machine style games ( ie: farmville is, candy crush not) had some really bad aspects on their life, usually severe relationship issues, unemployment, or having a job that has bad environment, like working 70 hours, or working in a prison.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    wow. never thought about adding slot machine to that abhoral genre of game... but actually, no, slot machine has /some/ good outcome at least. even if infinitesimal...
shele 13y ago
I'd like to keep in mind that tons of behavioural science is tainted by doing research on broken great apes in boxes.
FooBarWidget 13y ago
Why didn't the original experiment notice this? Didn't they use a control group like a proper scientific study should do?
- GeneralMayhem 13y ago
  You can't control for something you don't realize is a variable.
  - FooBarWidget 13y ago
    The whole point of a control group is ensure that unknown variables don't interfere. If they had designed the original experiment so that one group of rats get a placebo and the other group drug water, but with all other factors being exactly equal, then they should have noticed something.
    - GeneralMayhem 13y ago
      My point is that you have to take positive action to control for a factor. Since there's a practically infinite number of factors that could have an effect, you can't assume that only the experiment variable is changing, because that would require first enumerating an infinitude of factors. You can list the things that you think are most likely to be confounding and make sure that they're either controlled for or randomized, but eventually you have to make a judgment call of when the groups are similar enough. Here's a couple more silly but vaguely possible examples: what if one cage was nearer the window, and UV exposure had a significant effect? Or what if the big-pen rats were in the corner where the air was more stagnant, and rats don't like to get high when it's humid? Nobody would have predicted those as a possible hypothesis, so there would be no effort taken to account for them. That's not poor science, it's a necessary part of the process.
AznHisoka 13y ago
So does this also give credence to the idea there would be less suicide bombers if they had access to more/better sex? [1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maher-burka-suicide-bomber-video-2011-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maher-burka-suicide-bomb...
- theorique 13y ago
  The problem with suicide bombers is that they are already "addicted" (in some sense), to a toxic, and extreme, strain of their religion. It's possible that they could be weaned from their fanaticism and ideology via a substitute like sex. On the other hand, many of them already have access to plenty of sex - for example, UBL had four wives, and the 9/11 terrorists are known to have patronized prostitutes and strip clubs in the days prior to their suicide hijackings. So it may not be a perfect substitution for someone who is that dedicated to the cause.
hariis 13y ago
IME, The mental impressions of an addiction override a lot of the other factors including socio-economy, social interaction/integration

146 points by rfreytag 13y ago

This doesn't seem to add anything new to the article about drug addiction and "Rat Park" that was posted and extensively discussed two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6379522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6379522 "So, if Rat Park is to be believed, drug addiction is a situation that arises from poor socioeconomic conditions. From literally being a rat in a cage. If you're a rat in a park, you'd rather hang out with your friends and explore the world around you." It's a pretty big leap to extrapolate from research on rats in cages to socioeconomic conditions in human societies. For one thing, poor humans don't live in cages, and thus have a lot more freedom and much richer environments than rats in a lab. Also, poverty doesn't seem to lead to drug addiction across all human societies and cultures, so there are probably other factors involved.

