Quite a few years ago, I read a book by Lauren Slater called “Opening Skinner’s Box.” This book (which I highly recommend!) explored great psychological experiments of the twentieth century in an understandable and human format. I was highly shocked to realize that one of the studies she explored had never been mentioned in any of my text books, referenced in any of my classes, or even touched upon by any of my professors during my undergraduate and graduate degree programs in psychology and mental health counseling. This study is known as the Rat Park study.

The findings were, as researchers say, “statistically significant” meaning the results could not easily be discounted as an anomaly. They were meaningful in the context of culture and made logical sense when explored in the larger context of addiction. So why did the academic world not include this study even as a footnote? Why did addiction researchers not pursue the meaningful questions raised by the findings?

I imagine it was because the results caused one to question the entire field of research surrounding addiction. And, for me personally, made me question the foundational beliefs that our society holds about mental illness overall. The results did not provide a quick biochemical or genetic answer, but instead a messy environmental one. And I imagine this is why so few people have ever heard of this study. So if you are among the many that have never heard of the Rat Park study, let’s look at it today.

The Rat Park Study

Research on addiction is often conducted on rats, because their genetic, biological, and behavioral characteristics closely resemble those of humans. These addiction studies have shown again and again the power of addiction. Rats have exposed their highly sensitive paws to repeated electrical shocks to receive drugs (often morphine). Rats have chosen drugs over food until they have literally starved themselves to death. Essentially, if given the option, rats will, again and again, study after study, choose drugs to the point of extreme and possibly deadly harm to themselves. This research is typically believed to show that the pleasure provided by drugs is so great and the addictive properties of these substances so huge, that they outweigh even basic genetic drive to survive.

But a psychologist by the name of Bruce Alexander looked at this research and instead asked “but what about the environment?” The rats in these studies lived in cramped, and sometimes filthy cages. They were isolated from one another. They were deprived of any other actual stimulation. And in some cases, they even had catheters inserted into their raw shaved backs or electrodes screwed directly into their brains. Alexander looked at these conditions and proposed that the addiction these rats experienced had less to do with the substance and more to do with the world in which they lived.

So, in 1981 he designed an experiment that considered environment as part of the equation. He built a 200 square foot Rat Park. He heated it to optimal temperature; filled it with fresh cedar shavings, bright balls, exercise wheels, and tin cans; and ensured there was ample space to roam, and mate, and private areas for nesting. He even painted the walls with colorful murals of nature. And into this Rat Park he placed 16 rats of both sexes. He created a Rat Colony. He then compared his findings to rats in a control group, who were kept isolated in tiny, metal cages in which rats are typically kept during addiction studies.

In his first study, he provided the rats a choice between sugar water laced with morphine and regular water. Rats, like many humans, love sugar, making the mixture highly alluring even without the potential effects of the morphine. Alexander found that the control group, the rats in cages, chose the sugar/morphine water again and again, rarely if ever drinking the plain water. But what about the rats in the colony? Well, the rats in the colony would only occasionally drink the sugar/morphine water. It didn’t matter how sweet Alexander made the water; the rat colony rats just weren’t that interested. They preferred plain water and showed no signs of what would be considered “addiction.” Interestingly, the researchers also found that if they negated the effects of morphine, by adding naloxone to the mixture, that rats would then drink the sugar water. The Colony Rats enjoyed the sweetened water, but only if they would not get “high” from drinking it.

Alexander wanted to take his research a step further, though. He wanted to know what would happen if the rats were already addicted? If you relied on the research done to date (at the time), once the rat was addicted it should be, theoretically, unable to kick the habit. So, Alexander made addicts of all the rats: cage and colony. For 57 days the only water provided to the rats was laced with morphine. It was believed that 57 days of consistent use was long enough to produce tolerance and physical dependence on the morphine. After 57 days, the rats were once again given a choice between morphine water and plain water.

The caged rats, predictably, chose to continue drinking the morphine water. The colony rats, however, did not. The colony rats, though already addicted, reduced their intake of morphine water of their own accord despite withdrawal symptoms. Until, once again, they would only occasionally drink the morphine water. As Alexander wrote, “We think these results are socially as well as statistically significant. If rats in a reasonably normal environment consistently resist opiate drugs, then the ‘natural affinity’ idea is wrong, an overgeneralization of experiments on isolated animals.”

Questioning the Messages We Are Given

Now I am not going to pretend to have the education or authority necessary to say that the theories proposed by the Rat Park researchers are true and valid. I do, however, believe that the results bring some important questions to light. Questions about the way we think about addiction and about mental illness. Questions about the nature of the research conducted. And questions about the avenues researchers continue to advocate for and pursue.

Personally, I believe that addiction and mental illness cannot truly be understood in a vacuum, or in a research lab. I believe there are thousands, if not millions, of factors that effect addiction and mental illness. I do believe that genetic predispositions as well as biochemical factors are relevant to our understanding. But I also honestly believe our environment, and our culture, play a huge role as well. When I read about this study, I began questioning the cultural messages I had been taught about addiction and about mental illness.

Primary among these messages is the idea that you are in charge of your mental health and happiness and you alone must make changes to yourself if you want to be healthy and happy. At first glance, this seems a very empowering and true message. However, if you look a little deeper, you can see how damaging this message truly is. Where in this message does it talk about the environment in which you exist? Where in this message does it talk about the cultural context in which we all exist?

