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
A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviors. . . . The wound may not be as deep and 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
“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
“Misplaced attachment to what cannot satiate the soul is not an error exclusive to addicts, but the common condition of mankind. It… — 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
“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
“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
“The successes (financial) represent addictive drives, whose negative impact in the world is tremendous. Who creates more suffering, somebody who sells an… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage… — 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Many people fear that decriminalization and the controlled dispensing of drugs will lead to widespread substance use among people who are now… — Gabor Maté Copy Share 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… — 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
“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 hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse.… — 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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 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
“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
“Human beings want not only to survive, but also to live. We long to experience life in all its vividness, with full,… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“To expect an addict to give up her drug is like asking the average person to imagine living without all her social… — 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
“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
“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
“The war mentality represents an unfortunate confluence of ignorance, fear, prejudice, and profit. ... The ignorance exists in its own right 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
“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