cardiffspaceman 13y ago
The argument should be, is the DARE propaganda misrepresenting the science or not? The "other" FA actually covered some nuance, but the news, for those of us who did not know about this study 35 years ago even though they were actively reading things, is that rats might need a bad environment to be prone to prefer morphine to food. Which is not what the prevalent message was over the past 3 decades.
BIair 13y ago
Source: My brother died of chronic alcoholism at 42, and http://www.drugscience.org/dl/dl_comparison.html http://www.drugscience.org/dl/dl_comparison.html Addiction rates: Marijuana 9-10%, Alcohol 15%, Cocaine 15-20%, Tobacco 20-30%, Heroin 23-25% Dependence (ordered higher to lower): Nicotine, Heroin, Cocaine, Alcohol, Caffeine, Marijuana When first seeing these stats, I was surprised how low the additication rates were for heroin and cocaine. Growing up in the DARE era, I thought simple consumption was enough for everyone become an addict. Instead it appears a game of roulette based in genetic makeup. The more one researches, the more one realizes the the legal drugs of nicotine and alcohol are more dangerous than those targeted by the "war on drugs".
- astral303 13y ago
  The difference (from what I remember from an NPR interview) is that cocaine is a drug that is used much less frequently (a few times a week) than nicotine (which is used several times a day). Frequent use leads to the brain getting that much more frequent reinforcement of the drug.
- gnaffle 13y ago
  Yet, nicotine don't destroy families and make people lose their jobs (unless they smoke it for many years), so there is a real difference in the consequences for the people who do get addicted to alcohol or the harder drugs. So grading drugs on a simple "danger scale" isn't very helpful.
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    > Yet, nicotine don't destroy families and make people lose their jobs (unless they smoke it for many years) That's a pretty big "unless". As for the immediate effects, nicotine is easier to come by - you don't have to go to a sketchy dealer in an alley to pay an outrageous markup to get your cigarette fix. Also, heroin doesn't have this effect either, contrary to popular belief. Look up the success rates of diacetylmorphine maintenance programs - programs in which chronic drug users are given a steady supply pure, uncut heroin (ie, no fiberglass/etc.). These people are able to hold steady jobs while using heroin only at night, the same way a habitual drinker might have a shot of whiskey every night. The incidence rate of negative social externalities (such as crime) has actually dropped for people who are enrolled in such programs.
    - waps 13y ago
      Ever since I was 8 I've seen both of these camps every now and then. One side claiming drugs are extremely evil and you can never touch them even once. Other side claiming that any kind of addiction is perfectly fine to indulge in, some of them even if it hurts others to varying degrees. These were long stupid discussions, and like every 8 year old, I was on the side of "why not ?". And then, you know, you start studying, never giving it a second thought. And then I visited a "home" (a prison, really) for the mentally ill (where they keep addicts here, perhaps that should be mentally ill and criminal), and had a few (mandatory - grmbl) talks with them to see and analyse their reaction patterns (lots of paper writing after the visit). They had an addict that had only arived the day before, which we had to talk to. There was no more doubt after that in my mind. Cocaine heroin and other opiate addictions are indeed evil itself. You get addicted and overdose, or you lose interest. If you get addicted. Either that kills you, or it leaves you addicted, attempting to cure yourself. Even if you manage to "cure" yourself (not really possible, but yes you can learn not to touch the drug, you can't learn not to crave it), you will leave with a seriously handicapped brain, and nowhere near the emotional control you had before you started on the drug. The fresh arrivals in the clinic, fresh off the drug, are ready to kill, or rape themselves, and worse just for one more ml of the drug (a fact they claim is frequently exploited by prostitution and crime). Yes alcohol addiction is bad. Especially the medical effects are not fun. Psychologically they're not much fun either. However to claim that an alcohol addict is anywhere near the same level of addiction/danger as an opiate addict is insanity, and only illustrates your complete lack of experience on the subject. And nicotine addicts detoxing are downright pleasant people, in firm control of their emotions, nothing at all like recovering opiate addicts. And these numbers ... they're not going to convince anyone who's ever worked with these people. If they claim any opiate is harmless, or even on par with alcoholism, then there's quite simply something very wrong with your measurements.
hollerith 13y ago
The claim is not that poverty leads to drug addiction; the claim is that the lack of "social integration" leads to drug addiction. Many very poor communities throughout history have had very good social integration. Social integration means a sense of belonging to a community or a tradition and regular contact with people who know you and who know they are going to continue to have regular contact with you. The significant part of being stuck in a small cage is the absence of the things that usually given "meaning" to the rat's life, particularly the ability to interact with other rats.
- AznHisoka 13y ago
  Maybe that lack of social integration leads to less dopamine, which makes us seek drugs/alcohol/sex. I know I often feel naturally "high" when I feel like I belong to a group/community. Things such as hanging out with close friends, achieving something with a friend, celebrating things together really do make me feel great about life. I mean.. why would I want to seek drugs if that was the case?
  - collyw 13y ago
    Because they can enhance it even further. They can give you insights that you wouldn't otherwise have. Many famous musicians and artists are inspired by drugs, and I think it is unlikely that they have a problem with social integration (though others probably do).
rsheridan6 13y ago
And being a non-poor human is not exactly playing in the park, since, unless you're born rich or have your dream job, you have to make some sort of sacrifices that involve doing non-fun work.

