[m_arnold]

Addiction is often a response to life circumstance.

Everyone points to the famous experiment in which rats were given access to a button they could push to release happy drugs in their brains. The rats hit the button until they withered away and died.

There was, however, another experiment done, in which the rats were given access to the drug button, but also an expansive "rat park" in which they could play and interact with other rats. In this case, most rats tried the button, but did not abuse it.

This makes perfect sense: if you were trapped in a cage with no future, no friends, and nothing to do but hit the pleasure button, wouldn't you? The parallels to human behavior are left as an exercise to the reader.