Gabor Maté

It's actually a Buddhist term.

In the Buddhist cosmology, Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, people cycle through six realms.

There's the ordinary human realm, ordinary selves.

There's the animal realm, which is our drives and our appetites, our lusts.

There is the hell realm, which is terror, fear.

rage.

In the hungry ghost realm the creatures are depicted with small narrow necks and gullets, big empty bellies which they can never fill from the outside and that's the addictive realm because the addiction is all about trying to fill an emptiness or soothe something inside

from getting something from the outside, but it can never be satisfied.

So whether you're addicted to sex, pornography, gambling, drugs, work, self-cutting, it never soothes that emptiness.

It never soothes the pain.

So that's the realm of hungry ghosts.

So that's where the title of that book came from.

Well, the choice idea that people are choosing to be addicted is absolute nonsense and it's what governs the legal system.

The legal system's approach to addiction is based on absolute nonsense.

Well, that's true.

Many people suffer traumas and they'll become psychotic.

Many people suffer traumas and don't develop autoimmune disease.

So there's all kinds of responses to traumatic experiences we can talk about.

That addiction is one of them.

I'm not saying that everyone traumatized becomes addicted.