March 2008

Port Elgin, ON


The Smack
I collaborated with Drs. Alexander, Hadaway, and Beyerstein on Rat Park, the now thirty-year-old research that challenged Skinner box results undergirding the popular belief that “drugs cause addiction as surely as lightning causes thunder” (“The Rat Trap,” December). Typically, the hungry rat in a Skinner box presses a lever to get food. This stimulates its “pleasure centres,” brain structures at least 250 million years old. Injecting a tiny dose of morphine near these pleasure centres will also cause a rat to press a lever to get more. Sounds like an easy explanation of morphine addiction.

The problem is that humans have complex responses to even simple stimuli. We all know how satisfying it is to have a big glass of water on a hot day, or a good meal when you’re hungry. But would you like twenty pieces of chocolate cake after the meal? How about a glass of cold water when it’s freezing outside? Perhaps half a bottle of whisky before your driving test? Why not?

In the real world, a piece of chocolate cake is only rewarding if you want it. In fact, it can be aversive if you wanted the crème brûlée instead, or if you think that your date, who is on a diet, will suffer while she watches you eat it. In humans, pleasure critically depends upon one’s circumstances, and it takes many surprising forms. People are pursuing pleasure when they line up and pay to be scared half to death on a roller coaster.

Most people don’t actually like morphine. It’s often a challenge to get patients with chronic pain to take enough of it for long enough to control their symptoms and get better. Patients with no substance abuse history who become addicted to morphine are so rare that they are nearly impossible to find. Even people with a history of heroin addiction tend to use insufficient pain medication. They gave up the drug because they don’t want it anymore.

Morphine probably stimulates the pleasure centres no matter what state people are in, but other parts of the brain seem to modify or even block its signals, depending upon myriad circumstances that are difficult to control in the lab. Rat Park changed just one variable (social housing), and the whole morphine-brain-pleasure model fell apart.

Perhaps we should have been able to predict the poor reception our research has received. Rat Park created new problems for brain researchers, which apparently blocked stimulation of their pleasure centres.
Dr. Robert B. Coambs
Health Promotion Research
Toronto, ON


Good Will Hunting
In “Unlimited Editions” (December), Timothy Taylor describes John Meier’s frustrations as he gathers information for a bibliography of the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction. Last spring, I grew similarly frustrated while fact-checking a question about Roderick Haig-Brown, the namesake of one of British Columbia’s annual literary awards. Had he received the Governor General’s Award for best juvenile fiction in 1948 for his adventure story Saltwater Summer? The list of prizewinners on the GG website starts with the 1949 winner, and a call to the reference librarian at the Canada Council for the Arts only complicated the puzzle.

Further inquiries here in Vancouver put me on to John Meier. He confessed that early on in his project he had identified the cumulative Canada Council list as incomplete and unreliable. But he recalled seeing something in correspondence from the years prior to 1948 about the establishment of a Governor General’s Award for juvenile fiction, which he was able to confirm with secondary sources. Based on that information, I was able to determine that Haig-Brown had indeed won the first GG for best juvenile fiction. Meier’s huge recall and tenacious research was invaluable to me. I have no doubt he will assemble more missing pieces for a fuller picture of Canada’s literary history.
Ann-Marie Metten
West Coast Book Prize Society
Vancouver, BC


Blink
The picture of the Queen on the cover of the December issue is worth more than a thousand words. Not only is it a beautiful likeness; it is irreverent. I wonder, after fifty-six years in the limelight, is Her Majesty thinking, “I ought to hand the whole bloody nonsense over to Charles”? Or did she suddenly remember that she forgot to tell the butler to open the door to the sunroom?
Hermann Saefkow
Smithers, BC


If I were the Queen, or even a monarchist, I would be upset with the ugly photo you placed on the cover of your December issue. Since I’m neither, I got a smile out of knowing the poor lady has so many family irritations. I’m sure my fellow Québécois who were lucky enough to see this beautiful magazine were also tickled.
Guy Verreault
Cobble Hill, BC