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RAZ: That's - well, that's what we all assume, right? You take heroin for 20 days, you're probably going to be addicted.
HARI: Exactly. And I only began to understand what's really going on and, in fact, what had gone on in my family when I went and met an incredible professor called Bruce Alexander in Vancouver. And Professor Alexander explained to me, this theory of addiction that I had in my head - that it's caused by the chemical hooks - comes from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. You take a rat, and you put it in a cage, and you give it two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself quite quickly. But Professor Alexander was looking at these experiments in the '70s, and he had this kind of realization. Wait a minute. We put the rat alone in an empty cage. It's got nothing to do except take these drugs.
RAZ: Yeah.
HARI: What would happen, he thought, if we did this differently? So he built a cage that he called Rat Park, and it's basically heaven for rats, right? They've got loads of friends. They got loads of grain. They got loads of tunnels to scamper around. They can have lots of sex. And they've got both the water bottles - the normal water and the drugged water. But this is the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don't like the drugged water. None of them ever used it compulsively. None of them ever overdosed. So you go from almost 100 percent compulsive use of overdose when their lives are bad to none when their lives are good and they have the things that make life meaningful for rats.
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Johann Hari: Does Stigmatizing Addiction Perpetuate It?
Good 12 minute program explaining more, especially about the key of connection.
HARI: Exactly. And I only began to understand what's really going on and, in fact, what had gone on in my family when I went and met an incredible professor called Bruce Alexander in Vancouver. And Professor Alexander explained to me, this theory of addiction that I had in my head - that it's caused by the chemical hooks - comes from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. You take a rat, and you put it in a cage, and you give it two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself quite quickly. But Professor Alexander was looking at these experiments in the '70s, and he had this kind of realization. Wait a minute. We put the rat alone in an empty cage. It's got nothing to do except take these drugs.
RAZ: Yeah.
HARI: What would happen, he thought, if we did this differently? So he built a cage that he called Rat Park, and it's basically heaven for rats, right? They've got loads of friends. They got loads of grain. They got loads of tunnels to scamper around. They can have lots of sex. And they've got both the water bottles - the normal water and the drugged water. But this is the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don't like the drugged water. None of them ever used it compulsively. None of them ever overdosed. So you go from almost 100 percent compulsive use of overdose when their lives are bad to none when their lives are good and they have the things that make life meaningful for rats.
--
Johann Hari: Does Stigmatizing Addiction Perpetuate It?
Good 12 minute program explaining more, especially about the key of connection.
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