Rhetorical Analysis

Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong

Johann Hari

Throughout history, Addiction has been one of the leading causes of death and only

recently it is finally being looked at in a different light. Johann Hari is a journalist and author of

two New York Times best sellers who has been covering addiction and trying to figure out how

to help people with addictions for over 20 years. Addiction has been part of his life since he was

a little kid and he wanted to share to the rest of the world what he knows about this disease. He

wants to show his audience how people actually get hooked on something and how they should

be treated and helped instead of isolating them and making them criminals. Hari is trying to

reach anyone who is either struggling with addiction or anyone who knows someone who has a

problem and wants to help. He is trying to get his audience to realize that what they are doing for

people struggling with addiction isn’t the correct way to approach it, especially calling out the

USA and England for their poor approach. Hari made this text to bring up the incorrect agenda of

what addiction really is and how to help addicts. His ability to hook the listener right from the

start and hold on to them made it very easy to understand and listen to. He was very versatile in

his style and tone during his TED talk. There were many moments throughout the talk when he

was formal but also satirical at times. He was serious the majority of the TED talk when talking

about addicts that he knew and how bad of a disease it is, but was also very satire at some points

to loosen the audience up and keep them listening.

 Johann Hari communicated to the audience that most of the world has to change the way

they handle addicts. Hari’s main point is to stop cutting out the addicts in our life and instead

deepen the connection between each other. He wants other countries to be like Portugal. The

Portuguese were at an all time low in drug addictions as one percent of the population was

addicted to heroin.They punished people and shamed them. Year after year, the problem kept

getting worse. It got so bad that the Prime Minister decided to change the way they did things

and it worked for the better (Hari 8:22). The first thing they did was completely decriminalize all

drugs, from weed to cocaine. The consumer is now treated as a patient and not a criminal.

Portugal used the money that was punishing them and put it into support and treatment centers.

Portugal's drug problem significantly reduced after what they did. Hari wants countries like

America and England to follow Portugal's way of treating the addicted. One quote that really

summarized the main message Hari was sending to the audience was “The opposite of addiction

isn't sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.” (Hari 14:13)

Johann Hari is a very credible journalist with two New York Times Best Sellers. He

presents himself as a man who is very knowledgeable because of the people he’s learned from

overtime as well as the experiences in his own life. Because of experiences he had with addicts

in his own family as a child he said that he wanted to travel to learn more about addiction. He

met loads of different people, from a transgender crack dealer in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to a

scientist who spends a lot of time feeding hallucinogens to mongooses, to Portugal which is the

only country to legalize most drugs (Hari 1:21-1:36). I personally trust him due to the way he

spoke and the facts that he gave.

It is important for an author to show emotion when trying to get a point across to an

audience. Johann Hari does a great job of pulling the audience in right away when he talks about
one of his first memories, where he was trying to wake up a family member of his and he

couldn’t (Hari 0:07-0:17). He didn’t realize at the time but his family had a drug addiction

problem in the family. This hits close to home with many families as any type of addiction is

unfortunately very big all over the world.

As an author trying to get a message across you have to be logical and have evidence to

support your claim. Johann Hari definitely showed these traits during his ted talk with the data he

brought up. He talks about experiments that were done by Professor Bruce Alexander. He said in

the early 20th century scientists put rats in isolated cages with a bottle of water and a bottle of

heroin. The rat picked the heroin every time. This experiment made the public believe that heroin

is chemically hooked. He then talks about experiments that were done by Professor Bruce

Alexander. Hari talked about how he met him in Canada and how he performed an experiment

himself to try and rebut the original experiment. Professor Alexander built a cage called “rat

park” which is a paradise with loads of cheese, toys, and tunnels. Most importantly, they've got

tons of friends. Alexander put both untouched water as well as the drugged water in the park. He

said that in Rat Park they barely touched the drugged water and it seemed they didn’t like it at

all. In the original experiment the isolated rat died from the drugged water almost every time

compared to Professor Alexander's experiment, where none of the rats died and they all seemed

to be living happy lives. These experiments show how the rats responded to the drugged water in

different environments.

I have learned a lot from listening and reading Johann Hari’s speech on addiction. Before

listening to this TED Talk, I just assumed that addicts were hooked on these drugs and for the

most part criminals. After watching and reading the transcript I see addiction in a completely

new light. I now believe that addicts are just lost or alone and need help getting back more than
punishment. The rat experiments effectively helped me understand the truth about addiction as

well as Hari talking about Portugal and how to correctly help and approach struggling addicts.