The use and dependence of certain substances can be explained from different perspectives and perhaps all of them are a bit correct, one of the most explored is the one that encompasses the environmental factors identified in various studies as risk factors associated with drug use and addiction.
On the other hand, trying to isolate the addictive component of a drug without considering the particular circumstances and characteristics of each person who consumes it is a mistake, if we really want to understand the problem, we have to go beyond the substance itself. , with its addictive power and without forgetting the consumer, every consumer.
- In this way.
- We can answer a simple question that.
- In turn.
- Illustrates the idea that we want to present.
- For example.
- Why are there people who consume alcohol.
- Including those who consume it frequently and in large quantities.
- And who are not addicted??.
Attempts can be made to analyze the phenomenon of addiction by examining laboratory tests. In the first experiment we have a mouse in a cage with two water options, one with water and the other with heroin or diluted cocaine.
Almost every time the experiment was repeated, the rat became obsessed with medicated water and drank to death; this can be explained by the action of the drug in the brain. However, in the 1970s, a psychology professor from Vancouver, Bruce Alexander, reviewed and modified the experiment.
This psychologist built a rat park (Rat Park). It was a fun cage in which rats had colorful balls, walking tunnels, lots of friends and lots of food; certainly everything a mouse could wish for. At Rat Park, everyone tried the two bottles of water because they didn’t know what they contained.
What happened was that rats who had a good life were not prisoners: the pleasure of drugs. In general, they avoided drinking water with medication, consuming less than a quarter of the amount of water consumed by isolated mice, none of them died. While mice who were alone and unhappy became addicted and had less luck.
In the design of the first experiment it was not realized that the rat alone could walk around the cage following its basic reflexes and stimuli or would simply drink water with the drug, which represented at least a different motor activity and something to do, regardless of the possible attractiveness that the water represented for it.
On the other hand, the second experiment proposed an excellent alternative, and no alternative: an interesting and self-reinforcing activity, mice that had a good alternative or simply a routine in their pleasant life did not feel the need to drink continuously. water mixed with a substance that stimulated its center of pleasure; or at least they didn’t notice this imbalance.
This was even more surprising when, in a third revision of the experiment, rats that had spent 57 days confined in cages were introduced with the sole option of consuming the drug; It was observed that once abstinence and the opportunity to live in a happy environment were overcome, all rats recovered.
If you are happy, you will not need to fill a void, but if you are not satisfied, you can seek to compensate for this chemical imbalance with a substance: the nucleus accumbens, the center of reception of dopamine in the brain and, therefore, the emission of sensations of pleasure associated with behavior, is a king in charge of receiving its environmental and chemical subjects.
There are very faithful subjects who continually reuse goods and possessions for him, dopamine chemistry workers: water, food, strengthening social interaction, a good bed to rest . . . if, in addition, these factors occur individually or restricted under conditions of deprivation, then more pleasure will be added.
Thousands of soldiers during the Vietnam War depended on heroin. Back home and overcoming withdrawal syndrome, soldiers living in a positive environment resumed their normal lives.
The drug is not in itself a powerful enough behavioral stimulant if it is not based on the love of the lives of orphans. Healthy routines or decent work fight addiction. Perhaps, once established, the drug becomes an addictive behavior that is sustained by mere repetition. and / or destruction of life itself, but its starting point is much more complex.
It is an explanation that gives us hope and meaning, oblivious to the moralistic or chemically reductive visions that present the dependent person as someone of low character, which makes us understand that addicts, except differences, could be like the rats of the first cage: isolated, alone and with a single escape route at their disposal: the pleasure of drugs. On the other hand, a person who uses drugs but returns to a positive environment can avoid addiction because they have at hand several other stimuli that activate their brain reward. Circuit.
In this sense, the secret is to build a “cage”. freedom. To