Cocaine or opiates—which one, I cannot recall—dripped by bottle into the cage. Alone, this rat lived in a plastic box with straw bedding, dry food, a water bowl, and drugs. Within hours, the rat began hammering the drug drip like I siphon Diet Lemonade from Chick-fil-A. Shamelessly. Too often. Now addicted, the rat became despondent and anxious, hittin’ the bottle as often as it could.
Thankfully, Extreme Home Makeover recognized the rat’s hardship and renovated the cage. Exercise wheel. Cardboard scratch pads. Branches for chewing. They knocked down a wall because everyone loves watching a sledgehammer destroy shit on television. The rat also got a rat roommate with a clean background check and no priors.
In the hours and days after the big reveal, the rat transformed. Started training for a 5K. Called up its grandparents. Read The Let Them Theory. Depression and dependence became relics of its past. And get this: the researchers left the drug drip in the cage.
I’ve been thinking about this study (or, my confabulations about the study) and this environment we’re living in, one notable for historical isolation and easy access to a drip of dopamine-jacked, divisive content in our pockets. I’ve wondered, as many are asking, if we’re just divisive and cynical by nature, and as many are claiming, if the world is doomed to burn. I don’t know those answers, but I do know that we’re plugged 7 hours per day (on average) into a world that’s engineered to drip divisiveness into our veins, and until we all unplug and renovate this world with more dynamism, engagement, and curiosity, I can’t see anything but more addiction and turbulence.
That’s the cage’s design.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