There is a theory of psychology called feminist psychology. This theory takes into account not just gender, but also social structures and cultural context. While I have only a primary understanding of the theory, I love the general concepts it represents. By looking at mental illness through this lens, we can see not only the person, but also the environment that helped shape them, and the culture that continues to constrain them. And I feel this view is absolutely vital when we discuss addiction and mental health.

Let’s say for example that you are a therapist. Your client is significantly depressed and exhibits a high degree of anger. He has been in multiple physical altercations and is regularly in trouble with the law. He believes the world is against him and will never allow him to succeed. He refuses to acknowledge that his actions are problematic and refuses to make any changes that would allow him to function and exist more easily in society. Take a moment before reading on and think about what is “wrong” with this client. Think about what work he needs to do to get “better”.

Now, let’s add a little cultural context. This client is a Black male living in Georgia and the year is 1958. Do your views of this person’s struggle and the work he needs to do change once you look at the context he is in? Once you know that he is living in a place and era where racism and discrimination is not only accepted but is enforceable law?

If this client was to make the personal changes necessary to exist in that society, we would need to counsel him on how to accept that White supremacy is a valid construct, how to be subservient in public, and how to manage his anger in the face of violent hatred heaped upon him. Are those honestly changes that will help this person’s mental health? Or, could it be, that the cultural context plays a part here? Is his belief that the world is against him a paranoid delusion built on self-persecution, or is it a factual assessment based on reality? Could it be that this person has a right to be angry? And that perhaps his violations of the law are in fact valid demonstrations of his struggle to change an unfair and demeaning power structure?

Now this may seem an extreme example, but is it really? Because we are a part of culture, we were born in it, raised in it, live in it, know nothing but it, we are often blind to the injustices that are inherent to it. Unless we are directly affected by them, we often don’t see the true nature of damaging cultural constraints. And sometimes, even when we are directly affected by them, we still don’t see them. We accept the larger message telling us we are wrong, we are broken. We are the ones that need to change, not culture. The Rat Park study helped open my eyes to so many of the cultural messages we take for granted. To question so much of the research on which we base our theories and perspectives. And it definitely made me question how much of my struggles are things I can change through internal work and how many of my struggles are due to the cultural constraints surrounding me?

Doing the Work in the Real World

Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that if we want to be healthy and functional and happy, we must do the work. No one else is going to do it for us. But I also believe that sometimes that work is not always internal. Sometimes it is external. Sometimes it is not us that need to change, but the environment and culture. And because of this, I also believe that sometimes we will be limited in how much we can do.

In examining Alexander’s Rat Park study, Slater wrote:

“Alexander calls rat park a normal environment . . . But when you see the preserved pieces of the experiment, the painted plywood, when you consider the abundant food, the readily available exercise equipment, the river in its plush streaks of silver, ‘normal environment’ does not come to mind. What comes to mind is ‘perfect environment’ of which I feel sure there are none in the labless world we live.”

What Alexander created was a Rat Utopia. He created an environment that would meet all of the needs of his subjects. That would protect them from harm, guard them from stress, and allow them to spend their energies wherever and however they please. And I agree with Slater, that this is not a world in which any of us truly exist. So, fighting addiction and overcoming our mental health struggles will not be as easy for us as it was for the rats living in their utopian colony. But that does not necessarily mean it is impossible.

Just as we have the option to do internal work. There are options to do external work. We may be limited in what those options are or in the resource (time, money, energy, etc.) needed to perform them. But we can still perform them on some small scale.

Escaping the Cage and Building a Colony

People think I am eccentric for living off-grid in Eastern Montana. From my perspective, though, I moved out of the rat cage. I did not have energy (physical, psychological, or emotional) necessary to change society to fit me. To create, foster, or lead a cultural revolution that would change society to not be damaging to me. But I did have the energy and cultivated the resources to distance myself from it. I moved from the cat cage and am working to build a colony.

And every change I have made that has put me further away from that cage has made me happier. I have seen drastic reduction inf frequency and intensity of depressive episodes, fatalism, and suicidal ideation. I used to idealize and thirst after addiction, being so jealous of those who could lose themselves in a bottle or a needle. Because I too wanted that oblivion so badly. But now, the thought never crosses my mind. I want to be sober and aware and here.

Is my life perfect? Not by a long shot. I still have a lot of mental health struggles and personal stresses. But my life is better than what it was. And yes, I have done and am still doing a lot of internal work. But I know without a doubt, that I would not be as functional as healthy and as happy as I am now, if I had not also changed my environment. There is no amount of internal work I could have ever done that would allow me to be healthy and happy in the rat cage. But by balancing my efforts between internal and external changes, I have created a rat colony in which the amount of internal work I am capable of can make me happy and healthy.

Like I said, I am not saying Alexander’s interpretations of his data are correct or even that is his study is sound. But I am saying, what we all know to be true, that culture and environment do have an impact on us. So if you, like me, have struggled with mental health. Or you are tangled in the strangling web of addiction. I encourage you to look not only inside, but also outside yourself. When you are ready to do the work, consider the culture you live in. And find a way, your way, to create your own rat colony.

Cages vs. Colonies: How Culture and Environment Impact Mental Illness and Addiction

Talking About Other’s Mental Health

The Science of Love