When you hear someone is an addict, what comes to your mind? *He must be doped on drugs — all the time* *She can’t do without getting high* *He’s broke because he spends all his money drinking*

Most of us think it’s the drugs that are the real cause of the addiction– which is true, to some extent.

But what if we told you that what you thought you knew about addiction is wrong?

Yes everything.

Our ideas about addiction came about from a series of experiment carried out in the early 20th century.

In the experiment you get a rat and you put it in a cage, and you give it two water bottles: one is just water, and the other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drug water and almost always kill itself quite quickly.

But experiments in the 1970s by famed professor of psychology Bruce Alexander reveal that more times than not, the real culprit in addiction is a lack of human connection.

Yes, simple human connection!

This powerful video explains this curious relationship.

Doesn’t this make you revaluate how you see drug addicts, what can be done and what we can do to help?