Pubdate: Wed, 27 Jan 2016
Source: Winnipeg Sun (CN MB)
Copyright: 2016 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: http://www.winnipegsun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://www.winnipegsun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/503
Author: Floyd Perras
Note: Floyd Perras is executive director of Siloam Mission.
Page: 11

ADDICTS ALREADY LIVE IN OWN CAGE

That's because addiction is often an adaption to your environment.

If there is one thing I have learned over the last 20 years of 
working with homeless populations it's that the way we look at 
addiction is often wrong. Let me explain. When I was first starting 
my career as a chaplain, if you would have asked me what causes 
alcohol addiction I would have told you "it's very simple: alcohol 
causes alcohol addiction."

I don't think that anymore - not about alcohol, not about cocaine, 
not about prescription pills, not about any drug.

The way we understand addiction in popular culture comes from a 
series of experiments done in the early 20th century that were later 
featured in famous anti-drug ads in the 1980s in America.

Basically the experiment put a rat in a cage along with two water 
bottles. One bottle was just water; the other one was laced with 
heroin or cocaine. The rat started drinking from both, but eventually 
just drank from the drug-laced bottle and died.

And so it was concluded: that's what addiction looks like.

But in the 1970s, Dr. Bruce Alexander from Vancouver looked at the 
experiment differently - the rat was in an empty cage and had little 
choice except to drink the water.

So he built Rat Park - a veritable paradise for any rat lucky enough 
to make it in. Along with the two water bottles, Dr. Alexander put in 
all sort of food and toys the rat would like. He also gave the rat 
companions so they wouldn't be lonely and could procreate.

A remarkable thing happened: the rats tried both water bottles but 
preferred the clean water. They never overdosed on the drugged water 
or used it in a way that looked like compulsion or addiction.

That's because addiction is often an adaption to your environment.

My friends on the right disagree. They tell me if you're an addict 
it's because you are choosing to be one, because you lack 
self-control and because you're a hedonist. To them it's a moral flaw.

Not your morality

My friends on the left disagree, too. They tell me if you're an 
addict it's because you get taken over by your circumstance, because 
your brain gets hijacked or because it's a disease not of your own doing.

But what Dr. Alexander's experiment shows us it's that it is not your 
morality, and it is not your brain. It's your cage. When I look at 
the people who end up at our shelter and who struggle with 
addictions, I see the cage.

And so much of the time, that cage looks like childhood abuse. In 
fact, in North America two-thirds of addicts report being abused as children.

If you have a traumatic childhood, you are less likely to build 
trusting bonds and to connect with the world around you. You are more 
likely to be like the first rat getting high on drugged water than 
the rats bonding and connecting in the second cage.

That means instead of building more cages to lock up drug users, we 
need to first look at the cage they're already in. We can no longer 
ostracize and marginalize traumatized people who actually just need help.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom