In her book “Opening Skinner’s Box,” Lauren Slater invites us in this book to reflect on human nature by describing, commenting and inquiring about classic experiments in psychology. In chapter 7: “Rat Park” The Radical Addiction Experiment. She brings up an experiment that Bruce Alexander, a psychologist; made with rats. He decided to build a colorful park where he put from 16 to 20 rats of both genders with abundant food, balls and wheels to play. On the other hand, he isolated other ones into the cage, which are forced to consume morphine for 57 days. When these animals were moved to the Rat Park and given the opportunity to choose between normal water and water mixed with morphine, most chose normal water. Through
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Slater describes how people feel when they are in a boring surrounding “Solitary confinement causes extraordinary physic distress in human beings and is likely to be just stressful to other sociable species, therefore to elicit extreme form of coping behaviors such as the use of powerful analgesics and tranquilizer ” (167)
Lacking of motivation. Many people turn to drugs because they do not feel comfortable with their lives or do not find a motivation to guide them. Generally, people affected by drug addiction suffer from certain social exclusion. They do not have good results in their studies, they have no job, or the one they have is difficult and not very stimulating. It is not uncommon then, to get pleasant or stimulating sensations that break your routine, and end up using drugs regularly.
Slater described the case of Emma Lowry, whose something really bad happened to the bones of her back, but now has a different view of the drugs. With this briefly introduction of Emma Lowry’s story, I would like to say why the use of drugs should not be considered as a drug addition. First, some drugs such as morphine and opium are used to treat pain, especially after surgeries, as well as to suppress severe cough. For example, this was this time when a member of my family had cancer. He went trough this difficult surgery
Slater describes how people feel when they are in a boring surrounding “Solitary confinement causes extraordinary physic distress in human beings and is likely to be just stressful to other sociable species, therefore to elicit extreme form of coping behaviors such as the use of powerful analgesics and tranquilizer ” (167)
Lacking of motivation. Many people turn to drugs because they do not feel comfortable with their lives or do not find a motivation to guide them. Generally, people affected by drug addiction suffer from certain social exclusion. They do not have good results in their studies, they have no job, or the one they have is difficult and not very stimulating. It is not uncommon then, to get pleasant or stimulating sensations that break your routine, and end up using drugs regularly.
Slater described the case of Emma Lowry, whose something really bad happened to the bones of her back, but now has a different view of the drugs. With this briefly introduction of Emma Lowry’s story, I would like to say why the use of drugs should not be considered as a drug addition. First, some drugs such as morphine and opium are used to treat pain, especially after surgeries, as well as to suppress severe cough. For example, this was this time when a member of my family had cancer. He went trough this difficult surgery