Well that's a start - you're open to challenging perenially held non-truths, as espoused by one of the other repeaters on here.Originally Posted by Luca
Well that's a start - you're open to challenging perenially held non-truths, as espoused by one of the other repeaters on here.
I am quite happy, as most emotionally stable adults would be, to admit I may have been wrong to definitively suggest that addicts are always addicts. I do believe that some people are more susceptible to addiction - which I believe is back up by research, but again happy to be corrected - and my comments were more based on the idea that former addicts are always "recovering" rather than cured, in that returning to the drug/stimulus even once can cause a relapse.
I think this here is the key to the (note: nuanced) discussion of whether people are always addicts or not. I don't think it's necessarily the case, but there is the possibility (the science behind which is beyond my pay-grade and commerce degree) that the ΔFosB overexpression that leads to addiction causes permanent changes to the brain, so that even when you've kicked your habit, you're at least still more susceptible to addictions.
I submit that I don't know the facts of this particular discussion very well (which is why, @QE Harold Flair, I didn't 'come to your defence'), but I do know the facts of addiction being a physical issue well, which was my main point of contention.
Cured from what? Addiction is not a disease.
That's nice, dear.
ΔFosB overexpression and the changes to neuroplasticity that it causes. Are you not following?
It doesn't cause changes to neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is just the ability of the brain to change and adapt - as in the brain is plastic, it can be molded.
I guess the best way to express it would be to say that it causes a form of neuroplasticity itself to occur i.e. it causes the brain to change.
Cured from a learned pattern of behaviour, then? Neural plasticity is simply something we all have. So addiction is nothing more than continually doing something you want to and it can be stopped without any treatment, as has been shown. Treatment, it seems, is a waste of time.
Yeah, I could have phrased that better. I guess what I was looking for was "changes to the structure of our brain via neuroplasticity."
It's hardly just a 'learned behaviour'.
Rats will forgo food to the point of starvation for rewards of cocaine.
We're not rats.
Harold is completely right to be honest. But it's clear he's never truly being addicted to anything (other than msn news). There is a lot more to it than that - usually addicts to anything have done so through poor life choices that can be changed (with a lot of effort and willpower like he states) but a lot don't have the willpower or the effort in them for one reason or another.
It's that, the lack of wanting to try and change that causes someone who can't remove themselves from an addictive substance - but it's also that which I don't think Harold will probably understand.
Some people have to remove themselves from reality, addictions of any sort allow them to do so, if either a small smoking addiction to a heroin addiction and it's these minor details of a persons life that change it from simply an addiction to a disease.
Ultimately a well rounded person with a well rounded family could take up smoking and quit it using self empowerment and self wiliness with relative ease. But lets say someone who had an awful upbringing and awful life uses smoking (or any other substance) as a positive or escapist act to help themselves (from erasing the past or easing what it has done) is going to find it a lot harder to quit, almost impossible given some circumstances, because it's not only an addiction to the nicotine [add any other addictive substance here] but a way of feeling happy for escaping what has happened.
Using an addiction to escape trauma and then quitting said addiction is a lot harder and a lot closer to a mental disease then an addiction in itself.
And you are right Harold, we aren't rats. That's the problem with humans and addictions.
This isn't worth it. Just continue the discussion around him. Repeat after me:
Everyone else accepts that opiates and other drugs produce a chemical dependency within the brain, and that in many cases, this requires treatment above and beyond sheer willpower to get past. Let's push forward from that, accept that there is at least one bastion of disagreement in the ranks, and not bother trying to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced.
Does it count as legalization if it comes with a mandated treatment component?
So does caffeine and chocolate. We are free not to make the choice to eat chocolate or drink caffeine products. We still have that choice, just as those who choose to take heroin have the choice to do so or not do so. What treatments do you refer to? Putting people on another 'addictive' drug? Which, by the way, is often sold to buy more heroin. Oh and by the way no, not everyone does accept what you just said.
Also, don't tell others not to talk with me when you are doing exactly that. In fact, just don't do it at all. That's cretinous behaviour. And no, not 'repeat after me'. I have a different opinion so, to put it mildly, fuck you.
Just to come back to this:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/sen/committee/371/ille/presentation/alexender-e.htmMy colleagues at Simon Fraser University and I built the most natural environment for rats that we could contrive in the laboratory. "Rat Park", as it came to be called, was airy and spacious, with about 200 times the square footage of a standard laboratory cage. It was also scenic, (with a peaceful British Columbia forest painted on the plywood walls), comfortable (with empty tins, wood scraps, and other desiderata strewn about on the floor), and sociable (with 16-20 rats of both sexes in residence at once).
