Many of the Sonoma County social workers and therapists attending Johann Hari’s talk Thursday evening at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts already had an inkling, if not a firm belief, that the decades-old and misdirected war on drugs had done more harm than good.
The real causes of addiction were isolation, loneliness, trauma, and a history of abuse, the New York Times best selling author said. That narrative resonated among those in the audience, who regularly witness human pain and suffering in homes and on the street.
“The war on drugs is based on the idea if someone has an addiction problem we’ve got to punish them in order to give them an incentive to stop,” Hari said. “We’ve got to inflict pain on them in order to give them an incentive to stop. But once you understand that pain is the driver of addiction, pain is the cause of addiction, suddenly you can see … the war on drugs makes addiction worse.”
Hari did not completely dismiss the concept of “chemical hook,” or a drug’s chemical addictiveness. But he said that unmet “natural psychological needs” are far more powerful determinants of addictions.
“You need to feel you belong, you need to feel your life has meaning and purpose; you need to feel people see you and value you; you need to feel you’ve got a future that makes sense,” Hari said.
“And this culture we’ve built is good at lots of things — I’m glad to be alive today,” he added. “But we have been getting less and less good at meeting people’s deep underlying psychological needs for a long time.”
Hari’s 90-minute lecture Thursday was sponsored by the Sonoma County Department of Health Services and Directing Change, part of a statewide effort to prevent suicide and promote mental health and wellness among students.
Local health officials said the lecture is part of the county’s ongoing effort to address the stigma of substance abuse, breakdown barriers to seeking treatment and provide education and resources to residents affected by addiction.
In introducing Hari, county Health Services Director Tina Rivera challenged the audience, many of them behavioral health professionals, to “move beyond mere inspiration.”
“I want us to leave with the revelation that things can change, that things must change,” Rivera said. “And that we can be a part of that change, whether that’s change within yourself, whether that’s change within your jobs, change in your families, change in your communities, whatever the change is that needs to be effectuated in your life.”
Hari’s books, which include the bestsellers Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections, explore how the loss of real human connection in modern society has led to ever-increasing levels of depression, anxiety and addiction.
Hari, whose father was Swiss and mother was Scottish, was born in Glasgow but moved to London with his family when he was a year old and has lived there most of his life. He studied social and political science at King’s College, Cambridge.
Hari’s earlier career as a journalist was marred by acts of plagiarism where he used quotes given to other journalists and presented them as part of his interviews. Hari has repeatedly apologized for those missteps, which he told a Press Democrat reporter were a “very bad error of judgment on my part.”
His books have been praised by a broad range of people and include blurbs from Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Arriana Huffington, Hillary Clinton and Elton John. On the TED website, Hari’s 2015 talk about addiction has received more than 19 million views, and his 2019 talk about depression and anxiety has been viewed more than 15 million times.
During the event at the Luther Burbank Center, Hari laced his lecture with generous doses of humor, irreverence and heartfelt poignancy. He recounted numerous stories about some of his journalistic travels in places like Germany, Canada and the United States.
Hari also cited the work of researchers like Bruce Alexander, a Canadian professor and psychologist who back in the 1970s challenged addiction research involving rats placed alone in a cage and offered two bottles. One had pure water and one contained water and heroin or cocaine. The rats, after some time, would repeatedly drink from the drug-tinged water until they overdosed and died.
Hari said for his experiments, Alexander “built a cage that he called Rat Park, which is basically like heaven for rats. They’ve got loads of friends, they’ve got loads of cheese, they can have loads of sex, anything a rat likes in life is there in rat park.”
Alexander discovered that in Rat Park, the rats try drug water but they don’t like it. In fact they hardly use it, and none of them overdose, said Hari. “When you look at the difference between these two cages, when the rats do not have the things that make life worth living, when their needs are not met, they want to anesthetize themselves a lot, they seek out the drug,” he said.
Hari argued that’s exactly what happened to humans during the pandemic, when rates of depression and anxiety doubled and fatal overdoses in the United States reached record levels. He said that during the pandemic, people’s “deep, underlying psychological needs” went unmet.
“In fact, all of our lives became like the lives of those rats in the first experiment,” he said, adding that the last two years has seen an increase in disconnection, stress and trauma; and consequently an increase in addiction, depression and anxiety.
After the lecture, Jacy Resendez, a senior client support specialist for the older adult team in the county’s behavioral health division, waited in line to get Hari’s books signed. Resendez said she liked how Hari equated mental health issues with isolation and a lack of community; it’s something she witnesses with her clients.
“Sometimes I’m the only person they have contact with — they’re isolated and depressed,” she said, adding that part of her job is helping seniors expand their community.
Jerry La Londe-Berg, a local social worker who happened to retire the day before the lecture, said he was particularly stuck by Hari’s argument that the “solution to addiction was connection.”
“It really is,” said La Londe-Berg. “The opportunity to not be judged, but to be listened to will allow people the space to address their addiction.”
La Londe-Berg is part of a nonprofit called SHARE Sonoma County, which uses available bedrooms, studios or granny units for those in need of housing.
You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.
