--- title: "15 Drug addict Quotes By Gabor Maté" description: "15 Drug addict quotes by Gabor Maté. Plus more from Gabor Maté and more Drug addict sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d83/gabor-mat-1410_abuse_the-hardcore-drug-addicts-that-i-treat-a_3144422.png" --- > [“The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-hardcore-drug-addicts-that-i-treat-are-without-exception-people/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d83/gabor-mat-1410_abuse_the-hardcore-drug-addicts-that-i-treat-a_3144422.png) > [“Not only do we avert our eyes from the hardcore drug addict to avoid seeing ourselves; we do so to avoid facing…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/not-only-do-we-avert-our-eyes-from-the-hardcore-drug-addict-to-avoid/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/168/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_not-only-do-we-avert-our-eyes-from-the-h_2621731.jpg) > [“A sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture. The drug addict is more painfully conscious of this void than most people…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/a-sense-of-deficient-emptiness-pervades-our-entire-culture-the-drug/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/600/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_a-sense-of-deficient-emptiness-pervades_1772062.png) > [“We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/we-see-that-substance-addictions-are-only-one-specific-form-of-blind/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8d/gabor-mat-1410_addict_we-see-that-substance-addictions-are-onl_923478.jpg) > [“No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side. I believe there is one addiction process, whether it is manifested…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/no-society-can-understand-itself-without-looking-at-its-shadow-side-i/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d6e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_no-society-can-understand-itself-without_2937851.jpg) > [“In any disease, say smoking-induced lung or heart disease, organs and tissues are damaged and function in pathological ways. When the brain…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/in-any-disease-say-smoking-induced-lung-or-heart-disease-organs-and/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/65c/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_in-any-disease-say-smoking-induced-lung_552282.jpg) > [“Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/far-more-than-a-quest-for-pleasure-chronic-substance-use-is-the/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b35/gabor-mat-1410_addict_far-more-than-a-quest-for-pleasure-chron_996354.png) > [“Many people fear that decriminalization and the controlled dispensing of drugs will lead to widespread substance use among people who are now…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/many-people-fear-that-decriminalization-and-the-controlled-dispensing/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/86a/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_many-people-fear-that-decriminalization_3092480.jpg) > [“Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/beauty-junkies-is-the-title-of-a-recent-book-by-new-york-times-writer/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7e1/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_beauty-junkies-is-the-title-of-a-recent_2686226.jpg) > [“Harm reduction is often perceived as being inimical to the ultimate purpose of “curing” addiction—that is, of helping addicts transcend their habits…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/harm-reduction-is-often-perceived-as-being-inimical-to-the-ultimate/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cbe/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_harm-reduction-is-often-perceived-as-bei_615802.jpg) > [“And then there’s physical dependence. As defined in medical terms, physical dependence is manifested when a person stops taking a substance and,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/and-then-there-s-physical-dependence-as-defined-in-medical-terms/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/233/gabor-mat-1410_aches-and-pains_and-then-there-s-physical-dependence-as_1591653.jpg) > [“The indispensable foundation of a rational stance toward drug addiction would be the decriminalization of all substance dependence and the provision of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-indispensable-foundation-of-a-rational-stance-toward-drug/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/32e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_the-indispensable-foundation-of-a-ration_2703512.jpg) > [“One of the greatest difficulties we human beings seem to have is to relinquish long-held ideas. Many of us are addicted to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/one-of-the-greatest-difficulties-we-human-beings-seem-to-have-is-to/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2ea/gabor-mat-1410_addict_one-of-the-greatest-difficulties-we-huma_788747.jpg) > [“All addictions — whether to drugs or to nondrug behaviours — share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/all-addictions-whether-to-drugs-or-to-nondrug-behaviours-share-the/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/337/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_all-addictions-whether-to-drugs-or-to-no_2058396.png) > [“Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/why-do-we-despise-ostracize-and-punish-the-drug-addict-when-as-a/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/26e/gabor-mat-1410_addict_why-do-we-despise-ostracize-and-punish-t_2186140.png) ## Other authors on Drug addict ## 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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/as-parents-who-make-every-effort-we-can-to-raise-our-children-in/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-fact-is-we-in-this-society-are-often-quite-removed-from-our-own/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/shame-is-the-deepest-of-the-negative-emotions-a-feeling-we-will-do/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Many adults have not attained maturity — have not mastered being independent, self-motivated individuals capable of tending their own emotional needs and of respecting…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/many-adults-have-not-attained-maturity-have-not-mastered-being/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [Autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/autonomy-is-impossible-as-long-as-one-is-driven-by-anything/) [Gabor Mate](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers. This is not simply because of the fact that the mother was different in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/if-a-mother-has-eight-children-there-are-eight-mothers-this-is-not/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Without attachment, the parent succeeds at most in cowing a child into obedience, at the price of grave damage to the relationship and to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/without-attachment-the-parent-succeeds-at-most-in-cowing-a-child-into/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“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.