By Maria Tariq
In 1965, Martin Seligman and his colleagues were doing research on classical conditioning or the process by which an animal or human associates one thing with another. In the case of Seligman's experiment, he would ring a bell and then give a light shock to a dog before presented it with food. After a number of times, the dog reacted to the shock even before it happened: as soon as the dog heard the bell, he reacted as though he'd already been shocked.
But then something unexpected happened. Seligman put each dog into a large crate that was divided down the middle with a low fence. The dog could see and jump over the fence if necessary. The floor on one side of the fence was electrified, but not on the other side of the fence. Seligman put the dog on the electrified side and administered a light shock. He expected the dog to jump to the non-shocking side of the fence.
Instead, the dogs lay down. It was as though they'd learned from the first part of the experiment that there was nothing they could do to avoid the shocks, so they gave up in the second part of the experiment.
Seligman described their condition as learned helplessness, or not trying to get out of a negative situation because the past has taught you that you are helpless.
After the dogs didn't jump the fence to escape the shock, Seligman tried the second part of his experiment on dogs that had not been through the classical conditioning part of the experiment. The dogs that had not been previously exposed to shocks quickly jumped over the fence to escape the shocks. This told Seligman that the dogs who lay down and acted helpless had actually learned that helplessness from the first part of his experiment.
In addiction we see lots of people with this helplessness. Before coming to an addiction treatment facility, they must have tried to quit drugs in different ways. But all of their methods or ways fail. Due to those wrong ways or methods they learn helplessness. They think that there is no way to quit a drug or believe that all their efforts they put will not work. Therefore, they give up trying. They see themselves as failures, and lose all motivation and interest in life, at the same time putting themselves down and wallowing in misery. They are unable to understand that now they can change their lives because of their previous experiences. They feel unable to see thing new, bright, dazzling and beaming ways of life.
The only way to help people who suffer ‘learned helplessness’ is to concentrate on showing the addicted person that he can operate on his environment and be effectual perhaps by giving him simple tasks in therapy at which he can succeed, develop confidence and then move on to harder ones. The aim is to break the conditioned conviction that nothing ever works.
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