Happy Cage

"The Happy Cage – Why everything we think about addiction is wrong" revisits the revolutionary "Rat Park" experiments of the 1970s. Standard addiction studies put a rat alone in a cage with two bottles: water and heroin-water. The rat always chose the drugs and died. Psychologist Rebecca Miles explains how Bruce Alexander changed the variable. He built a "Rat Park" with toys, food, and other rats for sex and socializing. In this environment, the rats tried the drugs but didn't become addicted. They preferred their social lives. This book argues that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection. It challenges the "War on Drugs" and explains why soldiers returning from Vietnam (where heroin was rampant) didn't remain addicts once they returned to their families.