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/attachment-is-our-connection-with-the-world-in-the-earliest/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/so-what-you-ve-actually-got-is-traumatized-children-when-children-are/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/even-without-world-wars-revolutions-and-emigration-siblings-growing/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/we-think-that-there-are-people-who-are-normal-over-here-and-then/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“One cannot get much more vulnerable than to expose oneself psychologically. To share oneself with another and then be misunderstood or rejected is, for…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/one-cannot-get-much-more-vulnerable-than-to-expose-oneself/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-areas-of-the-cortex-responsible-for-attention-and-self-regulation/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/peer-oriented-children-live-in-a-universe-of-severely-limited-and/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-united-states-contains-less-than-5-percent-of-the-world-s/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/drug-addict/gabor-mat/#itemlist", "name": "15 Drug addict Quotes By Gabor Maté", "numberOfItems": 15, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development; they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver who wasn’t sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again. That’s what sets up the brain biology of addiction. 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As we have seen, injection drug use more often than not arises in people who were abused and neglected as young children. The addict, in other words, is not born but made. His addiction is the result of a situation that he had no influence in creating. His life expresses the history of the multigenerational family system of which he is a part, and his family exists as part of the broader culture and society. In society, as in Nature, each microcosmic unit reflects something of the whole. In the case of drug addiction, the sins of entire societies are visited unevenly on minority populations.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/not-only-do-we-avert-our-eyes-from-the-hardcore-drug-addict-to-avoid/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/168/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_not-only-do-we-avert-our-eyes-from-the-h_2621731.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/168/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_not-only-do-we-avert-our-eyes-from-the-h_2621731.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/168/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_not-only-do-we-avert-our-eyes-from-the-h_2621731.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Not only do we avert our eyes from the hardcore drug addict to avoid seeing ourselves; we do so to avoid…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“A sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture. The drug addict is more painfully conscious of this void than most people and has limited means of escaping it. The rest of us find other ways of suppressing our fear of emptiness or of distracting ourselves from it. When we have nothing to occupy our minds, bad memories, troubling anxieties, unease or the nagging mental stupor we call boredom can arise. At all costs, drug addicts want to escape spending “alone time” with their minds. To a lesser degree, behavioural addictions are also responses to this terror of the void.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/a-sense-of-deficient-emptiness-pervades-our-entire-culture-the-drug/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/600/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_a-sense-of-deficient-emptiness-pervades_1772062.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/600/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_a-sense-of-deficient-emptiness-pervades_1772062.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/600/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_a-sense-of-deficient-emptiness-pervades_1772062.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“A sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture. The drug addict is more painfully conscious of…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the addict's stubborn refusal to give up something deleterious to his life or to the life of others. Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict, when as a social collective, we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations?”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/we-see-that-substance-addictions-are-only-one-specific-form-of-blind/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8d/gabor-mat-1410_addict_we-see-that-substance-addictions-are-onl_923478.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8d/gabor-mat-1410_addict_we-see-that-substance-addictions-are-onl_923478.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8d/gabor-mat-1410_addict_we-see-that-substance-addictions-are-onl_923478.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side. I believe there is one addiction process, whether it is manifested in the lethal substance dependencies of my Downtown Eastside patients; the frantic self-soothing of overeaters or shopaholics; the obsessions of gamblers, sexaholics and compulsive Internet users; or the socially acceptable and even admired behaviours of the workaholic. Drug addicts are often dismissed and discounted as unworthy of empathy and respect. They have much in common with the society that ostracizes them. If they seem to have chosen a path to nowhere, they still have much to teach the rest of us. In the dark mirror of their lives, we can trace outlines of our own.