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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 JULY 2021 OPINION NO one walks into the hospital with a broken leg, and walks out with an addiction to painkillers. This is because people do not become automatically addicted to drugs. In the same way, no one takes their first sip of alco- hol or coffee or binges their first Netflix series and instantly turns into an addict. And it is no dif- ferent with street drugs. It is in this context that during the past week I organised a conference together with the Platform for Better Preventive Healthcare. While yes elements of physical addiction can occur after pro- longed use of any addiction, ad- diction is not rooted in a phys- ical dependence. It is rooted in a socio-psychological one. If you are running away from a past full of trauma and unresolved, deeply rooted issues, drugs are the perfect place to hide. And without a system that addresses this, then we are not addressing addiction from a scientific and human rights perspective and ultimately failing all those who need the system to help them. In the 1970s, Bruce K. Alexan- der infamously created the first rat park experiment. In the ex- periment Alexander placed sin- gular rats alone in a cage and offered two water bottles to the rats. One bottle was filled with water and the other was laced with either heroin or cocaine. In his experiment Alexander found that the rats would repet- itively drink from the drug-laced bottles until they eventually all overdosed and died. This ex- periment led Alexander to be- lieve that drug addiction was rooted in physical dependence, and once he issued his findings to the Government in the Unit- ed States- the so called "war on drugs" began. However the American and world wide "war on drugs" failed so spectacularly at achieving its goals that Alexander himself started to question his own find- ings. The world-renowned psy- chiatrist re-evaluated his orig- inal experiment and found that it was flawed and did not take into consideration other factors which surround the human psy- che. In his re-analysis, Alexan- der realised that he had lacked to take into account the reality that human beings are surrounded by other humans, by communities, families and friends. And that this plays a huge part in "why and how" people turn to psycho- active substances or run away from them. In a rehashed experiment Al- exander put rats in "rat parks" where they were among others free to roam and play, to social- ise and also have sex. The rats were given the same access to the same two types of drinking bottles. What he found was that when surrounded with enter- tainment and most importantly, company, the rats inhabiting the "rat park" remarkably preferred the plain water. The few times that they did consume water from the laced water bottles, they did so infrequently, at ir- regular intervals and never over- dosed. In short, the fact that the rats were surrounded by other rats, and a social community, the power of drugs was beaten. It is this that must be at the forefront of our addiction poli- cies as a society. Being a child of the 80s, I am part of a generation which was bombarded with the "just say no" campaign. But the reality of today has shown us that this campaign has seriously failed. Because while we can all say no to drugs if we are offered them, it's not as easy to say no to lone- liness and depression when it comes knocking on our door, especially in the midst of a pan- demic which requires social dis- tance. This year, the National Report on the Drug Situation in Malta showed that the rate at which people use Cocaine and Heroin is on the rise. Given the socio-psychological element of drug use, this can be analysed through the loneliness that the Covid19 Pandemic has brought Everything we know about drug addiction is wrong Cyrus Engerer