» book review: The globalisation of addiction
Addiction, the scientist Bruce Alexander maintains, is more of a social than a chemical problem. When he built a rat colony based on rats’ needs rather than those of the researchers — rat heaven, if you will — he discovered that not only did rats’ addiction to drugs such as opiates disappear, the rats would rather suffer withdrawal than relapse even when forcibly addicted. The results haven’t exactly taken a prominent role in our view of addiction. It just might be they should. (via)