I had a conversation with a sorority Sunday night. I shared with them the story of two sets of studies on rats that have largely shaped our understanding of addiction.
Back in the 60s, researchers isolated rats in a cage and gave them the choice between two water bottles. One bottle had water. The other bottle had water laced with heroin. The rats almost always chose the water bottles with heroin. They almost always drank it until they overdosed and died. In the late 70s, a couple of researchers came along a wondered what would happen if the rats had more friends and options. So they designed a rat park. The cage was huge - 200 times bigger than the original cages. The cage was filled with lots of rat activities and rat friends. For the rats, it really was a day at the park. Rat park also had two water bottles. One with water, one with water laced with heroin. In rat park, almost no rats died of an overdose. Even the rats that experimented with the drugged water eventually went back to just plain water. The researchers concluded that the company of other rats and the freedom to roam around significantly reduced the chances of addiction. I asked the ladies what they thought of that. One young lady said, I always thought addiction happened because people started doing the thing they became addicted to. Now I'm wondering if there might be more to it. I told her she was right. There is almost always something more to it. I told the ladies they could use the story as a way to debunk the myth about fraternities and sororities. They always get a bad rap about the level of drinking and drug use that goes on. The reality is, because of the close bonds and relationships they form with one another, they are as protected - if not more so - than the students on campus who don't have the same opportunities for social bonding. I told the ladies the most powerful conversation I could have with them was the one I was having, the one encouraging them to love one another. That conversation would go a lot further in preventing drug addiction than a PowerPoint about how harmful and addictive drugs can be. Most addictions don't happen because people don't know better, it's because they don't feel better. And most people don't feel better because they don't have people to feel life with at all. I worry about the direction of addictions. Not just drug addictions, but all addictions. Most researchers are finding growing similarities to drug addiction and screen addiction. More and more, I start talking about addictions as the things people turn to in order to feel the goodness in life we were wired to find in our connections with one another. If we can't find that goodness in one another, we'll find it by connecting to something else. And if we're not careful, we'll become addicted to that something else. I know a lot of people will say - well those were rats - we are humans. Maybe - but I've talked to a lot of humans in my life who are struggling with an addiction or an obsession. And all I can say is, quite often, we aren't far into the conversation before these humans start talking about a life that sounds far more like a rat cage than a rat park. We were created to find no greater pleasure in life than the pleasure we find in one another. Sadly, more and more people are looking for that pleasure elsewhere. I don't know how to stem that tide. All I know is it starts with one another. It starts with spending more time in the park with one another and less time alone in a cage.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
July 2025
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