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What causes, say, heroin addiction?

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This is a really stupid question, right?

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It’s obvious; we all know it;

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heroin causes heroin addiction.

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Here’s how it works:

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if you use heroin for 20 days, by day 21,

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your body would physically
crave the drug ferociously

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because there are
chemical hooks in the drug.

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That’s what addiction means.

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But there’s a catch.

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Almost everything we think
we know about addiction is wrong.

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If you, for example, break your hip,
you’ll be taken to a hospital

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and you’ll be given loads of diamorphine
for weeks or even months.

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Diamorphine is heroin.

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It’s, in fact, much stronger heroin than
any addict can get on the street

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because it’s not contaminated by all
the stuff drug dealers dilute it with.

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There are people near you being given

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loads of deluxe heroin
in hospitals right now.

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So at least some of them
should become addicts?

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But this has been closely
studied; it doesn’t happen.

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Your grandmother wasn’t turned into
a junkie by her hip replacement.

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Why is that?

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Our current theory of addiction comes in
part from a series of experiments

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that were carried out earlier
in the 20th century.

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The experiment is simple:

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you take a rat and put it in a
cage with two water bottles.

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One is just water, the other is water
laced with heroin or cocaine.

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Almost every time you run this experiment,

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the rat will become obsessed
with the drugged water

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and keep coming back for
more and more, until it kills itself.

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But in the 1970s, Bruce Alexander,
a professor of psychology,

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noticed something odd
about this experiment:

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the rat is put in the cage all alone.

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It has nothing to do but take the drugs.

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What would happen, he wondered,
if we tried this differently?

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So he built Rat Park, which is
basically heaven for rats;

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it’s a lush cage where the rats would have
colored balls, tunnels to scamper down,

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plenty of friends to play with,
and they could have loads of sex—

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everything a rat about town could want.

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And they would have the drugged water
and the normal water bottles.

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But here’s the fascinating thing:

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in Rat Park, rats hardly
ever use the drugged water;

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none of them ever use it compulsively;
none of them ever overdose.

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But maybe this is a quirk of rats, right?

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Well, helpfully, there was a human
experiment along the same lines:

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the Vietnam War.

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20% of American troops in Vietnam
were using a lot of heroin.

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People back home were really panicked,

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because they thought there would be
hundreds of thousands of junkies

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on the streets of the United States
when the war was over.

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But a study followed the soliders home
and found something striking:

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they didn’t go to rehab; they didn’t
even go into withdrawal;

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95% of them just stopped
after they got home.

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If you believe the old theory of
addiction, that makes no sense.

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But if you believe Prof. Alexander’s
theory, it makes perfect sense,

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because if you’re put into a horrific
jungle in a foreign country

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where you don’t want to be, and you could
be forced to kill or die at any moment,

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doing heroin is a great way
to spend your time;

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but if you go back to your nice
home with your friends and your family,

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it’s the equivalent of being
taken out of that first cage

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and put into a human Rat Park;

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it’s not the chemicals, it’s your cage.

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We need to think about
addiction differently.

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Human beings have an innate
need to bond and connect.

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When we are happy and healthy, we will
bond with the people around us.

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But when we can’t,

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because we’re traumatized, isolated,
or beaten down by life,

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we will bond with something
that gives us some sense of relief.

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It might be endlessly
checking a smartphone;

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it might be pornography, video games,
reddit, gambling, or it might be cocaine.

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But we will bond with something,
because that is our human nature.

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The path out of unhealthy
bonds is to form healthy bonds,

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to be connected to people
you want to be present with.

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Addiction is just one symptom of
the crisis of disconnection

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that’s happening all around us.

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We all feel it.

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Since the 1950s, the average number of
close friends an American has

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has been steadily declining.

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At the same time, the amount of
floor space in their homes

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has been steadily increasing.

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To choose floor space over friends,
to choose stuff over connection.

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The War on Drugs we’ve been
fighting for almost a century now

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has made everything worse.

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Instead of helping people heal
and getting their life together,

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we have cast them out from society,

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we have made it harder for them
to get jobs and become stable,

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we take benefits and support away from
them if we catch them with drugs,

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we throw them in prison cells,
which are literally cages,

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we put people who are not well

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in a situation which makes them feel worse
and hate them for not recovering.

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For too long, we’ve talked only about
individual recovery from addiction.

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But we need now to
talk about social recovery.

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Because something has gone
wrong with us as a group.

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We have to build a society that
looks a lot more like Rat Park

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and a lot less like those isolated cages.

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We are going to have to change
the unnatural way we live

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and rediscover each other.

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The opposite of addiction is not sobriety;
the opposite of addiction is connection.

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This video is a collaboration
with Johann Hari,

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the author of the book

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“Chasing the Scream: The First and Last
Days of the War on Drugs”.

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He was very kind to work with us
on this video to spread the word.

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We recommend that you give the book a try.

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Our videos are made thanks
to your support on Patreon.com.

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If you want to help us make more of them,
we really appreciate your support.

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We made an interactive version of this
video together with some friends.

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See the link in the description.