The most significant study ever conducted on addiction did not involve a treatment program, a therapy session, or a new medication. It involved a much larger cage or prison.
Bruce Alexander’s experiment completely changed everything the world had previously thought about addiction and dependence.
And it shifted the entire paradigm through which we thought people were unable to stop.
The answer lay not only in the chemical properties of the substance or in interactions with substances or situations.
The answer lay solely… in the architecture!
In the 1970s, researchers at Simon Fraser University conducted an experiment that would spark a major debate.
They placed rats in small, isolated cages. In these cages, they offered the rats two sources of water: plain water and water laced with morphine.
Most of the rats chose the water containing morphine—compulsively and almost immediately.
And they continued to consume it until it led to their death due to repeated use.
The conclusion, at the time, seemed obvious, clear, and very straightforward. Drugs hijack and sabotage the brain; when given unrestricted access to the drug, the result is practically inevitable… death.
But a psychologist named Bruce Alexander, also at Simon Fraser University, noticed something that had initially gone completely unnoticed by the other researchers.
In those experiments, the rats were not making free choices. They were making a choice, but it was not a free one.
They were isolated, confined, deprived of any stimulation or interaction, and were given nothing else with which to connect, relate, or interact.
In fact, they weren’t choosing drugs; they were actually choosing the only relief available to them to free themselves from that unbearable or intolerable environment.
So, he decided to redesign the experiment.
To that end, he built a park for the rats. A spacious habitat with tunnels, hiding places, toys, access to food, and social interaction with other rats.
These were the conditions he believed would most accurately replicate, in a laboratory setting, what occurs in nature.
And so, two sources of water were also made available to the rats: plain water or water laced with morphine.
The rats in the park barely touched the water laced with morphine.
The same thing happened even when the water laced with morphine was sweetened. And even when they used rats that had previously been exposed to morphine—rats that had shown a preference for the drug-laced drink—and after this compulsive behavior and isolation, moved them to this specially constructed rat park and offered them exactly the same choices, their consumption decreased considerably.
The drug itself had not been altered, nor had its vehicle, much less its availability, access, concentration in the water, or degree of purity.
The only variable between the two experiments was the architecture of the cages.
Later, the researcher came to call this theory the “Displacement Theory.”
There is a view that compulsive behaviors—such as substance abuse, behavioral escapism, and disengagement—are not primarily caused by the substance or activity itself. Rather, they are caused by a loss of connection, purpose, and belonging.
If you remove these three pillars from any developed society, even the slightest form of escapism becomes appealing.
The most striking example of this is what happened during the Vietnam War. Studies at the time showed that, roughly speaking, about 20% of American soldiers deployed to the front lines of that conflict engaged in heavy heroin use during their time there. And that nearly 95% of these soldiers, upon returning home, were able to stop this abusive behavior almost immediately, without needing to resort to a detox program.
Not because heroin had become less addictive, but simply because of the change they experienced in their living environment.
And this is the part where we should pause for a moment to reflect.
Most of us don’t look at our own escape behaviors…
Scrolling through social media, drinking alcohol, working obsessively long hours, chronic distraction… we should ask ourselves: what are these behaviors actually relieving us of?
If we treat these escape behaviors as personal failures, signs of weak character, or obstacles to be overcome with greater discipline.
The “Displacement Theory” asks something completely different. Not why you can’t stop or break the cycle, but rather what’s missing from your environment—where you live and work—that would allow you to have more connection, purpose, and autonomy. Something to build with an eye toward the future.
The cage isn’t always obvious or visible.
Image by Yvonne Höpfl from Pixabay
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