Rat AddictLast week I read on Wikipedia about rats and their affinity for morphine. I was going to write something about how people do drugs because they like them. It is a small point, but one that bugs me: many people think that drug seeking behavior is purely dysfunctional. My position is that drug seeking behavior is rational, even if it can become a trap. But as is often the case with Wikipedia, when I went back, the phrase I was looking for was gone.

In searching, I happened about the following discussion of morphine and rats:

Other studies, such as the Rat Park experiments, suggest that morphine is less physically addictive than others suggest, and most studies on morphine addiction merely show that "severely distressed animals, like severely distressed people, will relieve their distress pharmacologically if they can."[17] In these studies, rats with a morphine "addiction" overcome their addiction themselves when placed in decent living environments with enough space, good food, companionship, areas for exercise, and areas for privacy. More recent research has shown that an enriched environment may decrease morphine addiction in mice.[18]

The Rat Park experiments are indeed very interesting. And it is a welcome counter to the disease theory of drug addiction. The idea is that environmental deprivation is what causes addition. I accept this to a large extent, but my thoughts are more nuanced. I would say that people will tend to avoid becoming dependent upon a drug if they live in a varied and engaging social environment. Many people become dependent out of boredom. The situation is complicated by the fact that heroin addiction (for example) generally provides a life style that is highly engaging, difficult, and rewarding. I have long felt—with much justification—that providing drug addicts with job training would be far more effective than providing them with "drug treatment." Even though I disagree with the details of the Rat Park experiments, I think we agree about this conclusion.

What is interesting about the Wikipedia quote is that the footnotes are not to articles that directly relate to the material. For example, footnote [17] refers to Weissman and Haddox's "Opioid pseudoaddiction—an iatrogenic syndrome." This paper is about a single human patient who, when under-treated for pain begins acting like a drug addict. The fact that this is considered an important finding is indicative of the poor state of drug addiction research. It implies that scientists thought that drug addicts acted as they did because of some special property of their drug addled minds instead of their rational attempt to relieve pain.

The second footnote [18] is Xu et al.'s "Effects of enriched environment on morphine-induced reward in mice." This article only refers to the second sentence, "More recent research has shown that an enriched environment may decrease morphine addiction in mice." However, its results are interesting. It found that mice placed in better environments "kicked down" their habits voluntarily. Again, this should come as no surprise. Human addicts do this all the time. What's more, drug taking activities are all about controlling a person's environment. No one questions this when it comes to doing more drugs, but it is suddenly a shock that it can also lead to doing less drugs. This comes from the strangle hold of the paradigm of the "irrational drug user."

This is even seen in the abstract for the article itself:

Drug addiction and abuse have been extremely serious problems in our society.

The idea that drug addiction is an "extremely serious problem" is not even questioned. In fact, this is a tautology: drug addiction is a serious problem because it is a serious problem. Because we know it is a serious problem, we make it illegal. This makes it more expensive both economically and socially. Users of banned drugs are pushed to the margins of society. They are arrested and pushed even more to the edge of society. Because of this, it is almost impossible to say what harms come from drug addiction. (We do, however, know that the effects of opiate addiction in the 19th century were minor compared to them today.)

The use of the term "drug abuse" is also a curious term to find in a scientific paper. I'm never quite certain what we are to think is being abuse. Is it the drug? If so, it makes no sense. One would never say we are committing nail abuse when we hit it wrong and bend it. Is it the person? Again, this makes no sense. It reminds me of nothing so much as the old term "self abuse" for "masturbation." But lest we forget: masturbation and homosexuality were psychological diseases not so very long ago.

We will never make any real progress in the science of addiction as long as we assume that drug addicts are irrational. Just as a person is the same after his morning cup of coffee as he was before, so a person is the same after taking heroin as he was before. One might be a little more alert and the other a little more drowsy, but they are still rational human beings. We need to treat them as such.

Update

I found it! It was under Brown Rat:

Rats may also emit short, high frequency, ultrasonic, socially induced vocalization during rough and tumble play, before receiving morphine, or mating, and when tickled. The vocalization, described as a distinct "chirping", has been likened to laughter, and is interpreted as an expectation of something rewarding.

Rats do morphine for the same reason they do many other things: they enjoy it. This is only a difficult concept for those in the drug treatment industry.