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I didn't realize that Rat Park was controversial. Can you point me to some scholarly articles or discussions around it, or the latest addiction research? The w

I didn't realize that Rat Park was controversial. Can you point me to some scholarly articles or discussions around it, or the latest addiction research? The wiki page indicates that there was some success in replicating the results. Searching the web is impossible, as it's mostly hype popsci articles in th vein of "you didn't know this about addiction!"

facetube 12y ago
There are almost certainly some issues with the Rat Park experiment, but even exercise alone has been shown to reduce binding availability at the mu opioid receptor in humans, probably as a result of beta-endorphin being released: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18296435 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18296435. It wouldn't be a huge leap to hypothesize that this could decrease exogenous opioid consumption. Interestingly enough, there's also a genetic mutation that's at least loosely associated with alcoholism, a possible increased response to naturally-produced beta-endorphin, and a need for more opioids to achieve equivalent pain relief: http://www.pnas.org/content/95/16/9608.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/95/16/9608.full.pdf http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1799971 http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1799971