"While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did." This thesis probally has a lot of validit

"While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did." This thesis probally has a lot of validity. That said, I have meet a lot if people with seemingly good lives who drink like there's no tomorrow? Plus, they have the disposable income to buy harder drugs without resorting to crime--diverting being caught, and identified. Personally, I think we have been conditioned to believing addiction is a disease and there's no hope unless you go to Rehab, or if you are poor--"You must go to AA!". I feel media, and even a lot if MD's have made getting off drugs, including alcohol; a lot harder than it is in reality. I give a pass to most MD's because they were taught that patients lie about how much of a drug they are using. (You tell a doctor you are drinking 750 ml bottle of wine a night, they are doubling the amount in their minds--so they don't even want to take the risk of telling you that you can titrate yourself off the drug.) I know getting off drugs is hard; I just don't know how hard it is. The damage, or thoughts have already been engrained in the psyche of most people. I'm not sure how they can properly(controlled, double blind, etc., honest) study the problem, or if their is a problem. For myself, I was a heavy drinker. My doctor flat out told me "don't fuck with it--going off without medical oversight is extremely dangerous. Well I wasen't going to spend the last of my savings on an expensive rehab, so I kept drinking. I finally got to the point where I really wanted to stop. I decreased the amout I was drinking by roughly 10% every two days and eventually became a non-drinker. In my case it worked. Maybe, I got lucky? One other antidotal story. My best friend died from COPD. He smoked 2-3 packs of cigs for 50 plus years. We used to watch tv together and see those commercials equating stopping smoking to quitting Heroin and just watched in silence. I gave up asking him to quit. I even bought him cigarettes when he was to sick to buy them himself--because if I didn't he would drag himself to the store and buy them himself--huffing, etc. (I'm not proud about picking up his cigarettes.) Well one day, we decided together he would stop. Actually--I told him I'm done--you need to stop. Day 1 (slight cravings). By day 3, or 4--he called me up and literally said, "I was so easier than I thought. Not stopping sooner was the biggest mistake of my life." It was too late, but his COPD got slightly better, and he lived another 5 decent quality years. There's a quote by Burroughs and it pops into my mind weekly--I wonder how much truth it holds? William Burroughs, who spent two decades on heroin, said that “getting off drugs is not all that difficult. It’s vastly exaggerated—only a month, whatever method is used, a slow withdrawal or whatever, and they’re going to be out of the woods.”