Rat Park Experiment: A New Theory of Addiction
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6379522
"So, if Rat Park is to be believed, drug addiction is a situation that arises from poor socioeconomic conditions. From literally being a rat in a cage. If you're a rat in a park, you'd rather hang out with your friends and explore the world around you."
It's a pretty big leap to extrapolate from research on rats in cages to socioeconomic conditions in human societies. For one thing, poor humans don't live in cages, and thus have a lot more freedom and much richer environments than rats in a lab. Also, poverty doesn't seem to lead to drug addiction across all human societies and cultures, so there are probably other factors involved.
Addiction rates: Marijuana 9-10%, Alcohol 15%, Cocaine 15-20%, Tobacco 20-30%, Heroin 23-25%
Dependence (ordered higher to lower): Nicotine, Heroin, Cocaine, Alcohol, Caffeine, Marijuana
When first seeing these stats, I was surprised how low the additication rates were for heroin and cocaine. Growing up in the DARE era, I thought simple consumption was enough for everyone become an addict. Instead it appears a game of roulette based in genetic makeup.
The more one researches, the more one realizes the the legal drugs of nicotine and alcohol are more dangerous than those targeted by the "war on drugs".
That's a pretty big "unless". As for the immediate effects, nicotine is easier to come by - you don't have to go to a sketchy dealer in an alley to pay an outrageous markup to get your cigarette fix.
Also, heroin doesn't have this effect either, contrary to popular belief. Look up the success rates of diacetylmorphine maintenance programs - programs in which chronic drug users are given a steady supply pure, uncut heroin (ie, no fiberglass/etc.).
These people are able to hold steady jobs while using heroin only at night, the same way a habitual drinker might have a shot of whiskey every night.
The incidence rate of negative social externalities (such as crime) has actually dropped for people who are enrolled in such programs.
These were long stupid discussions, and like every 8 year old, I was on the side of "why not ?". And then, you know, you start studying, never giving it a second thought.
And then I visited a "home" (a prison, really) for the mentally ill (where they keep addicts here, perhaps that should be mentally ill and criminal), and had a few (mandatory - grmbl) talks with them to see and analyse their reaction patterns (lots of paper writing after the visit). They had an addict that had only arived the day before, which we had to talk to.
There was no more doubt after that in my mind. Cocaine heroin and other opiate addictions are indeed evil itself. You get addicted and overdose, or you lose interest. If you get addicted. Either that kills you, or it leaves you addicted, attempting to cure yourself. Even if you manage to "cure" yourself (not really possible, but yes you can learn not to touch the drug, you can't learn not to crave it), you will leave with a seriously handicapped brain, and nowhere near the emotional control you had before you started on the drug. The fresh arrivals in the clinic, fresh off the drug, are ready to kill, or rape themselves, and worse just for one more ml of the drug (a fact they claim is frequently exploited by prostitution and crime).
Yes alcohol addiction is bad. Especially the medical effects are not fun. Psychologically they're not much fun either. However to claim that an alcohol addict is anywhere near the same level of addiction/danger as an opiate addict is insanity, and only illustrates your complete lack of experience on the subject. And nicotine addicts detoxing are downright pleasant people, in firm control of their emotions, nothing at all like recovering opiate addicts.
And these numbers ... they're not going to convince anyone who's ever worked with these people. If they claim any opiate is harmless, or even on par with alcoholism, then there's quite simply something very wrong with your measurements.
I tend to avoid responding to comments which include ad-hominem attacks as a rule, but your comment is so emotional that I'll make an exception here.
Drug use and its effects on both the brain and society are a subject I studied and worked with for several years. I'm not going to bother enumerating my "credentials" here; I'm just going to state flatly that your accusation is unfounded.
Alcohol withdrawal is one of the only forms of withdrawal that can be fatal[0]. Heroin withdrawal can be fatal in certain circumstances, but has far fewer fatalities per incidence (ie, normalized for number of patients) than alcohol.
> Cocaine heroin and other opiate addictions are indeed evil itself. You get addicted and overdose, or you lose interest.
1) Cocaine is not an opiate
2) Most (more than 50%) of habitual users of cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin do not meet DSM criteria for addiction[1]. One cannot simply claim that all users are addicted; this statement is medically false.
> And then I visited a "home" (a prison, really) for the mentally ill
Here, you are confusing P(A|B) and P(B|A). This is a common mistake. What you are not observing are all of the people who use these substances without problems.
Of course if you visit a prison, you're going to find criminals. If you visit an ICU, you will find people who are critically ill.
> The fresh arrivals in the clinic, fresh off the drug, are ready to kill, or rape themselves, and worse just for one more ml of the drug (a fact they claim is frequently exploited by prostitution and crime).
This statement actually supports my assertion about diacetylmorphine maintenance programs. If you do a little digging into how these programs operate, you will see what I mean.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delerium_tremens
[1]Can't find an online copy of the academic paper in which I first read this statistic (in print) at the moment, but it's cited in a lot of places - most addiction specialists are familiar with the statistic.
> Other side claiming that any kind of addiction is perfectly fine to indulge in, some of them even if it hurts others to varying degrees
This is a straw man. Nobody argues that. Some people do argue that some people use drugs without any dependence issues and without harming other people. That, however, is a very different argument from what you present.
