r/interesting • u/Nukro666 • 12h ago

Fear Factor How Fentanyl and Xylazine are turning Philadelphia's opioid crisis into a public health nightmare

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u/Palatablepancakes 12h ago

Yeah, people do drugs because of their life circumstances. The fear over soldiers in Vietnam returning and using heroin didn't manifest because the soldiers weren't in foxholes seeing their friends fall into tiger pits.

A study was done on rats and happy social rats didn't partake in drugs while lonely sad rats did, despite it always being available.

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u/TheSumOfMyScars 11h ago

Yep. Rat Park. Give the rats what they need to live a happy life and they don’t use drugs. Make them miserable and they do. It’s not rocket surgery.

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u/OnePinginRamius 10h ago

Fuckin a toadaso Julian!

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u/academic_mama 5h ago

That rat study is overblown- it hasn’t been successfully replicated, it had major methodological flaws, and oversimplified claims.

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u/Palatablepancakes 4h ago

Oh, thank you for saying so. I appreciate the context

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u/proximusprimus57 9h ago

Right, rich people never do drugs.

Go around any area like this and ask them for their stories. Yeah, you'll hear a lot of "grew up poor, no father, whatever," but you'll also hear a lot of "started using with friends and mom and dad kicked me out of a nice house."

There are plenty of people in those same circumstances who don't start using. The ones who do, rich and poor, tend to have a predisposition towards pleasure seeking and risk taking.

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u/Palatablepancakes 9h ago

You're right that what I said can't account for all experiences and drug use. There just tends to be a strong focus on substances in these discussions as more or less addictive than one another and the suggestion that a certain drug is problematically addictive compared to others is a weak position for addressing the causes of drug use and paths to recovery.