Essay On Rat Park

 A person in an impoverished situation may abuse drugs or alcohol as a way to cope with the dangerous environment he or she may live in, a way to deal with her financial stresses or a way to cope with physical or emotional abuse. Many times,

The article, “Rat Park,” is about a study about being addicted to drugs. In the article they talk about Alexander’s hypothesis that drugs do not cause addiction, but it's based on the living conditions a person is living in. The experiment was taken on rats, where some live caged in and and another set lived in the rat park. The experiment in the article shows, “. . . successfully showed that rats will resist even the most irresistibility delivered drug if it interferes with the alternatively gratifying opportunities available to them” (Slater). In the cage the rats would take the water with the drug, while in the rat park, the rats had the option to drink plain water or water with the drug. The rats who had the option of which type of liquid they want, would choose the liquid without the drug. Having this experiment done gave Alexander a conclusion about addiction. It states, “Alexander’s research suggests that addictions are in fact quite subject to free will” (Slater). The people studied on rats on how they are the type of animal are kind of close to humans, well on how they body system works. Every human has the right to be free, but are the humans really deciding base what they think is right.

In Lauren Slater’s article Rat Park, Slater talks about Bruce Alexander’s study and experiments on addiction. Alexander’s experiment consists of lab rats in two environments. The first is a caged environment and the second was a “perfect environment” called Rat Park. Rats in each environment were given two choices of water. One study group had regular water and the second was a form of heroin in water. The caged rats chose to drink the drugged water until they were placed into the “perfect” rat park environment. Once placed in this environment, theses rats stopped drinking the drugged water and started to drink the regular water. The rodents originally placed in the rat park drank

There are many ways in which the drug problem impacts poverty. The most obvious way drug use impacts poverty is through the fact that drugs are addictive and an addict will do anything to get their drugs. A drug addict will spend their life savings on drugs once all of their money is gone they may then resort to criminal activities such as robbery in order to satisfy their growing habit. This drastically contributes to the issue of poverty because not only is the drug addict in poverty but the victim being robbed is also suffering financially. Crime is closely related to drugs because first of all drugs are a crime whether or not they are used for personal purposes or with intent to sell.

In the article rat park Rats in Rat Park and control animals in standard laboratory cages had access to two water bottles, one filled with plain water and the other with morphine-laced water. The denizens of Rat Park overwhelmingly preferred plain water to morphine (the test produced statistical confidence levels of over 99.9 percent). Even when Alexander tried to seduce his rats by sweetening the morphine, the ones in Rat Park drank far less than the ones in cages. Only when he added naloxone, which eliminates morphine’s narcotic effects, did the rats in Rat Park start drinking from the water-sugar-morphine bottle. They wanted the sweet water, but not if it made them high. In a variation he calls “Kicking the Habit,” Alexander gave rats in

We will be examining substance abuse among adolescents in Orange County (OC) and assessing the contributing factors and different interventions currently offered. Adolescent substance abuse is difficult to identify because, unlike diseases, there are generally no physical manifestations. Therefore, proper education and resources geared towards at-risk adolescents must effectively address the underlying contributors of substance abuse. National statistics generally suggest that poverty is directly related to substance abuse. However, Courtney Perkes, a writer for the Orange County Register, notes that wealth is associated with substance abuse among teens, especially those living “in south Orange County and

Individual level risk factors for addiction may include low school involvement, existing mental disorders, history of abuse or neglect, and use during adolescence

There was one major study that showed the impact of connection with addiction and recovery. The study knows as “Rat Park” was conducted by Bruce K. Alexander in the 1970’s. The article, Rat Park Substance Use Experiment explains the experiment. In this experiment, Professor Alexander studied whether continued drug addiction was completely a result of imbibing the substance, or whether there were outside factors contributing to addiction. Alexander took two groups of rats and put them in two different compartments. Half of the rats were placed in complete isolation. The other half were placed in a very large area that had walls painted to look like woodlands, and cedar shavings and tons of boxes for the rats to play in, pretty much giving the

The Radical Addiction The purpose of Bruce Alexander’s experiment was to challenge the beliefs that people have about addiction. He wanted to know if addiction was still a result even when a benevolent environment was present. He wanted to look at the affects social, physical and physiological restrains have on addiction. This experiment’s purpose was to show if addiction was due to the chemical or if it was culture.

