In The War On Drugs, Let's "Fight Like Heaven"

A 1978 study led to a revolutionary change in how we understand and treat addictions.

We've all read about early experiments involving laboratory rats becoming heavily addicted to drugs. Isolated in metal cages and given a restricted diet, they were given the choice of either pressing a bar for ordinary water or one that gave them a drug like morphine. that gave them a high. This was meant to prove that our brains are hardwired for pleasure, and when given the opportunity, we humans, like rats, are prone to becoming hooked on doping ourselves with as much pleasure as possible.

Then in 1978 Bruce K. Alexander, a Canadian psychologist, began to wonder whether rats, being highly social creatures, might have overdosed on morphine because they were cooped up in metal cages. 

So he designed an environment called Rat Park in which scores of rats were able to live together in a kind of rat utopia, where they had ample free space, good nutrition and lots of ways of experiencing an active and good life together.

What he found was that the residents of Rat Park had little interest in getting high on drugs, but occupied themselves with healthy and appropriate activities.

This is not to say that humans can't become addicted to alcohol and other drugs, and experience addiction as the disease it has indeed become, one that causes physical withdrawal when they try to break their habit. But it also means that incarcerating such people in steel cages is surely one of the worst possible ways to help them overcome these addictions.

Likewise, it may suggest that drug addiction is a symptom of our society's ills as much as it has become not of its major problems. While the disease can inflict anyone, many people grow up in environments where they are especially vulnerable to needing treatment.

So what if we were able to help parents provide more supportive and nurturing environments for their children? What if we invested more in good schools for our children and teens, and provided ample job training and employment opportunities for everyone? What if congregations would reach out to more hurting people, inviting them into caring spiritual families of faith, hope and unconditional love and support? What if drug treatment programs were designed to help addicted people find good human connections, get needed medical treatment and improve their work skills?

That sounds utopian, I know, like a foretaste of heaven on earth.

But isn’t that how we are all created to live as members of God's heaven-ruled kingdom? 

Certainly it's a dream that should motivate us to invest lots of time, energy and creativity in a truly effective "war on drugs."

Here's a link to a Ted Talk video on this topic: https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en