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Addiction Quotes by Gabor Maté

52 Addiction quotes by Gabor Maté

All Addiction quotes Gabor Maté’s page

Gabor Maté says addiction is linked to pain rather than a simple cause. He notes that personality can be a mix of true traits and adopted coping styles that hide the real self. He contrasts passion, which creates, with addiction, which consumes, and urges empathy for those labeled ‘junkies.’

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

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Not why the addiction, but why the pain.

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“Passion creates, addiction consumes.”

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“The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”

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

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The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates.

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

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“What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true…

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“Those whom we dismiss as “junkies” are not creatures from a different world, only men and women mired at the extreme end…

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

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

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

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

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“Not every story has a happy ending [...], but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart and the revelations of…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“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…

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

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

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“One of the greatest difficulties we human beings seem to have is to relinquish long-held ideas. Many of us are addicted to…

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“The constellation of behaviours we call addiction is provoked by a complex set of neurological and emotional mechanisms that develop inside a…

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“What characterizes an addiction?” asks the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. “Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the power…

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“The addict is re-traumatized over and over again by ostracism, harassment, dire poverty, the spread of disease, the frantic hunt for a…

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“Music gives me a sense of self-sufficiency and nourishment. I don’t need anyone or anything. I bathe in it as in amniotic…

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“All addictions — whether to drugs or to nondrug behaviours — share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical…

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“Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of…

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“If you start with the idea that addiction isn’t a primary disease, but an attempt to solve a problem, then you soon…

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

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“What a lot of people use the internet for is really about meeting their attachment needs. So on Facebook, what do people…

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

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“I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid fifties and I was given Ritalin and Dexedrine. These are stimulant medications. They elevate…

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

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

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

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

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

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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.”