Tedx Addiction

According to Johann Hari on his talk in TEDx, addiction is caused by isolation. To come up with his conclusion, he met with different people from different parts of the world and shared an experiment done by Professor Bruce Alexander. In his experiment, he put a rat in a cage with two water bottles, one of which had drugs. The rat chose the one with drugs, but Professor Alexander realized that the cage was empty and this could have affected the results. When he included other aspects in the cage and made it into a “rat park,” which included cheese, tunnels, and even other rats and as a result, the rats did not like the drug water. He compared this experiment to the Vietnam War where soldiers were using heroin, which could have possibly been caused by their isolation. However, they easily stopped once they returned home. Another aspect that he shared is how doctors use diamorphine, which is a type of heroine, to their patients but patients do not become addicts even when given a huge dose of diamorphine. Furthermore, Johann Harri says that addiction is an “adaptation to your environment.” As human beings, people connect …show more content…
The theories above focus on individuals and speak about how they become addicted. However, it does not take into account why these individuals use drugs or other vices in the first place. Addiction was defined in the previous number as a “state in which organism engages in a compulsive behavior,” wherein a loss of control in limiting the intake can occur. On the other hand, Johann Hari proposes that it is a result of isolation and a disconnection from other