Gabor Maté

So already stresses on women during pregnancy, not their fault, but stresses on women during pregnancy predispose the child to mental health challenges because the cortisol, the adrenaline and the stress hormones affect the child's developing brain.

And, according to a major study out of Harvard University, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, which is the major pediatric journal in the world, the most important influence on the development of the human brain is the responsiveness of adult-child relationships in the early years.

And when children are hurt, traumatized, like in Australia, there was a report a few years ago, tens of thousands of children have been abused in all kinds of institutions.

If you look at the situation of the Aboriginal population of Australia who have been massacred, oppressed, deprived and marginalized for hundreds of years, naturally the rate of addiction is high amongst them, as it is in Canada.

And then we punish them for the pain that we've caused them.

And human beings, as has been said by a great American physician, George Engel, are biopsychosocial beings, which means to say that our biology is inseparable from our emotions, our psychology, and from our social relationships.

And that means that the more children suffer...

the more likely they are then to become addicted, but not only just to be addicted, but also develop pathology of all kinds.

And again, that's been studied, documented, the pathways have been delineated, and this information is almost completely ignored in medical training.

Because I'm the same as they are.

I have my own addictive behaviors, my own depressions, my own pain, my own ways of coping with pain, just to tune out my own difficulties.

I was just more fortunate than they had been so that I could channel marriages in different directions.

But even when I was working with this highly addicted population, I was still pursuing my own addictions.

It didn't have to do with substances.

In my case, it was shopping for classical music.

And people say, how can you compare yourself?

I'm not comparing myself.

The differences between me and my patients with HIV and hepatitis C...

and living barely outside the law are obvious.

But it's the similarities that are striking in that I was compelled to do this.