The Opposite of Addiction

SOURCE 1, Rat Park (Chasing the Scream, Hari, 2015): Note: later attempts to replicate Rat Park gave mixed results (Bozarth and colleagues, 1989; Petrie, 1996). "The rats with good lives didn't like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did." "Professor Alexander argues that addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's your cage." SOURCE 2, Portugal (Chasing the Scream): "In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all drugs, not just cannabis, but cocaine, heroin, everything. João Goulão, the architect of the policy, told me: 'We are dealing with people who have a health problem. Not criminals.'" "By 2012, the number of people dying from street drug overdoses had fallen from eighty a year to just three. HIV infections among drug users had fallen by 95 percent." SOURCE 3, Integration as medicine (attributed to Labate & Cavnar, Ayahuasca Healing and Science, 2021; this quotation was not found in the book; Source not found; under review): "A consistent finding across ayahuasca studies for addiction and depression is that the experience is not sufficient by itself. Integration, the process of assimilating insights from the session into everyday life, through ongoing therapeutic support and community, determines outcomes at least as strongly as the pharmacological event itself." SOURCE 4, The opioid system and social bonding (Source not found; under review): Social isolation activates the same neural pathways as physical pain. The opioid system, which is hijacked by heroin, is also the system that mediates social bonding. This is the same receptors, not a metaphor.