In the article “Chasing The Scream” Bruce Alexander informs us on how much our environment can shape our compulsions in regards to drugs. Bruce states that “addiction isn’t a disease. Addiction is an adaptation. It’s not you but it’s the cage you live in.” In other words, it depends on the environment that you are surrounded by that will make you addicted to something, such as drugs. This shows that our desire to do drugs doesn’t come from the drug itself, but from where we grow up. Bruce also stated that the drug is not what causes the harmful behavior, but the environment does. For instance, he did an experiment on rats. One group of rats were isolated with nothing in their cage just a bottle of water and a bottle of morphine. The other group had these two bottles as well, but they had things to play with like colored balls, wheels, and good food. Bruce referred to this as “Rat Park”. It turns out that the rats in “Rat Park” didn’t consume as much morphine as the rats that were isolated. This proves how they chose to spend their lives doing other things, despite having the drug there for them. Being able to have a better environment seemed to reduce the need of wanting to use the drug.
Bruce also states in the article that “a happy social environment freed the rats of their addiction.” Now, in terms of human beings, being surrounded by drug users will determine how much you will consume. For example, if every day you surround yourself with people who are addicted to heroin with nothing else to do in their life, then most likely you will become an addict as well because now you are expose to it. Now, if you’re surrounded by people that are actually doing things for their lives such as working, going to school, or just doing productive things, this will most likely make you want to do the same. In other words, an addict can’t persuade you or make you crave the drugs, maybe you will try the drug once out of the blue, but this doesn’t mean that you are addicted to it. After all, is not as much pressure or force for a person to do drugs that actually has a good environment surrounding them because they will see themselves adapting to a better addiction like activities, a hobby, or just something that wouldn’t harm them mentally, physically, and emotionally.
