Introduction
Rat Park - for people
First things first, recovery is a personal journey! It’s my opinion that whatever works for you, do it. I’m not in recovery and do not claim to be an authority; however, I have been exposed to the despair of addiction and mental illness along with its toll on friends, families, and society. I have experience with Al-Anon, NAMI, therapists, homelessness, IOP, rehab, jail, sober homes, clubhouse (Clubhouse International), etc. During my research, I ran across the Rat Park experiment by Bruce Alexander. I thought it was an interesting experiment and wondered what might be a version of rat park for people.
While recovering for several weeks in the hospital from COVID pneumonia, my spirit guide brought clarity: When I get healthy, I need to build an architectural model of Rat Park to inspire entrepreneurs (YOU) to create “Rat Parks” in the real-world.
To understand what “brought clarity” means, the clearest explanation/analogy I can come up with is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If you haven’t seen the movie, the main characters have a close encounter with a UFO and a vision is imprinted in their brains. In the scene above, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) scares off his family by digging up his flower bed trying to create the vision in his living room. He has no clue why he is doing what he is doing, but he is obsessed with creating his vision. Once he sees his vision on the television, he knows his purpose.
I’m going to try to not scare off the family while building the model of Rat Park. I plan on documenting the details of my vision for Rat Park along with the progress of the architectural model. I believe that is my task. I guess we’ll find out.
My goal is to reach 88 subscribers to let us (me and interested readers) know if Rat Park is an idea worth exploring in the real world.
If you think Rat Park is a good idea, please vote by subscribing!