Addiction isn’t about substances. It’s about connection.
For a long time, addiction has been framed as a problem of willpower, morality, or chemical hooks.
The story goes something like this:
Drugs hijack the brain. Once exposed, the brain becomes dependent. End of story.
But this explanation has always been incomplete.
Because when we look more closely… at people, at nervous systems, and at the environments we live in, a very different picture emerges. One that suggests addiction isn’t primarily about substances at all.
It’s about disconnection.
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The Rat Park Study: A radical reframe
In the late 1970s, psychologist Bruce Alexander ran a series of experiments that quietly disrupted the dominant narrative around addiction.
At the time, most addiction research used rats kept alone in small, barren cages. When given a choice between plain water and water laced with morphine or cocaine, these isolated rats reliably chose the drugged water, often to the point of overdose.
This seemed to “prove” that drugs themselves were irresistibly addictive.
Alexander wondered: What if the cage is the problem?
So he built Rat Park.
Rat Park was spacious, stimulating, and social. Rats had toys, tunnels, room to move, and, most importantly… other rats.
When rats in Rat Park were given the same choice between plain water and drugged water, something remarkable happened:
They barely touched the drugged water at all.
Even rats that had previously been consuming large amounts of morphine reduced their intake once moved into this enriched, connected environment.
The substance hadn’t changed.
The context had.
What this tells us about humans
Humans are not rats, but we are social mammals with nervous systems shaped by connection, safety, and belonging.
From a trauma- and attachment-informed lens, this makes deep sense.
When connection is missing, when there is chronic stress, relational trauma, isolation, shame, or a lack of felt safety, the nervous system looks for regulation wherever it can find it.
Substances can temporarily:
Soothe an overwhelmed nervous system
Numb emotional pain
Create predictability and control
Offer relief from loneliness or internal chaos
In that sense, addiction is not a failure of character.
It is often a brilliant short-term solution to a system that has been under-resourced for too long.
A real-world experiment: What happens when we choose connection?
This theory isn’t just supported by animal studies. We’ve seen it play out at a societal level.
In the early 2000s, Portugal was facing one of the worst drug crises in Europe. Instead of doubling down on punishment, criminalisation, and fear-based messaging, the country made a radical decision.
They decriminalised personal drug use and invested heavily in:
Community reintegration
Housing and employment programs
Social support and mental health care
Restoring dignity, purpose, and connection
Drugs were treated less as the enemy and more as a signal that something else was wrong.
The results were striking:
Drug-related deaths dropped dramatically
Rates of HIV transmission fell
More people sought help voluntarily
Long-term recovery outcomes improved
Portugal didn’t “solve” addiction by removing substances alone.
They changed the relational environment people were living in.
Addiction as a signal, not a moral failing
From this perspective, addiction becomes less about asking:
“Why can’t they stop?”
And more about asking:
“What pain, isolation, or unmet need is this helping them survive?”
This shift matters. Clinically, socially, and personally.
Because when we only focus on stopping the behaviour, we miss the opportunity to build the conditions that make stopping possible.
Connection doesn’t mean just social contact. It means:
Feeling seen and understood
Experiencing safety in relationships
Having purpose, agency, and belonging
Being regulated with others, not alone
The takeaway
The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety.
The opposite of addiction is connection.
This doesn’t mean substances are harmless. It doesn’t mean accountability doesn’t matter. But it does mean that lasting change rarely comes from shame, punishment, or isolation.
Healing happens when nervous systems no longer have to rely on substances to survive.
And that begins, again and again, with connection.
Working Together
If this piece resonated, please know this:
There is nothing wrong with you.
If substances, behaviours, or relationships have become ways of coping, your nervous system may be seeking safety, regulation, or connection, not failure or weakness.
While I don’t provide treatment for individuals who are actively using substances, I do work with adults who are in recovery or exploring life beyond addiction. Many of the people I support are unpacking the deeper layers underneath substance use; including attachment wounds, trauma, grief, and long-standing patterns of disconnection.
My 1:1 work is grounded in:
Attachment-based therapy
Trauma-informed and nervous system–focused approaches
Relational and embodied healing
Together, we focus less on “forcing change” and more on building the internal and relational conditions where change can happen organically, where the nervous system no longer has to rely on old survival strategies.
If you’d like to learn more about working with me, you’re welcome to explore that below.
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