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/no-society-can-understand-itself-without-looking-at-its-shadow-side-i/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d6e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_no-society-can-understand-itself-without_2937851.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d6e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_no-society-can-understand-itself-without_2937851.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d6e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_no-society-can-understand-itself-without_2937851.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side. I believe there is one addiction…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 6, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“In any disease, say smoking-induced lung or heart disease, organs and tissues are damaged and function in pathological ways. When the brain is diseased, the functions that become pathological are the person’s emotional life, thought processes and behaviour. And this creates addiction’s central dilemma: if recovery is to occur, the brain, the impaired organ of decision making, needs to initiate its own healing process. An altered and dysfunctional brain must decide that it wants to overcome its own dysfunction: to revert to normal — or, perhaps, become normal for the very first time. The worse the addiction is, the greater the brain abnormality and the greater the biological obstacles to opting for health. The scientific literature is nearly unanimous in viewing drug addiction as a chronic brain condition, and this alone ought to discourage anyone from blaming or punishing the sufferer. No one, after all, blames a person suffering from rheumatoid arthritis for having a relapse, since relapse is one of the characteristics of chronic illness. The very concept of choice appears less clear-cut if we understand that the addict’s ability to choose, if not absent, is certainly impaired. “The evidence for addiction as a different state of the brain has important treatment implications,” writes Dr. Charles O’Brien. “Unfortunately,” he adds, “most health care systems continue to treat addiction as an acute disorder, if at all.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/in-any-disease-say-smoking-induced-lung-or-heart-disease-organs-and/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/65c/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_in-any-disease-say-smoking-induced-lung_552282.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/65c/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_in-any-disease-say-smoking-induced-lung_552282.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/65c/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_in-any-disease-say-smoking-induced-lung_552282.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“In any disease, say smoking-induced lung or heart disease, organs and tissues are damaged and function in…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 7, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of view, addicts are self-medicating conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or even ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anaesthetics. Heroin and cocaine, both powerful physical painkillers, also ease psychological discomfort. Infant animals separated from their mothers can be soothed readily by low doses of narcotics, just as if it was actual physical pain they were enduring. The pain pathways in humans are no different. The very same brain centres that interpret and “feel” physical pain also become activated during the experience of emotional rejection: on brain scans they “light up” in response to social ostracism just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling “hurt” or of having emotional “pain,” they are not being abstract or poetic but scientifically quite precise. The hard-drug addict’s life has been marked by a surfeit of pain. No wonder she desperately craves relief.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/far-more-than-a-quest-for-pleasure-chronic-substance-use-is-the/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b35/gabor-mat-1410_addict_far-more-than-a-quest-for-pleasure-chron_996354.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b35/gabor-mat-1410_addict_far-more-than-a-quest-for-pleasure-chron_996354.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b35/gabor-mat-1410_addict_far-more-than-a-quest-for-pleasure-chron_996354.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 8, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Many people fear that decriminalization and the controlled dispensing of drugs will lead to widespread substance use among people who are now deterred from becoming addicts only by existing legal prohibitions. Like other tenets of the War on Drugs, this view entirely lacks supporting evidence. Any data on the subject points to the opposite prediction. For example, for many decades in the United Kingdom, heroin has been dispensed, under legal supervision, to addicts. The same type of program has been offered on a limited basis in other countries as well, and nowhere has it been found that this measure served in any way to entice unaddicted people into addiction. That is not surprising, given that addiction is a response to life experience, not simply to a drug. People who do not suffer the searing emotional pain that drives hardcore drug addiction will rarely fall into dependency on chemicals, even if these were more readily available — and, once more, public access to habit-forming substances is not being proposed. The call for the decriminalization of drugs for personal use does not imply legal acceptance of drug dealing. Criminalization and prevention are not identical — if anything, the first undermines the other. Paradoxical though it may seem, current drug laws against possession make drugs more readily available to potential new users than decriminalization would. Only the War on Drugs creates the raison d’être of the international trafficking industry, most of whose wealth is based on satisfying the cravings of established drug addicts. Without the exorbitant profits yielded by supplying to addicted users desperate for their substances, the illegal market would shrink to a fragment of its present size. Further, much of the street-level front-line sales force of the illicit drug trade consists of users raising money to support their habit. With the decriminalization of possession for personal use and the medically supervised distribution of drugs, the incentive to sell to new “customers,” including young kids, would largely evaporate. Policing resources could then be concentrated on the remaining large-scale traffickers — if any.