> And these numbers ... they're not going to convince anyone who's ever worked with these people.
No numbers are ever going to convince people who make their judgments based on emotional reactions, as you seem to have. However, there is a reason that modern addiction treatments, which are far more successful, involve harm-reduction and maintenance-based approaches.
> Of course if you visit a prison, you're going to find criminals. If you visit an ICU, you will find people who are critically ill.
And I argue that diseases should be eradicated if possible just the same. I've been to a leprosy clinic, and how many people does that disease infect, really ? 10 worldwide, on a yearly basis ? It should still be eradicated from the planet. There is no inconsistency here.
Furthermore if P(criminally_destructive_behavior|drug_available) > 1/1000000 (or so), I think there is a very strong case to be made for outlawing these substances. You can't allow things that destroy a significant number of people they touch roam free through society, and the discussion should end there.
A certain level of harmfulness cannot be avoided in society. Building, cars, ... all cause harm. But when it is not a necessity that harm should be avoided, even at the expense of personal freedom. Otherwise, society is not livable.
> No numbers are ever going to convince people who make their judgments based on emotional reactions, as you seem to have. However, there is a reason that modern addiction treatments, which are far more successful, involve harm-reduction and maintenance-based approaches.
Having met quite a few hard-drug recovered individuals, I'm pretty convinced that there is no treatment, not really. Just like there is no such thing as a recovered alcoholic, there is no such thing as a recovered addict. There are simply people who've trained in behavioral patterns that avoid triggering certain impulses, often by introducing a constant background level of discomfort (look at the number of suicides for recovered alcoholics versus general population, the number of suicides is WAY higher for recovering drug addicts even compared to recovering alcoholics).
I realize this thread is getting old, but that's another possible reversal of causality (P(A given B) vs. P(B given A). It's also possible that drug addicts are from a segment of the population that is more likely to commit suicide, but the drugs medicate away the suicidal urge.
You also have a strong selection bias; as mentioned upthread, you haven't studied the habitual drug users who didn't end up in prison. There's no way the drug market could be as big as the TV news likes to say it is, unless the majority of users were living ordinary lives despite their drug use.
Nobody's saying that drug addiction should be ignored; they're saying that you can treat the problem more effectively by treating society itself rather than trying to prevent access to drugs.
A = recovering drug addict B = suicide victim
Bayes theorem P(B|A) = P(A|B) P(A) / P(B)
First link google found with some numbers : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1932152
P(B) is much smaller than P(A), assuming most recovering drug addicts do not actually commit suicide. Let's say 3/4 don't (this is meant to be a lower bound, since increasing this number will mean drugs are responsible for more suicides, given the rest of the calculation). Therefore P(A) / P(B) ~= 4.
So this depends on what fraction of suicides drug addicts represent. If that fraction is above 25%, that means drugs lead to suicide. If that fraction is less, then they don't.
According to the article that fraction is between 25% and 70% (in 25% of cases suicide victims were clearly addicts, in 75% of cases drug abuse was seen before the suicide).
While this is not too rigorous (esp. the sources part), this seems to indicate that "scientifically" you'd clearly find drugs cause suicide. If the fraction of suicides were to be ~ 45%, that would mean drugs increase suicide risk about 4-fold (and thus the number of suicides in a given group). That does not sound like an unreasonable number to me. It also means that free availability of drugs, increasing the number of people exposed will increase suicides by a factor between 1 and 4, depending on how big the problem currently is.
An effective banishment of drugs from our society would cut suicides by that number, between 25% and 70%, assumed to be about 45%.
The obvious criticism of this would be that P(A) and P(B) are nothing but a rational estimate, given that you ONLY know the things on the right side of the equation. In practice we know more. It's still very likely to be a good approximation though.
So good point about reversal of causality, but following through on that point yields more evidence for it to be true, not less.
Also drug addicts are generally addicted to more than one substance.
Many very poor communities throughout history have had very good social integration.
Social integration means a sense of belonging to a community or a tradition and regular contact with people who know you and who know they are going to continue to have regular contact with you.
The significant part of being stuck in a small cage is the absence of the things that usually given "meaning" to the rat's life, particularly the ability to interact with other rats.
Many famous musicians and artists are inspired by drugs, and I think it is unlikely that they have a problem with social integration (though others probably do).
Those things reproduce exponentially if left with space/food/mates.
It's tempting to read too much into these types of results when they are not reproducible.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maher-burka-suicide-bomb...
On the other hand, many of them already have access to plenty of sex - for example, UBL had four wives, and the 9/11 terrorists are known to have patronized prostitutes and strip clubs in the days prior to their suicide hijackings. So it may not be a perfect substitution for someone who is that dedicated to the cause.
Here's a couple more silly but vaguely possible examples: what if one cage was nearer the window, and UV exposure had a significant effect? Or what if the big-pen rats were in the corner where the air was more stagnant, and rats don't like to get high when it's humid? Nobody would have predicted those as a possible hypothesis, so there would be no effort taken to account for them. That's not poor science, it's a necessary part of the process.