Why Aren’t We All Drug Addicts?

I once read about a scientist who studies centenarians—people who live to be a hundred. The idea, of course, is to find out their secrets, and it makes sense. If we find common genes or habits it might help the rest of us live longer, healthier lives.

But why don’t researchers do this in general? Why don’t they study health as much as they study disease? Perhaps it’s because problems stand out and it’s easier to investigate their causes and devise solutions than it is to comprehend systems as a whole. For instance, I often fix computer problems without any deep undertanding how the damn thing works. And of course problems are urgent, they demand our attention. Scientists still don’t understand exactly how aspirin works, but would you rather fund a study on the mechanism of aspirin or on cancer research?

Few areas in public policy are more frustrating than drug addiction. Addiction plagues all cultures, whether it’s tobacco or caffeine or alcohol or betal nut or cocaine or methamphetamine. Our brains are hard-wired for it, we seem doomed. Our prisons and hospitals are filled with addicts from every class and profession, and they all tell the same story of surrender. Neurologists and psychiatrists and social workers study them like rats in a maze, searching for explanations and therapies.

But my question isn’t why addicts are addicts. My question is why aren’t we all addicts? Because the vast majority of us have never been addicts and never will be. My grandmother took Percocet for years. She kept the large bottle on her kitchen sink, yet never took more than the prescribed dose. For that matter why didn’t I ever steal some when I visited her? Why did I never feel tempted?

We don’t hear these stories. We don’t hear about the kids who try cocaine but don’t go back, or smoke for years then quit without patches or support groups, or get drunk at frat parties but leave that world behind after graduation.

In my early teens I tried my share of drugs, but never got addicted. As an experiment one afternoon I smoked an entire pack of Camels. I neither intensely liked cigarettes nor disliked them. As an adult I drink coffee and alcohol, but always in moderation. I’ve never felt the pull of any of these substances as much as I crave chocolate. And even chocolate I can do without. I left a half-empty bottle of Vicodin in my medicine cabinet until an ex-girlfriend stole it. My doctor recently wrote me a script for Oxycontin and I threw it away. What’s wrong with me?

I don’t know the answers. I just know this one question. And not enough people are asking it.