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/many-people-fear-that-decriminalization-and-the-controlled-dispensing/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/86a/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_many-people-fear-that-decriminalization_3092480.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/86a/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_many-people-fear-that-decriminalization_3092480.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/86a/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_many-people-fear-that-decriminalization_3092480.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Many people fear that decriminalization and the controlled dispensing of drugs will lead to widespread…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 9, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers. The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.” But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry. The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/beauty-junkies-is-the-title-of-a-recent-book-by-new-york-times-writer/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7e1/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_beauty-junkies-is-the-title-of-a-recent_2686226.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7e1/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_beauty-junkies-is-the-title-of-a-recent_2686226.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7e1/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_beauty-junkies-is-the-title-of-a-recent_2686226.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 10, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Harm reduction is often perceived as being inimical to the ultimate purpose of “curing” addiction—that is, of helping addicts transcend their habits and to heal. People regard it as “coddling” addicts, as enabling them to continue their destructive ways. It’s also considered to be the opposite of abstinence, which many regard as the only legitimate goal of addiction treatment. Such a distinction is artificial. The issue in medical practice is always how best to help a patient. If a cure is possible and probable without doing greater harm, then cure is the objective. When it isn’t — and in most chronic medical conditions cure is not the expected outcome — the physician’s role is to help the patient with the symptoms and to reduce the harm done by the disease process. In rheumatoid arthritis, for example, one aims to prevent joint inflammation and bone destruction and, in all events, to reduce pain. In incurable cancers we aim to prolong life, if that can be achieved without a loss of life quality, and also to control symptoms. In other words, harm reduction means making the lives of afflicted human beings more bearable, more worth living. That is also the goal of harm reduction in the context of addiction. Although hardcore drug addiction is much more than a disease, the harm reduction model is essential to its treatment. Given our lack of a systematic, evidencebased approach to addiction, in many cases it’s futile to dream of a cure. So long as society ostracizes the addict and the legal system does everything it can to heighten the drug problem, the welfare and medical systems can aim only to mitigate some of its effects. Sad to say, in our context harm reduction means reducing not only the harm caused by the disease of addiction, but also the harm caused by the social assault on drug addicts.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/harm-reduction-is-often-perceived-as-being-inimical-to-the-ultimate/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cbe/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_harm-reduction-is-often-perceived-as-bei_615802.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cbe/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_harm-reduction-is-often-perceived-as-bei_615802.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cbe/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_harm-reduction-is-often-perceived-as-bei_615802.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Harm reduction is often perceived as being inimical to the ultimate purpose of “curing” addiction—that is…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 11, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“And then there’s physical dependence. As defined in medical terms, physical dependence is manifested when a person stops taking a substance and, due to changes in the brain and body, she experiences withdrawal symptoms. Those temporary, drug-induced changes form the basis of physical dependence. Although a feature of drug addiction, a person’s physical dependence on a substance does not necessarily imply that he is addicted to it. The withdrawal syndrome is different for each class of drug — in the case of opiates such as morphine or heroin it includes nausea, diarrhea, sweats, aches and pains and weakness, as well as severe anxiety, agitation and depressed mood. But you don’t have to be addicted to experience withdrawal — you just have to have been taking a medication for an extended period of time. As many people have discovered to their chagrin, with abrupt cessation it’s quite possible to suffer highly unpleasant withdrawal symptoms from drugs that are not addictive: the antidepressants paroxetine (Paxil) and venlafaxine (Effexor) are but two examples. Withdrawal does not mean you were addicted; for addiction, there also needs to be craving and relapse. In fact, in the case of narcotics, it turns out that the addictive, “feel good” effect of these drugs seems to act in a different part of the brain than the effects that lead to physical dependence. When morphine is infused only into the “reward” circuits of a rat’s brain, addiction-like behaviour results, but there’s no physical dependence and no withdrawal. “Dependence” can also be understood as a powerful attachment to harmful substances or behaviours, and this definition gives us a clearer picture of addiction. The addict comes to depend on the substance or behaviour in order to make himself feel momentarily calmer or more excited or less dissatisfied with his life.