Chasing The Scream Analysis

Drug addiction is on the largest contributing factors for the deaths of millions of people throughout out the ages. Todays day in age drugs have become more dangerously more potent than they were a decade back. The majority of the population believe that the reason addicts become hooked on drugs because the the chemical triggers found in the drug. This has caused many society as a whole to look down on drug addicts and treat them with less respect than anyone who is not a drug addict. Johann Hari is an english author and journalist who was published articles in newspapers like the New York times, Huffington post and the Guardian, Hari has published his own book Chasing the Scream were he goes into a three year journey on the war on drugs.

In the article The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think written Johann Hari and published by the Huffington post on January 20, 2015. In the article Hari argues that drug addicts are not addicted to the chemical triggers found in the drugs but a result of the their social situation. Drug addicts use the drug as a crutch for feeling unhappy with their lives. Hari makes an argument that in order for drug addicts to recover and stop using drugs, their family and friends have to support them with lots of love instead of casting them off to a rehab facility. The audience he targets are the normal population with high school ability to read and individuals who can relate to the struggle of living with someone who is addicted to drugs. Through a series strategies to support his claims, Hari provides evidence that drug addiction is not caused by chemical triggers found in the drug it self, but a product of “disconnection” . In this essay, I will analyze some of Hari’s major claims, strategies he uses to grab readers attention and the overall effectiveness of his rhetorical strategies.
Hari starts off his main argument by providing an example of Rat experiment that was conducted by the Drug free America, they put a rat in a cage alone with two sources of water. The first source of water consisted of plain water and the second was laced with heroin or cocaine. The rat every time chose to drink the laced water and drank him self to death. Then in other to disprove the argument that the rats were just addicted to the chemical triggers in the drug. Hari then provides a counter experiment that supports his claim, he provides another experiment conducted by in the 1970s by a professor of Psychology in Vancouver called Bruce Alexander. The experiment was to place the rats in a cage also but the cage was instead a “ rat park” filled with other rats to mate with, best food, and the best tunnels and play toys. The “ rat park” also has the the normal water and the laced water with cocaine or heroin. Alexander noted that all the rats tried the laced water but they did not continue to come back for more, instead the rats drank the normal water because they were content with their lives. Alexander’s experiment found that the first experiment was flawed because the rats were isolated and had no others things to do than drink the drugged water. Hari uses this experiment to connect is to his main argument that the real cause of addiction is not the chemical triggers but the social situation they currently have. By providing two experiments that support his claim Hari is able to convince the reader more of his argument. The use of pervious experiments are examples of the rhetorical
strategy named exemplification. By just mentioning credible experiments that have been
performed, it makes hard for the audience to disagree with him, overall making his argument argument stronger because experiments are from a reputable sources that is hard to falsify.

Hari could make his argument stronger by providing more in depth details of the experiment in stead of just providing the gist. Hari appeals to logos in this example, logos corresponds with the logical appeal and how well the author uses evidence to support his main claim. The logos in this example is providing the two experiments because most of the time people will trust any experiment performed by scientist. For some reason people will believe any experiment performed with rats because we share 99% of genes with

