Social Separation Syndrome and Addiction
Can you remember a time when you were not invited to a friend’s birthday party or other social event? Or times when you felt like your friends were ganging up on you or teasing you? It’s not hard to recall how insecure these circumstances can make us feel. We often begin to question ourselves and our worth because of the reactions of others.
The same feelings can emerge when we find ourselves to be the “only”: the only woman in a group of men, the only person of color in a group of whites, the only lesbian or gay person in a group of heterosexuals, and so on. There is an increased sense of vulnerability to this kind of isolation that almost anybody can relate to.
One of the places where social separation has been found to be particularly powerful is in its impact on addiction. For some time, addiction has been characterized as primarily a chemical dependency. To combat such addictive tendencies, counselors have used counteracting chemical agents (such as methadone for heroin addicts) to reestablish normalcy to our altered neurotransmitters, opioid receptors, and mesolimbic pathways
While it would be foolish to ignore the role physical dependency plays in catalyzing addictive tendencies, it appears equally foolish to ignore the role that social connectedness can play in moderating the likelihood of engaging in such addictive practices to begin with.
How many people do you know who have tried to curb addictive behaviors such as overeating, laziness, too much TV, drug use, or drinking and found it much easier when doing it in partnership with somebody? How much easier is it to get out of bed to exercise when you know somebody is meeting you at the gym or waiting outside for you to go for a run? How much harder is it to eat that thing you shouldn’t when everybody at the table with you has jointly committed to eating healthier?
Social environments impact addiction. Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander and his colleagues Robert Coambs and Patricia Hadaway started by getting laboratory rats hooked on morphine.12 For fifty-seven consecutive days, the rats would have access to only a morphine solution to consume in order to meet their need for water. Once they were addicted, a second option of unlaced tap water was introduced, giving the rats an opportunity to choose between the new, drug-free water or the water laced with morphine. Addiction models that rely on the theory of drug-induced addiction would have predicted that rats would continue to indulge in the morphine solution regardless of their social circumstance, but Alexander and his team questioned this traditional view.
In their studies, the researchers divided the rats between two distinct social environments: a small, barren cage where a rat would be housed by itself, or Rat Park (Figure 1.3), a large, open space where rats were housed among many others and had access to a variety of toys, tunnels, and opportunities for stimulation. They then observed the rats to see how those who had become addicted in the solitary confines of a small, cramped cage would react when placed in Rat Park.
The findings were stunning. While rats who remained in cages continued to opt for the morphine cocktail, the addicted rats who were transitioned to Rat Park overwhelmingly chose the plain water over the morphine solution. It appeared that addiction depended heavily on social variables. For rats confined to a small, cramped cage, a morphine kick might be a way to cope with the otherwise bleak nature of their lives. However, for rats afforded the luxury of Rat Park, such a coping mechanism proved unnecessary. These findings are not unprecedented. Drake Morgan, an addiction specialist at the University of Florida College of Medicine, and his colleagues conducted a similar study with macaque monkeys.
The same can be true for human beings. Forced separation can be devastating to the human psyche. Researchers at seven medical schools collaborated to study the impact of solitary confinement on a group of recently released prisoners and found that they were two and a half times more likely to show post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms than prisoners who were not in solitary.14 There was also an increased number of suicide attempts among the group. Dr. Aaron Fox, associate professor of medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and one of the lead authors of the study, said, “If exposure to solitary confinement causes PTSD, then it may be harmful and dangerous and something we should think twice about. If people with PTSD are placed in solitary confinement, that’s also a problem, as it’s exacerbating their mental health problems.” Robert King, a prison reform activist who himself was wrongly incarcerated for thirty-two years, including twenty-nine years in solitary confinement, said, “I can tell you from experience: If you’ve done time in solitary confinement, you’ve been damaged. Even if you survive it, it has an impact on you.”15
The Power of Social Groups
Our relationships with our social groups, either through social isolation or through blind belonging, can contribute not only to outward acts of violence but also to violence against oneself. A study conducted at San Francisco State University found that LGBTQ teens who experience high levels of rejection from their families during adolescence (when compared with young people who experienced little or no rejection from parents and caregivers) were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, more than six times as likely to report high levels of depression, more than three times as likely to use illegal drugs, and more than three times as likely to be at high risk for HIV or other STDs.
It is also important to recognize that the more threatened we feel, the more we pull back into our most core group identities. It is no coincidence that hate crimes or other rampant discriminatory behaviors tend to occur with far more frequency when people are in times of high stress and insecurity. Think about the rise of intolerance in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, after the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, and so on. During times of upheaval, it’s all too easy to find a scapegoat to blame for our discomfort. Our current indictment of Muslims and immigrants clearly follows this same pattern.
This threat dynamic is exacerbated by the increased diversity in the world around us, and especially by increased worldwide migration. There is substantive scientific research showing that humans benefit tremendously from diversity in domains such as decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity.18 But we also know that sudden increases in diversity can present challenges to social cohesion. When diversity expands rapidly, and in especially visible ways, it causes people of all races to withdraw into their own groups and disengage from social institutions that we generally think of as community-building, such as civic associations, PTAs, and bowling leagues, creating a “turtling effect,” as if people were proverbially pulling back into their shells.
This effect may be motivated by different stimuli, depending upon the group, but it is generally driven by some manifestation of fear of the other, real or imagined.