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/and-then-there-s-physical-dependence-as-defined-in-medical-terms/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/233/gabor-mat-1410_aches-and-pains_and-then-there-s-physical-dependence-as_1591653.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/233/gabor-mat-1410_aches-and-pains_and-then-there-s-physical-dependence-as_1591653.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/233/gabor-mat-1410_aches-and-pains_and-then-there-s-physical-dependence-as_1591653.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“And then there’s physical dependence. As defined in medical terms, physical dependence is manifested when a…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 12, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The indispensable foundation of a rational stance toward drug addiction would be the decriminalization of all substance dependence and the provision of such substances to confirmed users under safely controlled conditions. It’s important to note that decriminalization does not mean legalization. Legalization would make manufacturing and selling drugs legal, acceptable commercial activities. Decriminalization refers only to removing from the penal code the possession of drugs for personal use. It would create the possibility of medically supervised dispensing when necessary. The fear that easier access to drugs would fuel addiction is unfounded: drugs, we have seen, are not the cause of addiction. Despite the fact that cannabis is openly available in Holland, for instance, Dutch per-capita use of marijuana is half that in the United States. And no one is advocating the open availability of hard drugs. Decriminalization also does not mean that addicts will be able to walk into any pharmacy to get a prescription of cocaine. Their drugs of dependence should be dispensed under public authority and under medical supervision, in pure form, not adulterated by unscrupulous dealers. Addicts also ought to be offered the information, the facilities and the instruments they need to use drugs as safely as possible. The health benefits of such an approach are self-evident: greatly reduced risk of infection and disease transmission, much less risk of overdose and, very importantly, comfortable and regular access to medical care. Not having to spend exorbitant amounts on drugs that, in themselves, are inexpensive to prepare, addicts would not be forced into crime, violence, prostitution or poverty to pay for their habits. They would not have to decide between eating or drug use, or to scrounge for food in garbage cans or pick cigarette butts out of sidewalk puddles. They would no longer need to suffer malnutrition.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-indispensable-foundation-of-a-rational-stance-toward-drug/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/32e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_the-indispensable-foundation-of-a-ration_2703512.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/32e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_the-indispensable-foundation-of-a-ration_2703512.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/32e/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_the-indispensable-foundation-of-a-ration_2703512.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The indispensable foundation of a rational stance toward drug addiction would be the decriminalization of…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 13, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“One of the greatest difficulties we human beings seem to have is to relinquish long-held ideas. Many of us are addicted to being right, even if facts do not support us. One fixed image we cling to, as iconic in today’s culture as the devil was in previous ages, is that of the addict as an unsavoury and shadowy character, given to criminal activity. What we don’t see is how we’ve contributed to making him a criminal. There is nothing more intrinsically criminal in the average drug user than in the average cigarette smoker or alcohol addict. The drugs they inject or inhale do not themselves induce criminal activity by their pharmacological effect, except perhaps in the way that alcohol can also fuel a person’s pent-up aggression and remove the mental inhibitions that thwart violence. Stimulant drugs may have that effect on some users, but narcotics like heroin do not; on the contrary, they tend to calm people down. It is withdrawal from opiates that makes people physically ill, irritable and more likely to act violently — mostly out of desperation to replenish their supply. The criminality associated with addiction follows directly from the need to raise money to purchase drugs at prices that are artificially inflated owing to their illegality. The addict shoplifts, steals and robs because it’s the only way she can obtain the funds to pay the dealer. History has demonstrated many times over that people will transgress laws and resist coercion when it comes to struggling for their basic needs — or what they perceive as such. Sam Sullivan, Vancouver’s quadriplegic mayor, told a conference on drug addiction once that if wheelchairs were illegal, he would do anything to get one, no matter what laws he had to break. It was an apt comparison: the hardcore addict feels equally handicapped without his substances. As we have seen, many addicts who deal in drugs do so exclusively to finance their habit. There is no profit in it for them.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/one-of-the-greatest-difficulties-we-human-beings-seem-to-have-is-to/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2ea/gabor-mat-1410_addict_one-of-the-greatest-difficulties-we-huma_788747.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2ea/gabor-mat-1410_addict_one-of-the-greatest-difficulties-we-huma_788747.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2ea/gabor-mat-1410_addict_one-of-the-greatest-difficulties-we-huma_788747.