In the rat cages, the rats’ appetite for morphine was measured by fastening two drinking bottles, one containing a morphine solution and one containing water, on each cage and weighing them daily. In Rat Park, measurement of individual drug consumption was more difficult, since we did not want to disrupt life in the presumably idyllic rodent community. We built a short tunnel opening into Rat Park that was just large enough to accommodate one rat at a time. At the far end of the tunnel, the rats could release a fluid from either of two drop dispensers. One dispenser contained a morphine solution and the other an inert solution. The dispenser recorded how much each rat drank of each fluid.
A number of experiments were performed in this way (for a more detailed summary, see Alexander et al., 1985), all of which indicated that rats living in Rat Park had little appetite for morphine. In some experiments, we forced the rats to consume morphine for weeks before allowing them to choose, so that there could be no doubt that they had developed strong withdrawal symptoms. In other experiments, I made the morphine solution so sickeningly sweet that no rat could resist trying it, but we always found less appetite for morphine in the animals housed in Rat Park. Under some conditions the animals in the cages consumed nearly 20 times as much morphine as the rats in Rat Park. Nothing that we tried instilled a strong appetite for morphine or produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment.
Rat Park is interesting. It basically showed that if you have an interesting and enjoyable life, you're far less likely to become addicted. It probably goes some way to explaining why the rate of addiction is so high for the homeless. As Leeds said, it's a way to escape from life, so it will be less effective if your life isn't worth escaping from.
But it doesn't invalidate the idea that addictions are real, physical changes to the brain, just provides colour on the situations under which the changes are likely to arise.
A lot of people start doing drugs regularly because they're bored, and those with an addictive personality / limited life prospects become addicted to those drugs.
Explains the "functional" drug addict - and I know many who are 'hooked' on harder drugs (or even just weed/alcohol) who have their shit together - as they have a lot of shit to do and are still able to indulge pretty insane quantities. I know a guy who does methadone (and has done heroin quite a few times) pretty much every day and he got an offer from Credit Suisse for a full time post. Says he's gonna have to quit for his job and I believe him, but I wonder how hard it will be
It kind of does, actually. At the very least it shows 'addiction' isn't what people usually assume it is. The drug, itself, isn't overpowering the mind - which is why only the rats in dire conditions chose to keep taking it. There's a distinct difference between self medication and addiction.
You know not all drugs are the same yeah? The experiment I posted was with cocaine, the one you posted is with morphine. The level of addiction they cause in rats may be completely different.
I would have thought heroin was more addictive than cocaine?
Edit, while researcing on that! I came across this:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsul...ve-than-oreos/Research Shows Cocaine And Heroin Are Less Addictive Than Oreos
Even reading the first few lines of that it's clear the point they are making is that over-eating can be an addiction as well. If you can't get on-board with drug addiction being real, you're going to shit yourself at the thought of food addiction.
I don't agree with the word 'addiction' as it's being used. There is still a choice, and those who choose not to eat/take drugs show that willpower and strength of character overpowers the desire.
Willpower only applies to drugs for the first few times of use, it's once the addition has started that the willpower is replaced by a chemical addiction.
So how do people who beat 'addiction' do so, then? Is there anything pleasurable that isn't an addiction using that definition?
Harold, you know how sometimes after you've had six or seven Pringles, it's really difficult to not have one more? Imagine that x100000.
There comes a time in the action of pringle devouring that one does stop. You know when you've had enough and you make a conscious decision to stop. I mean I could easily go though 2 tubes of Pringles if I wanted to, but I don't.
Harold, you almost make me want to track you down and get you hooked on heroin. Then, once that's been done, we could just leave you in a room with a month's worth of food, water and heroin and livestream the whole thing.
I genuinely think that's the lengths that someone would have to go to in order to prove you wrong.
Yea, ok mate.
It would be pretty interesting, to be fair.
Do you reckon you'd be able to get through the month without taking any heroin?
Of course, and then I'd take great pleasure in having a sadist prosecuted.
I don't believe I could even get 'hooked' on heroin, so you would fall flat right there. And you'd be missing the point in any case, it would be the boredom and the situation that would lead to someone taking the heroin in such circumstances, not the addictiveness of the drug.
Haha, quality. I'd love to see it done. We could add a Playstation into the room to cure the boredom, like.
Weirdo.
What else can you do?
I know it's meant in jest but that's a really unhelpful analogy in the context of things.
When I get home I might try putting a load of Pringles into a blender with a little water, and then injecting the paste directly into my bloodstream. I bet I wouldn't get addicted, because I'm a man's man.
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