The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. — Gabor Mate Copy Share Image
It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the… — Gabor Mate Copy Share Image
“Dismissing addictions as “bad habits” or “self-destructive behaviour” comfortably hides their functionality in the life of the addict. It is impossible to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Those whom we dismiss as “junkies” are not creatures from a different world, only men and women mired at the extreme end… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviors. . . . The wound may not be as deep and the… — Gabor Mate Copy Share Image
“Another powerful dynamic perpetuates addiction despite the abundance of disastrous consequences: the addict sees no other possible existence for himself. His outlook… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A… — Gabor Mate Copy Share Image
“We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“A sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture. The drug addict is more painfully conscious of this void than most people… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Not every story has a happy ending [...], but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart and the revelations of… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“All addictions — whether to drugs or to nondrug behaviours — share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“If you start with the idea that addiction isn’t a primary disease, but an attempt to solve a problem, then you soon… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“One of the greatest difficulties we human beings seem to have is to relinquish long-held ideas. Many of us are addicted to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The constellation of behaviours we call addiction is provoked by a complex set of neurological and emotional mechanisms that develop inside a… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“What characterizes an addiction?” asks the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. “Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the power… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Music gives me a sense of self-sufficiency and nourishment. I don’t need anyone or anything. I bathe in it as in amniotic… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The addict is re-traumatized over and over again by ostracism, harassment, dire poverty, the spread of disease, the frantic hunt for a… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side. I believe there is one addiction process, whether it is manifested… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The mainstream view of addiction in North America is that it's a choice, it's an ethical lapse, it's a bad decision, it's… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Opiates don't only relieve physical pain, they also relieve emotional pain. It turns out that the same part of the brain that… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The indispensable foundation of a rational stance toward drug addiction would be the decriminalization of all substance dependence and the provision of… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“And then there’s physical dependence. As defined in medical terms, physical dependence is manifested when a person stops taking a substance and,… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Society would have much to gain from decriminalization. On the immediate practical level, we would feel safer in our homes and on… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“No organism in nature is separate from the system in which it lives, functions and dies, and no natural process can be… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Like addiction itself, anxiety will always find a target, but exists independently of its targets. Only when we become aware of it… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Harm reduction is often perceived as being inimical to the ultimate purpose of “curing” addiction—that is, of helping addicts transcend their habits… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Addictions, even as they resemble normal human yearnings, are more about desire than attainment. In the addicted mode, the emotional charge is… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Some people, a relatively small minority, are at grave risk for addiction if exposed to certain substances. For this minority, exposure to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“What, then, is addiction? In the words of a consensus statement by addiction experts in 2001, addiction is a “chronic neurobiological disease…… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Addiction is a human problem that resides in people, not in the drug or in the drug’s capacity to produce physical effects,”… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Not only do we avert our eyes from the hardcore drug addict to avoid seeing ourselves; we do so to avoid facing… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there’s one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. Passion is divine fire: it… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that harm reduction measures encourage drug use. Denying addicts humane assistance multiplies their… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“As parents who make every effort we can to raise our children in loving security, we do not need to feel more guilt than… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.” — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Many adults have not attained maturity — have not mastered being independent, self-motivated individuals capable of tending their own emotional needs and of respecting… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers. This is not simply because of the fact that the mother was different in… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Without attachment, the parent succeeds at most in cowing a child into obedience, at the price of grave damage to the relationship and to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Attachment is our connection with the world. In the earliest attachment relationships, we gain or lose the ability to stay open, self-nurturing and healthy.… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“So what you've actually got is traumatized children. When children are traumatized that affects how they feel about themselves, which is deeply ashamed because… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“We think that there are people who are normal over here, and then there’s the pathological ones who have depression, anxiety, addiction or schizophrenia… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“One cannot get much more vulnerable than to expose oneself psychologically. To share oneself with another and then be misunderstood or rejected is, for… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“The areas of the cortex responsible for attention and self-regulation develop in response to the emotional interaction with the person whom we may call… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Peer-oriented children live in a universe of severely limited and superficial attachments. The quest for sameness being the least vulnerable way of attaching, it… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.” — Gabor Maté Copy Share
![“Not every story has a happy ending [...], but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and…” quote by Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/301/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_not-every-story-has-a-happy-ending-but-t_581790.jpg)
