Skip to content

Wine Quotes by Gabor Maté

47 Wine quotes by Gabor Maté

All Wine quotes Gabor Maté’s page

A hidden hurt is said to sit at the center of every addiction. The quotes explain that people chase drugs or compulsive habits to ease pain, not because they simply like the behavior. They point out that addiction functions as a coping mechanism and that the underlying wound may be invisible yet powerful.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

“The question is never “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?”

Image

Not why the addiction, but why the pain.

Image

It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the…

Image

A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviors. . . . The wound may not be as deep and the…

Image

“Dismissing addictions as “bad habits” or “self-destructive behaviour” comfortably hides their functionality in the life of the addict. It is impossible to…

Image

“A sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture. The drug addict is more painfully conscious of this void than most people…

Image

“Misplaced attachment to what cannot satiate the soul is not an error exclusive to addicts, but the common condition of mankind. It…

Image

“We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the…

Image

“Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A…

Image

“The successes (financial) represent addictive drives, whose negative impact in the world is tremendous. Who creates more suffering, somebody who sells an…

Image

“Another powerful dynamic perpetuates addiction despite the abundance of disastrous consequences: the addict sees no other possible existence for himself. His outlook…

Image

“Any passion can become an addiction; but then how to distinguish between the two? The central question is: who’s in charge, the…

Image

“Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage…

Image

“Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic…

Image

“All we know about the advances in addiction treatment arises out of our understanding of trauma. People often think that trauma is…

Image

“The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. Passion is divine fire: it…

Image

“There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that harm reduction measures encourage drug use. Denying addicts humane assistance multiplies their…

Image

“In truth, the U.S.-sponsored international “War on Drugs” is a war on poor people, most of them subsistence farmers caught in a…

Image

“Many people fear that decriminalization and the controlled dispensing of drugs will lead to widespread substance use among people who are now…

Image

“In any disease, say smoking-induced lung or heart disease, organs and tissues are damaged and function in pathological ways. When the brain…

Image

“First, we need to take stock of ourselves and give up any hint of moral superiority and judgment toward the addict. Judging…

Image

“By the way, let me shatter a myth about addiction. This whole idea that drugs are addictive... they're not in themselves addictive.…

Image

“The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse.…

Image

“Some people, a relatively small minority, are at grave risk for addiction if exposed to certain substances. For this minority, exposure to…

Image

“Addictions, even as they resemble normal human yearnings, are more about desire than attainment. In the addicted mode, the emotional charge is…

Image

“In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there’s one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking…

Image

“Not only do we avert our eyes from the hardcore drug addict to avoid seeing ourselves; we do so to avoid facing…

Image

“Addiction is a human problem that resides in people, not in the drug or in the drug’s capacity to produce physical effects,”…

Image

“What, then, is addiction? In the words of a consensus statement by addiction experts in 2001, addiction is a “chronic neurobiological disease……

Image

“Opiates don't only relieve physical pain, they also relieve emotional pain. It turns out that the same part of the brain that…

Image

“The indispensable foundation of a rational stance toward drug addiction would be the decriminalization of all substance dependence and the provision of…

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…

Image

“Human beings want not only to survive, but also to live. We long to experience life in all its vividness, with full,…

Image

“No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side. I believe there is one addiction process, whether it is manifested…

Image

“Like addiction itself, anxiety will always find a target, but exists independently of its targets. Only when we become aware of it…

Image

“To expect an addict to give up her drug is like asking the average person to imagine living without all her social…

Image

“No organism in nature is separate from the system in which it lives, functions and dies, and no natural process can be…

Image

“Society would have much to gain from decriminalization. On the immediate practical level, we would feel safer in our homes and on…

Image

“The war mentality represents an unfortunate confluence of ignorance, fear, prejudice, and profit. ... The ignorance exists in its own right and…

Image

“And then there’s physical dependence. As defined in medical terms, physical dependence is manifested when a person stops taking a substance and,…

Image

Other authors on Wine

More by Gabor Maté

“As parents who make every effort we can to raise our children in loving security, we do not need to feel more guilt than…

“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.”

“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs…

“Many adults have not attained maturity — have not mastered being independent, self-motivated individuals capable of tending their own emotional needs and of respecting…

Autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything.

“If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers. This is not simply because of the fact that the mother was different in…

“Without attachment, the parent succeeds at most in cowing a child into obedience, at the price of grave damage to the relationship and to…

“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.…

“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…

“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and…

“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…

“One cannot get much more vulnerable than to expose oneself psychologically. To share oneself with another and then be misunderstood or rejected is, for…

“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…

“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…

“The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”