Chapter 7: Rat Park
Summary:
Rat Park was an experiment done by Bruce Alexander where he wanted to study if difficult circumstances were lead to addiction rather than the chemical itself. Rat park is almost like an amusement park. It was large and comfortable and had everything a rat could want. The experiment put 16 rats in rat park and 16 rats in cages. The first test the rats access to a sweet mixture of morphine water as well as just regular tap water. The results showed that the rats in rat park did not take to the morphine water but the caged rats drank it consistently. The next study started with giving all the rats morphine water for 57 days so they were all junkies. The same settings as before were used and it was shown that the rats in rat parked stopped using or significantly cut back on morphine use despite showing signs of withdrawal. The caged rats did not stop. The author even did a test with pills and was inconclusive.
Discussion:
The chapter's in this book keep getting better. Even though this one took awhile to get down to business I found it fascinating. I never thought that the way we think of addiction as a society could be challenged. At the end of the chapter the author just seemed absolutely uncertain of which explanation to believe which I can understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment