Addiction and Opiates

CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, PROBLEMS
In the course of our studies in child psychology we had expected to fix upon 7-8 as the age before which no genuinely
physical explanation could be given of natural phenomena. Our present inquiry entirely confirms this expectation.
After 7-8 the more positive forms of causality gradually supplant the others, and we can say that at the age of about 1
1 12 the evolution is completed. There is therefore, in the domain peculiar to causality, a process of evolution exactly
similar to that to which we drew attention in speaking of reality: confusion of the self and the universe, then
progressive separation with objectification of the causal sequences.... It is only after having assimilated the activity of
external bodies to his own muscular activity that the child turns the new-made instrument upon himself and, thanks to
it, becomes conscious of his internal experience.(5)
In view of Piaget's description of a child's developing conceptions of causality, the immunity of children to addiction,
the apparently permanent cure of a 12-year-old who bad been given drugs from birth, and the complete absence of
addiction in young persons below the age of ten years or thereabouts, are not accidental circumstances but exactly
what one would expect.
It is of considerable interest and significance that, during the last fifteen or so years, there has been considerable
experimental work with rats and monkeys that has seemed to a number of investigators to confirm the idea that the
book in opiates is derived from the experience of relief of withdrawal distress, that is, from negative reinforcement.
This convergence of views is notable in that it includes persons of very different professional and ideological
commitments, such as sociologists, psychologists, and pharmacologists. The experimental findings with lower animals
may be summarized with respect to the theoretical position outlined here by saying that they seem to indicate, insofar
as animals are capable of responding to opiates as human subjects do, that the similarity is produced by the same basic
mechanisms but in a simpler form. In other words, in so far as rats and monkeys can be hooked on drugs, the
processes of their becoming so follow the same patterns as in human subjects.
A point of controversy is the question of how far lower animals can go in duplicating human responses. This question
is part of the broader question of man's special place in the animal kingdom, his extraordinary intellectual capacities,
and his possession of language. Complex human responses, it is argued, are mediated by language symbols, by ideas or
concepts. The significance of a stimulus or situation is not inherent and fixed, but is determined by the way in which it
is perceived or conceived. Applied to addiction, these ideas suggest that the effects of drugs on behavior would be
expected to depend on how they were understood and interpreted.
Man's possession of language and conceptual thought also enables him to organize and integrate his responses on a
more complex level than is the case with lower animals.
Human addiction, unlike the reactions of lower animals, is a cultural or societal phenomenon. It becomes that when the
person understands or grasps conceptually what is happening to him and identifies himself as an addict. When the raw
biological and pharmacological events are conceptually elaborated they enter into relationships with other conceptual
processes, such as conceptions of self and those connected with laws, rules, morality, punishment, and guilt. The
complexities of addiction behavior which arise from the 'Cultural nature of man and the fact that he is the only
language-manipulating animal are naturally not found in rats and monkeys.
Addicting and Non-addicting Drugs
The drugs designated as addicting, such as barbiturates, opiates, and alcohol, share the characteristic feature that all
produce physical dependence and withdrawal distress. Non-addicting drugs, such as LSD, marihuana, cocaine, and
others, do not involve these features. Confusion arises from the fact that there are persons who use non-addicting drugs
regularly just as there are persons who use addicting drugs irregularly.
What is implied by the preceding analysis is that the attachments to these two types of substances are qualitatively
different and are established in two very different ways. In the case of addicting drugs, we have argued that it is the
push of withdrawal distress that fixes the habit; in the case of the non-addicting subtances it is the pull of positive
pleasure that motivates use. While the opiate addict says be takes the drug to feel normal, the users of LSD and
marihuana obviously take these substances to feel other than normal. While opiate addicts under certain circumstances
can be deceived about whether they are under the drug's influence, it is inconceivable that an experienced LSD user
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