Stand aside cocaine… you now have competition.

A recently conducted study by a neuroscience student at Connecticut College determined that Oreo cookies are literally as addictive, if not more addictive, than cocaine.

Now you’re probably thinking: How did this student conduct this research and how can I be a test subject.

Jamie Honohan, a recent graduate and leader of the project, decided to study how the overwhelming presence of unhealthy foods in low-income residential areas contributed to the nation’s obesity problem.

The team used two groups of rats as test subjects (despite offers by some of his student colleagues).

Some were injected with cocaine and others were fed bits of an Oreo cookie. The rats were then placed in a maze with a rice cake on one side and either cocaine or Oreos on the other side. As it turns out,

the students found that the rats who had been fed Oreos spent as much time on the Oreo side as the rats who had been injected with the drugs spent on the drug side, indicating that the link they made between the “pleasurable effects” of Oreos/drugs and that specific environment was equally strong.

Not only would the rats eat the creamy center of the cookie first, but a larger number of pleasure neurons were activated in the rats by the Oreos than the cocaine.

Watch out the next time you break open a container of Oreos- you might eat one too many.