You Have to Build Your Rat Park
Or: How integration is about more than mindset
If you saw a tiger caged at a zoo that looked anxious and sad, what would you think?
Would you think the tiger needs to meditate more? Or go on antidepressants? Or set some really ambitious goals for the new year and stick to them?
Nah — the only way that tiger will feel better is if it gets out of the zoo, right?
Modern industrialized society is a kind of zoo for humans, one that disconnects us from what matters most and makes us depressed, anxious, and addicted.
We know that social media has caused a global mental health crisis among teenagers (and the rest of us). We know that the nuclear family is damaging to the mental health of both parents and kids compared with multigenerational homes. We know our food system makes us sick.
Yet we blame ourselves, rather than our society, for our poor mental health. We set New Years’ intentions. We try to meditate more. We’re like the tiger in the cage wondering what’s wrong with us rather than what’s wrong with being in this cage.
Welcome to Rat Park
If you leave a rat alone with a bottle of morphine-laced water, it will drink compulsively and die. We as a society have interpreted from this that morphine is chemically addictive.
Yet a series of experiments by Canadian researcher Bruce Alexander challenged that idea. Here’s how Johann Hari describes it in his popular TED talk on addiction:
He said, “Ah, we're putting the rat in an empty cage. It's got nothing to do except use these drugs. Let's try something different.” So Professor Alexander built a cage that he called "Rat Park," which is basically heaven for rats. They've got loads of cheese, they've got loads of colored balls, they've got loads of tunnels. Crucially, they've got loads of friends. They can have loads of sex … But here's the fascinating thing: In Rat Park, they don't like the drug water.
Addiction isn’t just about chemicals — it’s also about meaning. Rats that are bored, lonely and disconnected from rat-like things will abuse drugs. Rats that are enriched by their environment will not.
The same is true of human depression, anxiety and many other forms of chronic mental health problems. Psychologists now use a framework called the “Biopsychosocial model” of mental health, which emphasizes the interplay between our biology, society and environment. Take a healthy person and put them in a toxic environment, and they will become sick.
The medicalization of mental health has led doctors and psychiatrists to focus exclusively on the biological element, because it falls in their purview. A doctor feels comfortable prescribing you a pill, but less comfortable telling you to make more friends.
And, unlike rats, human “environments” are extremely complex. The shit we scroll through on our phones makes up part of our environment. So does the walkability of our neighborhoods. And the self-talk that runs through our minds all day. Building our own rat park is about more than getting some fun toys. It’s about reconnecting with what matters in life and abandoning what doesn’t.
That’s the real, hard work of psychedelic integration: Making change.
Creativity ain’t easy
I want to live on the same block as my friends.
This is something I’ve wanted for a long time, and which my work with psychedelics has emphasized over and over. For me, breaking down the nuclear family and rebuilding a meaningful tribe involves physical proximity. I don’t want to have to drive my kids to a playdate — I want them to walk down the street. I don’t want to text my friend to ask if they want to come over for dinner —I want to swing by.
But it’s not so easy. The zoo of a modern society we live in has disconnected us from each other in sneaky, tangled ways. For one thing, we’ve become so accustomed to making decisions at the family level that it’s very hard to even begin the conversation among a larger group of friends.
What neighborhood should we choose?
What can we afford?
How important is walkability?
These decisions are hard enough to manage with a partner. Now imagine trying to do it with eight other people. So far I have convinced exactly zero friends to live close to me.
The crazy thing is, we all want the same thing. We all want to have a closer-knit community. Yet we struggle to overcome the scripts we were handed by our culture.
Building a creative life — one that is in alignment with the lessons we get from our psychedelic work — is really fucking hard. But there’s no other choice. Either we ignore these lessons and remain in the zoo, or we get aggressively creative and break out.
Psychedelics can help us clearly see the cage we’re in. They can’t get us out.