toadi 13y ago

I think there are to many variables to know for sure what the reason is people get addicted.

lysium 13y ago
I don't think we want to know 'for sure'. It's enough if we identify the variables that have the largest impact and tackle those.
swombat 13y ago
There are too many variables to know anything at all. Let's just give up and go back to the caves, then, right?

bjourne 13y ago

Has anyone ever tried to repeat the Rat Park study except for Bruce Alexander? Since the study only involved 16 - 20 rats, there surely could have been something in their genetic markup that made them more resistant to addiction than average rats. Also, Bruce Alexander had a hypothesis that flew in the face of common sense and set up a study that validated his hypothesis. Even assuming absolutely no foul play the result could be tainted by the researchers hopes.

gcb0 13y ago
I doubt after week 1 that there were only 16-20 rats. Those things reproduce exponentially if left with space/food/mates.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  If it's because of some genetic immunity to drug addiction, the children are likely to benefit as well.
  - tomjen3 13y ago
    The rats that were made addicted to the heroin did experience minor withdrawl symptoms so they are able to get addicted.
    - duaneb 13y ago
      Withdrawal is a symptom of physical dependence, not addiction (which is harder to define/identify).

rlwolfcastle 13y ago

There have been criticisms of the study’s design and the few attempts that have been made to replicate the results have been mixed. It's tempting to read too much into these types of results when they are not reproducible.

gcb0 13y ago

So, it is not that middle aged woman like farmville games... it is because their house/apartments are small?

Gravityloss 13y ago
Or that in general their life is not satisfactory on some level, so they escape into that world. Escapism and why we do it, all that.
speeder 13y ago
The women that I met that expended too much time (as in: it bothers other people) in slot machine style games ( ie: farmville is, candy crush not) had some really bad aspects on their life, usually severe relationship issues, unemployment, or having a job that has bad environment, like working 70 hours, or working in a prison.
- gcb0 13y ago
  wow. never thought about adding slot machine to that abhoral genre of game... but actually, no, slot machine has /some/ good outcome at least. even if infinitesimal...

shele 13y ago

I'd like to keep in mind that tons of behavioural science is tainted by doing research on broken great apes in boxes.

FooBarWidget 13y ago

Why didn't the original experiment notice this? Didn't they use a control group like a proper scientific study should do?

GeneralMayhem 13y ago
You can't control for something you don't realize is a variable.
- FooBarWidget 13y ago
  The whole point of a control group is ensure that unknown variables don't interfere. If they had designed the original experiment so that one group of rats get a placebo and the other group drug water, but with all other factors being exactly equal, then they should have noticed something.
  - GeneralMayhem 13y ago
    My point is that you have to take positive action to control for a factor. Since there's a practically infinite number of factors that could have an effect, you can't assume that only the experiment variable is changing, because that would require first enumerating an infinitude of factors. You can list the things that you think are most likely to be confounding and make sure that they're either controlled for or randomized, but eventually you have to make a judgment call of when the groups are similar enough. Here's a couple more silly but vaguely possible examples: what if one cage was nearer the window, and UV exposure had a significant effect? Or what if the big-pen rats were in the corner where the air was more stagnant, and rats don't like to get high when it's humid? Nobody would have predicted those as a possible hypothesis, so there would be no effort taken to account for them. That's not poor science, it's a necessary part of the process.

AznHisoka 13y ago

So does this also give credence to the idea there would be less suicide bombers if they had access to more/better sex? [1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maher-burka-suicide-bomber-video-2011-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maher-burka-suicide-bomb...

theorique 13y ago
The problem with suicide bombers is that they are already "addicted" (in some sense), to a toxic, and extreme, strain of their religion. It's possible that they could be weaned from their fanaticism and ideology via a substitute like sex. On the other hand, many of them already have access to plenty of sex - for example, UBL had four wives, and the 9/11 terrorists are known to have patronized prostitutes and strip clubs in the days prior to their suicide hijackings. So it may not be a perfect substitution for someone who is that dedicated to the cause.

hariis 13y ago

IME, The mental impressions of an addiction override a lot of the other factors including socio-economy, social interaction/integration