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“One of the greatest difficulties we human beings seem to have is to relinquish long-held ideas. Many of us…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 14, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“All addictions — whether to drugs or to nondrug behaviours — share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical level the purpose of all addictions is to create an altered physiological state in the brain. This can be achieved in many ways, drug taking being the most direct. So an addiction is never purely “psychological” all addictions have a biological dimension. And here a word about dimensions. As we delve into the scientific research, we need to avoid the trap of believing that addiction can be reduced to the actions of brain chemicals or nerve circuits or any other kind of neurobiological, psychological or sociological data. A multilevel exploration is necessary because it’s impossible to understand addiction fully from any one perspective, no matter how accurate. Addiction is a complex condition, a complex interaction between human beings and their environment. We need to view it simultaneously from many different angles — or, at least, while examining it from one angle, we need to keep the others in mind. Addiction has biological, chemical, neurological, psychological, medical, emotional, social, political, economic and spiritual underpinnings — and perhaps others I haven’t thought about. To get anywhere near a complete picture we must keep shaking the kaleidoscope to see what other patterns emerge. Because the addiction process is too multifaceted to be understood within any limited framework, my definition of addiction made no mention of “disease.” Viewing addiction as an illness, either acquired or inherited, narrows it down to a medical issue. It does have some of the features of illness, and these are most pronounced in hardcore drug addicts like the ones I work with in the Downtown Eastside. But not for a moment do I wish to promote the belief that the disease model by itself explains addiction or even that it’s the key to understanding what addiction is all about. Addiction is “all about” many things. Note, too, that neither the textbook definitions of drug addiction nor the broader view we’re taking here includes the concepts of physical dependence or tolerance as criteria for addiction. Tolerance is an instance of “give an inch, take a mile.” That is, the addict needs to use more and more of the same substance or engage in more and more of the same behaviour, to get the same rewarding effects. Although tolerance is a common effect of many addictions, a person does not need to have developed a tolerance to be addicted.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/all-addictions-whether-to-drugs-or-to-nondrug-behaviours-share-the/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/337/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_all-addictions-whether-to-drugs-or-to-no_2058396.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/337/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_all-addictions-whether-to-drugs-or-to-no_2058396.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/337/gabor-mat-1410_addiction_all-addictions-whether-to-drugs-or-to-no_2058396.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“All addictions — whether to drugs or to nondrug behaviours — share the same brain circuits and brain…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 15, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations? To pose that question is to answer it. We despise, ostracize and punish the addict because we don’t wish to see how much we resemble him. In his dark mirror our own features are unmistakable. We shudder at the recognition. This mirror is not for us, we say to the addict. You are different, and you don’t belong with us. Like the hardcore addict’s pursuit of drugs, much of our economic and cultural life caters to people’s craving to escape mental and emotional distress. In an apt phrase, Lewis Lapham, long-time publisher of Harper’s Magazine, derides “consumer markets selling promises of instant relief from the pain of thought, loneliness, doubt, experience, envy, and old age.” According to a Statistics Canada study, 31 per cent of working adults aged nineteen to sixty-four consider themselves workaholics, who attach excessive importance to their work and are “overdedicated and perhaps overwhelmed by their jobs.” “They have trouble sleeping, are more likely to be stressed out and unhealthy, and feel they don’t spend enough time with their families,” reports the Globe and Mail. Work doesn’t necessarily give them greater satisfaction, suggested Vishwanath Baba, a professor of Human Resources and Management at McMaster University. “These people turn to work to occupy their time and energy” — as compensation for what is lacking in their lives, much as the drug addict employs substances. At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only towards the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future — the two elements that make the present intolerable. Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the centre, where we have lost touch with our souls, our spirit, with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition-, action- and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before. The constant, intrusive and meaningless mind-whirl that characterizes the way so many of us experience our silent moments is, itself, a form of addiction— and it serves the same purpose. “One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove the emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.” So writes Eckhart Tolle. Even our 24/7 self-exposure to noise, emails, cell phones, TV, Internet chats, media outlets, music downloads, videogames and non-stop internal and external chatter cannot succeed in drowning out the fearful voices within.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/why-do-we-despise-ostracize-and-punish-the-drug-addict-when-as-a/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/26e/gabor-mat-1410_addict_why-do-we-despise-ostracize-and-punish-t_2186140.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/26e/gabor-mat-1410_addict_why-do-we-despise-ostracize-and-punish-t_2186140.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/26e/gabor-mat-1410_addict_why-do-we-despise-ostracize-and-punish-t_2186140.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/drug-addict/gabor-mat/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/drug-addict/gabor-mat/", "name": "Drug addict Quotes by Gabor Maté", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/drug-addict/gabor-mat/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d83/gabor-mat-1410_abuse_the-hardcore-drug-addicts-that-i-treat-a_3144422.png" }, "description": "15 Drug addict quotes by Gabor Maté. 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