Article in question: http://news.rutgers.edu/research-news/addicts-may-be-seeking-relief-emotional-lows-more-euphoric-highs/20131106#.UnuwyPmkqUY It explains how addicts might be abusing drugs simply to avoid lows rather than to attain highs.

This article somewhat surprised me. Not for the information that it had, but for the fact that the data attained in the tests was treated as some unusual discovery. I don’t want to seem cynical and/or sardonic, but I thought that it was pretty obvious that addicts get stuck in addictions because of the lows that they get once the high wears off.

When I was in school, they made it clear in simple that hard drugs are bad for you. “What comes up must come down.” So the better the high from a drug, the worse the low you get from withdrawal.  Based off of testimonies that I heard from recovering drug addicts, it seemed fairly evident that the addiction became less about getting high and more about not being low.

Though, I will credit these scientists for providing factual scientific data about such a thesis. They experimented with mice and listened to the sounds that the mice made, based off of their emotional state (it’s explained more in-depth in the article). It just sort of bothers me how they treat the information as if it’s something profound and/or surprising.

Maybe I’m not taking into account the fact that they may have not been exposed to this sort of information before. Again, regardless of how they treat the information, they did a good job attaining it.