rats.
Another example that Hari uses to support his claim is when he goes over why it isn’t the chemical triggers in the drug that cause addiction, his explanation is that everyday thousands of people go to the hospital for broken bones and are given diamorphine for pain, and none of those patients become addicts or at least a very small percent of them do. I’m sure that their is records of multiple patients who have become addicted to diamorphine after being treated with with it at the hospitals. This arguments that Hari makes is one of the weakest that he presents because he backs up his argument with little background info. It makes it seem like he is making an assumption instead of offering factual information. Hari tries to use the rhetorical strategy of exemplification again but fails to do so because there is no factual evidence. I think that he tries to appeal to logos because it makes sense that the majority of the people who are given diamorphine at hospitals do not become addicts but there must be a percentage of people who do become hooked. Hari could've supported his main argument better if he had provided more
evidence to support the example that people that are given diamorphine at hospitals don't become addicted. If Hari had offered more statistics on the the percent of people who become addicted to diamorphine it would had impacted his main argument negatively but it would’ve made him a more reliable source. Even though Hari doesn't use this example to support his claim effectively,
it still has an impact on the reader because the majority of the people who read the Huffington post are not super college educated. This makes his article effective enough to convince his audience that chemical triggers are not the real cause of addiction. In this example Hari tries to appeal to ethos but does not do a good job of provide enough knowledge of the topic. Ethos has to do with how much credibility and how trust worthy the author is. Throughout the article Hari seems like credible a source provided the audience with enough evidence to gain their trust but in this example he seems to skip over important information that could've supported his argument more and made his appeal ethos stronger. If the reader looked into Hari’s previous works they might notice that he had an issue with plagiarism. Plagiarism is a big deal of a journalist and can greatly impact the readers because they are maybe not going to trust his argument.
Thirdly, Hari presents an example where he argues that the “age of loneliness” is a major contributing factor to drug addiction to drug addiction around the world. We as a society are all more connected than ever before but lack human connection. The reason that we need human
connection Hari argues is that it gives us satisfaction and if we don't connect with humans we will find something the connect to therefore drug addicts will connect with drugs. “So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection”(Hari). In this quote Hari is saying that instead of of forcing addicts to be sober we should have more connection with them. Addicts
should be treated differently instead of vanished from society we should encourage them to get back to society. Hari uses the mode of persuasion of pathos because he wants everyone to realize that addicts are just looking to return back to normal. Pathos is all about how the audience feels about why they are reading something or listening to music. This point is a great example of pathos because it cause the reader to become understanding of how addicts are feeling. Hari did an okay job in in this method of persuasion because it affected his argument in a positive way but he could have gone more in detail about the struggles of addicts trying to return back in to society.
Lastly, Hari offers a way that will help drug addicts reconnect with society. Hari provides the example of Portugal where they decriminalize all drugs. Portugal had a huge drug problem that they could not keep down. So they tried the radical thing they could which was make all drugs legal and spend all the money that was going in arresting and jailing drug addicts into something that would benefit them instead. Portugal secured the drug addicts with housing and subsidized jobs that gave them something to do instead of laying around and doing drugs. This is an example of cause and effect analysis, Hari provides an example of a potential solution to the drug problem in United States by providing an example of the cause and effect that happened in
Portugal. This example is also an example of the rhetorical strategy precedent because it
references a previous event that had happened and Hari connects it to the his modern day
argument.

It shows that Hard is well versed in the topic of drug war and drug addicts. Hari has a good use of rhetorical analysis to support his claim in this example. In this example Hari appeals to logos with this argument because he uses evidence and facts that support his main argument. A perfect example of logos is when Hari mentions that ever since Portugal has legalized all drugs and invested more money on reconnecting drug addicts to society, injecting drug use has fallen by 50 percent. This is a solid factual evidence that makes the reader have a positive reaction toward the authors

argument.
Through a series of major claims, rhetorical strategies and modes of persuasion, Hari is able to make his claim the the real cause of addiction is not the chemical triggers in the drugs but the the social situation that drug addicts have when they are using drugs. He starts his argument by providing the rat experiment that had in my opinion the most positive impact for his argument because it the example in which he provides the most evidence for. Hari’s other claims are not as strong as his rat experiment example but he is able to convince some readers that chemical triggers are not the cause of addiction. His examples were not the best but he does appeal to all three modes of persuasion really well, he doesn't focus on just one instead he goes over all three creating a well rounded essay. Hari uses minimal rhetorical strategies which is not good because if he had provide more rhetorical strategies his argument would be stronger. Overall Hari did an okay job in his argument, a couple of days after reading the argument I seem to have forgotten everything about the article except for the main argument and the rat experiment. This shows that he needs to make his article more memorable