22/03/2025
For who could live a life so soon cut short
and not esteem the worth of
passing joys? What pleasures could
there be that will endure? Are not
the frail entitled to believe that
every scrap of pleasure is
their righteous payment for their
little lives? Death is the result, if they enjoy their
benefits or not. The end of life
must come, whatever way that life
be spent. And so take sad pleasure in
the quickly passing and ephemeral.
“Put a rat in a cage and give it 2 water bottles. One is just water and one is water laced with he**in or co***ne. The rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself in a couple of weeks. That is our theory of addiction.
Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do. Let’s try this a bit differently.” So he built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything a rat could want is in Rat Park. Lovely food. Lots of s*x. Other rats to befriend. Colored balls. Plus both water bottles, one with water and one with drugged water. But here’s what's fascinating: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use it.
None of them overdose. None of them use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. What Bruce did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
Now, we created a society where significant numbers of us can't bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drink, drugs, s*x, shopping... We’ve created a hyper consumerist, hyper individualist, isolated world that is, for many of us, more like the first cage than the bonded, connected cages we need.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not ourselves."