How To Overcome An Addiction

When it's a controversial topic, I just limit them to my blog.Late at night,my friends were asking about coolidge effect from my story. Few of them said it's better for someone to stop any sort of addiction.

It's been about a century since we made this fateful decision to take addicts and punish them,make them suffer because we believe that would deter them and give an incentive to stop.

Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong.

I have seen patients were given loads of ketamine, diamorphine, diazepam, tramadol etc for long period of time during surgeries or during post operative window period.

All the opioids given in a hospital is actually much better, medically pure than those contaminated stuff on the streets.

I wondered why these people that exposed to all that chemical hooks never became an addict.

They didn't leave the hospital as  junkies.

When I tried to learn more about this,I came across an experiment by a psychology professor named Bruce Alexander.

He placed rats in a cage and put 2 bottles of water.One is plain water and another one is mixed with either heroin or cocaine.

The rats almost always prefer the drugged water and kill themselves quite quickly.

Then he noticed something.He have been putting the rats in an empty cage.Those rats have nothing else to do except to use those drugs.

So he tried something different.He built a cage called rat park which is basically a heaven  for rats.They got loads of cheese, colored balls,tunnels,lots of female rats as well. Then he placed both water bottles.The fascinating thing was,in rat park,they don't like the drugged water, almost none of the rats drink it.

I thought maybe it's just about rats,not for us but unfortunately there was a human experiment in an exact principle.It was the Vietnam War.In Vietnam,20% of the American troops were using loads of heroin but when they got back home,they didn't go to rehab nor into withdrawal.95% of them just stopped.

Those experiments raised a different question.

What if addiction isn't about chemical hooks?

What if addiction is about your cage?

What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment?

Human beings have a natural and innate needs to bond.When we're happy and healthy,we will bond and connect with each other but if you can't do that due to any reason,you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief.

If you're suffering from any sort of addiction,first find your cage that you have been trapped in.Once you fix the root cause,the addiction which is a symptom will disappear itself.