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Addiction Studies: Reconsidering problems that affect us all

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Addiction can damage important ties to family and to wider society, thus leading to a sense of extreme isolation for its victims. Image courtesy of Naypong/freedigitalphotos.net

Ethanol is a psychoactive (or mind-altering) drug that, once consumed, effects a sedative or depressant influence on one’s central nervous system. It’s almost a certainty that you’ve tried it before. In fact, the chances are that you enjoy it enough to ingest it regularly.

That’s because ethanol is the chief component in alcoholic beverages. It is one of the oldest recreational drugs known, and its use can be traced back not just to Ancient Greece or Rome, but to Ancient Egypt and earlier – as far back as 7000 BC China.

The long-term presence of ethanol perhaps goes at least some way towards explaining the widespread acceptance of its equally widespread use. Drink is used in celebration, commiseration and – as witnessed by media reports of a ‘session’ in the Dail on the night of the Abortion Bill debate – even (unwisely) in contemplation.

Yet it has also been widely acknowledged that its abuse can lead to serious physical, emotional and mental deterioration. Heavy abuse does not provide solutions, only more problems.

While there have been studies to show that certain types of people may be more susceptible to addiction, a well-trained addiction counsellor will consider the likelihood that a client’s addiction, whether to a substance or an activity, is often a response to other circumstances in the client’s life.

Assumptions

The addictive quality of many drugs have been widely documented, and those addictive qualities have become, over time, something of an assumption in the public consciousness. The chemicals in certain substances are thought to re-wire the brain so that the subject develops a dependence on the substance or activity, as well as on the feelings and experience it provides them.

However, a series of little-known experiments conducted in the 1970s in Canada seem to indicate that this may not be the case.

The experiments (which you can read about here) were conducted with the aim of testing the hypothesis that rats in an enclosed environment chose to consume morphine over water only because of the conditions in which they were housed. In brief, the experimenters designed a much larger enclosure for their test subjects, decorated it, installed running wheels and allowed the males and females to mix freely. They provided them with as much food and water as they wanted. There were no deprivations. The experimenters found that rats in the smaller enclosures consumed 20 times as much morphine as those housed in the latter.

The experiments thus raised the possibility that housing and environmental circumstances may well play a larger role in substance addiction than is generally thought. The influencing factors were therefore as much external as they were internal. With this in mind, the recent claim by Fr Peter McVerry (founder of the Peter McVerry Trust) that homelessness in Ireland is now worse than ever brings with it the profoundly disturbing possibility that levels of substance abuse and addiction may also see a significant increase.

Learning about Addiction

Addiction Studies programmes disabuse learners of any unproductive preconceptions or tendencies towards judgement as they examine the meaning and nature of addiction. Students are taught that addiction and substance abuse are often a response to a variety of harmful external factors – social, environmental or physical.  While the brain’s chemistry may undoubtedly be affected by exposure to certain intoxicants or stimulants, the compulsion towards these is often borne from needs that are either neglected or missing from elsewhere in the addict’s life.

Furthermore, Addiction Studies programmes are careful to place the effects of addiction within a societal context. The problems that addiction cause affect not just the individual concerned; they affect the rest of us too.


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