Many sociological studies fail to provide an accurate picture of substance abuse in a society for a number of reasons. In treatment or survey interviews, substance abusing individuals frequently misrepresent or misreport their frequency of use. Those living in poverty are often more transient in their housing than those of middle and upper classes and may, therefore, be excluded from many types of household surveys. Often, statistical information is gathered from treatment facilities; however facilities do not all report into a national database and a large number of addicts never seek services. One final problem with the validity of studies involving substance abuse and poverty is the isolation, in many studies, of one or more drugs. Many researchers have focused on drugs, such as crack-cocaine or heroin and not marijuana or powder cocaine (Jacobson and Ensminger, 2011). While it is difficult to obtain valid data on the actual rate and incidence of substance abuse in poverty ridden communities, researchers have been able to isolate some negative effects of substance abuse and correlate them to socio-economic status.

Doweiko explains there are several factors that increase an individual’s vulnerability for a substance use disorder (SUD). Lack of parental bonding can have an impact of what the child learns. Environmental factors include poverty, sparse opportunities in life and no chance of going on a vacation to get away from the neighborhood. Not having the means to have a safe purposeful life can lead people to escape reality with drug use. The most important factor is an individual’s life goals. Deciding what they want to do with their futures and whether or not substance use or abuse is something they want in their future goals. If an individual’s goals are not planned then they are vulnerable to substance use or abuse (Doweiko,

It has become common wisdom to dismiss the Bruce Alexander work. However, Lauren Slater at the chapter Rat Park gives a quit unique and unexpected thought towards drug addicts. My whole life I heard it said that when more individuals get exposed to a drug the more addictive they become. (Slater) A few of physiologist have disclaimed and ignore Bruce Alexander’s experiment regarding drug addiction. The experiment was conducted with Mice, they were put first in a dirty and nasty cage, it turns out that the Mice on the dirty cage became extremely addicted. The Mice on another cage had a spectacular environment and the Mice refused to take the drugs. The concluded that marbles environments did not cause addiction instead it did

In the 1970’s, he decided to have his own experiment, but changed the environment that the rats were in. In his version, he created “Rat Park”, and in this park, the rats were not alone and had plenty of other things to do. He wanted to test why the rats decided to go back to the drugs in the previous experiments. From both his experiment and the previous, he was able to see that when given nothing to do, be either rat or human, your body will crave stimuli. With the rats alone their only stimuli was the drugged water, while in Rat Park they had a plentiful amount of things to do besides consume the drugs. Alexander’s experiment had cancelled out the ones before him, but many still believe that the previous

After reading the journal article, “addiction is a brain disease”, there were two interesting facts that caught my attention. One of it was the environmental cue that the home environment is the reason why one begins to use a drug and becomes addicted to it. The home environment cue is who the individuals hanged out with, drug-buddies or the spot where the individuals consume the drugs. For example, a group of people hangs out and one of the people in the group does not do drug, but everyone in that group does drug and persuades the person to do drug constantly then the person becomes addicted to the drugs. When an individual is addicted to a drug and try to seek help, some individuals will be successful at their full recovery of their addiction

This has an effect on teens living in the same harsh conditions. There are many teens out there living in communities whose families cannot support them because the mother or father is on drugs. This leads a teen to becoming pregnant and not able to get the proper care that one would need. This can lead to them being kicked out, having to live on the street, and commit numerous of crimes just to survive. This becomes a cycle of delinquent behavior with each generation.