reminds me of a science fiction short called, "Second Contact", by W. R. Thompson, found in "Imperial Stars vol. 3 The Crash of Empire".

In the story, a small republic is rebuilding after a global collapse. The collapse was brought on by the visitation to the Earth by the interstellar equivalent of a tramp steamer. The republic is dealing with a barbarian clan opposed to technology, capitalism, and everything associated with what the republic is trying to rebuild.
And then another alien ship lands.
This ship is crewed by academics, who travel the galaxy studying collapsed civilizations. They'd bought the information of the merchant ship, and come to investigate.

The merchant ship aliens kept asking questions and behaving in ways that basically belittled and insulted our cultures and societies, making us look and feel like backward primitives. Eventually there was a nuclear war, wherein the merchant ship shoots down all the missiles and thanks us for the opportunity to test their meteor defense systems.

They had a weapon, a terrible weapon. If they shot you with it, it didn't kill you. It gave you the ultimate orgasm, after which you would become a 'chaser', and chase after the aliens trying to get them to zap you again.

In the course of the story, one of the legislators deals with one of the academic aliens. The legislator is dealing with a matter of a kid who's been shooting cats; he has to explain to the alien why the kid must be stopped, and why it's important the child be punished.
Another legislator, who absolutely hates the aliens, argues with the academic alien, because she blames the collapse on the merchant aliens, and it proves that the collapse was already inevitable.

Meanwhile, the barbarians try to provoke the aliens into zapping the republic's heroic military commander, and turning him into a chaser. The leader of the barbarians knows that this man was already zapped when the aliens first came to Earth. What nobody knows is that this hero escaped a mental hospital (where he was put because he shot a kid about to throw a grenade into his troop transport truck), to lead his military unit into driving the aliens back into space.

While trying to prevent him being zapped again, the legislator is zapped. He wakes up a couple days later... remembers the ultimate orgasm... and has no desire to repeat the event.
The academic alien confirms that the zapper is NOT addictive to a member of a *healthy* society.

"Dzhaz just admitted it won't work."
She jerked around, startled, "When did it say that?"
"When it was talking about the zapper. What did it say? A single zap is ineffective against a member of a *healthy* society? Such people don't really enjoy getting zapped - right? It feels nice, but it's degrading, and you have better pleasures. Family. Work that means something. Accomplishment, hope, a future. When you have that, you don't slip off into pipe dreams"

And that's why liberals drink more than conservatives.