Our "Rat Park" Is Not a Suburb

I wrote last spring about Johann Hari's book Chasing the Scream. Now there's a five-minute video that makes the gist of Hari's argument about drug treatment and the drug war with mostly charming animation:


A key part of our current context that feeds drug use and habituation is social disconnection. Vox's Dave Roberts posted a must-read piece about that a few days ago: How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult.

I would note that it's not actually housing "choices" Roberts is describing: it's the infrastructure of modern American life, based on the cars, larger houses, larger yards and more social isolation of nuclear families.