addiction modesto blog

My friend Marianne Peck, MFT says “people are dumber than rats.” Well, in some circumstances, perhaps. She’s talking about the addictive choices people make. See what you think after reading this article by Johann Hari.

Put a rat it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction.

Should we legalize marijuana? I say no. Decriminalize, yes. I should be upfront and say I have a skewed bias because I have been working as an addiction counselor since 1985.

I know, pot affects people differently so if your experience is that it enhances reality, fine. At the age of 20 I smoked daily for a year and it was the most unproductive, wasted, sleepy year of my life. I was able to take care of my son, clean the house and nap a lot. I remember the realization that sluggishness was not how I wanted to live each day, quit and felt mentally clear. But it took awhile!…