Addiction & Connection in the 21st century

Researchers had found that when rats were placed in a cage, by themselves and offered two water bottles-one filled with water and the other mixed with heroin or cocaine, the rats would repetitively drink from the drug-mixed bottles until they all overdosed and died.

But Dr. Bruce Alexander decided to do an experiment to test the environment’s impact on drug use which came to be called the “Rat Park. In the 1970’s he placed several rats in what were called “rat parks” where they could roam freely and interact together.1 He found that the rats in the “rat parks” drank from the water bottles most often and only occasionally drank from the cocaine or heroin-mixed water bottles and never overdosed.

However about 50 years following this seminal study I find myself wondering if technology is removing more of the “park” aspects while introducing more of the addictive behaviors. Whenever I am in a public setting an electronic device rarely seems to be more than arm’s length away from each person. Even if we are physically in the same space, our technological devices draw us in the same way the drug laced water bottles once did. These devices often feel like like a third hand and shrink our awareness of possibility and connection making us feel increasingly more alone. But I wonder what words, images, stories come up for you when you think of being in a “park” without the presence of our handheld attention seeking machines?

Play, fun, freedom, laughter, excitement…. nostalgia perhaps. Chi for Two® invites movement practices that promote a state called Play/Dance which is a state in which there is playful interaction that feels safe. In Play/Dance there is co-regulation which involves the living being with the more regulated nervous system helping shift the others to feel more regulated due to the “energetic dance” between them. There is sense of this moment is enough, and those cocaine spiked water bottles or iPhone notifications have little pull away from this connected space. As Caroline Gebhardt, co-developer said “when we do practices that seek presence, deep urges for support get stirred.” Chi for Two can allow for presence in the here and now to feel nourishing and supportive.

References:

1. Alexander BK, Beyerstein BL, Hadaway BF, Coombs RB. Effect of Early and later colony housing on oral ingestion of morphine in rats. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 1981;15:571-576.