It turns out I am a bad friend. It only took one drug-addicted rat in a cage to show me not only what I am like, but how dangerous this is for me.
There is a series of experiments on rats and addiction that go back to the 1950s1. Essentially, a rat in a cage is given a choice between a dispenser that only contained water and a dispenser that had water laced with an addictive drug. The drugs were varied in the experiments. But generally, the story goes that once the rat discovers the drug-laced water, it goes back and forth until it kills itself. The point of the experiments was to demonstrate the power and danger of addiction. It’s very effective for that.
However, another series of experiments were run in the 1970s called the Rat Park Experiments2, started by a guy called Bruce Alexander. His point was that the initial experiments were flawed because rats are social creatures. Of course, rats in isolation were going to become addicted; what else were they going to do?
So, what happens when rats are faced with the same decision but are in an environment where there are other rats, things to do, mazes to run, etc., rather than being in isolation? The rats would try the drug-laced water, but after a while, they would end up only drinking the normal water. The conclusion was that rats, as social animals, had addiction issues connected as much with isolation as it was with the chemical effect of the drug.
We Aren’t Rats…But
I realise that we aren’t rats. But we are social creatures. And as a society we are in danger. At the moment, we are experiencing, even in the Christian community, a high dependency on electronically induced dopamine. There seems to me that there are two silent but pervasive addictions gripping Christians and non-Christians alike: pornography and doomscrolling. Both offer a sense of instant gratification and escapism that can become highly addictive. A staggering 54% of practicing Christians admit to consuming pornography3, according to Barna research, a number uncomfortably close to the 68% reported by non-Christians. Pastors, as examples of Christian leadership, sadly aren’t doing as well as they should, with 1 in 5 saying this is a current struggle4. Meanwhile, doomscrolling—mindlessly consuming endless streams of often negative news—fuels anxiety and despair, with studies showing it significantly worsens mental health.
It’s not a drug-laced water spout that we face, it’s a handheld electronic dispenser. The question is how much is social isolation driving this trend of addiction?
An Unexpected Conversation
Ironically, it was during a doomscrolling session that I came across a solution we might be missing here. My YouTube algorithm has me completely figured out. When a conversation between two of my favourite people popped up, it casually suggested, “You might like this.” 5 The chat was between Simon Sinek, renowned author and TED speaker, and Trevor Noah, brilliant comedian and former host of The Daily Show. These two are some of the more interesting minds I’ve ever encountered.
What made it even more interesting was the topic of their conversation. I was expecting something like “success” or “leadership,” but instead, it was about friendship. Both of them believe that true “success” lies in being a good friend.
It was this conversation that put me on to the difference between the two rat studies. Sinek’s critique of society is that we have fallen into these addictive behaviours because of our social isolation. As we are constantly reminded: we are more connected and more lonely that ever before. Sinek’s conclusion was to look to deep, significant friendships “… if we have close friendships and if we live in community perhaps we’re less susceptible to all addiction.”
This aligns with ideas Johann Hari presents in his book, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and The Unexpected Solutions6. There’s a wealth of scientific evidence showing the strong link between our friendships and mental health. Simply put, we’re wired for relationships. The Rat Park drives that point home.
So, at this point, I should confess my own doomscrolling addiction. I know I am not alone, but I feel alone. The gaps in my life are taken up with simply picking up my phone, “just to check something”. Then the infinite scroll robs me of hours of my life as I start to check the weather or my calendar and then half an hour later realise I have been scrolling videos of fat cats falling off tables. In fact, it was during a lost hour of scrolling that I came across the conversation between Sinek and Noah.
I am the lone rat in the cage.
It’s not like someone locked me in the cage against my will. As a middle-aged man, I have spent the last few decades committing my time and energy to my wife, kids, work, and ministry. Everything but friends. Now I am alone and wasting precious moments of life watching those fat cats fall off those tables.
The Solution is Church, right?
At this point it would be very easy to to look to Christian community for the solution. Hari, Noah and Sinek all start to sing the praises of “religious communities” (read: church) though none of them wish to join7. But I want to argue this is not about church, at least not directly, it is about friendship.
One would assume that friendship should naturally flourish in the church. As Christians, we share the most important bond—our faith. But that is the problem: we “assume”. Assuming that we will have friends the moment we walk into church is naive. Standing in a room, singing God’s praises is a great thing to do, but it doesn’t make you friends with the other people there. It takes time to get to know people, but to really have friends you need to serve and sacrifice. One of the reasons we probably don’t have friends is that we save our “serve” and “sacrifice” for family or career or even ministry but not our friends.
It Takes Work
In the past I have worked on the quid pro quo approach to friendships: someone calls me, I call them back and if we neither calls for a while, then we just don’t see each other for awhile. Looking back I have no idea why I have done this, I would never take this approach in other areas of my life. Perhaps it is because I never considered the important effect of friendships on my own health.
My goal this year is to build a social network of friends. And for us to connect deeply. When I am tempted to doomscroll, I am working on calling or texting a friend. I am seeking to take the initiative of my friendships and not waiting for them to call me.
I am getting out of the lone cage and into the park.
FOOTNOTES
- See for example: Nichols, J. R., Headlee, C. P., Coppock, H. W. : Drug addiction. I. Addiction by escape training. J. Am. Pharm. Assoc. 45, 788 – 791(1956) ↩︎
- See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park or Bruce K. Alexander, Robert B. Coambs, and Patricia F. Hadaway “The Effect of Housing and Gender on Morphine Self-Administration in Rats ”Psychopharmacology (Berl). 1978 Jul 6;58(2):175-9 ↩︎
- https://www.barna.com/trends/over-half-of-practicing-christians-admit-they-use-pornography/ ↩︎
- https://www.barna.com/research/pastors-pornography-use/ ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNBxIhxHHxM ↩︎
- https://thelostconnections.com/ For the record, I think Hari has gone too far and his book is under researched, but the point still stands. ↩︎
- See Sinek’s interview here around 32 minute mark ↩︎
Peter D Hughes 