“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
“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
“In any disease, say smoking-induced lung or heart disease, organs and tissues are damaged and function in pathological ways. When the brain… — 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
“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
“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
“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
“Any passion can become an addiction; but then how to distinguish between the two? The central question is: who’s in charge, the… — 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
“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
“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
“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
“What a lot of people use the internet for is really about meeting their attachment needs. So on Facebook, what do people… — 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
“First, we need to take stock of ourselves and give up any hint of moral superiority and judgment toward the addict. Judging… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. — Gabor Mate Copy Share Image
“All we know about the advances in addiction treatment arises out of our understanding of trauma. People often think that trauma is… — 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
“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
“By the way, let me shatter a myth about addiction. This whole idea that drugs are addictive... they're not in themselves addictive.… — 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
“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
“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 Image
“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.” — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
