Gabor Maté

Hence my mantra.

Don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.

And if you understand why the pain, don't look at people's genes, don't look at their choices, look at their lives.

Well, I haven't asked them exactly what I asked you.

And I'd say your impulse to escape suffering is completely understandable.

It's very human.

There's nothing wrong with you, fundamentally.

Your addiction is an attempt to...

resolve the problem of pain, can we talk about the pain and where it came from?

And can we find you other ways of dealing with it so that you don't have to destroy yourself in order to escape from your pain?

It's a very different approach from saying, you've got this brain disease and you just have to treat the disease.

Now, the brain is involved in addiction, of course.

But if you look at the parts of the brain that are involved in addiction, there are actually parts of the brain that have to do with love, with a sense of belonging, a sense of connection, and a sense of pain relief, and a sense of vitality.

And if you look at human brain development, and this is what's so frustrating for me, if I allow myself to get frustrated, is that this stuff is pure science.

I don't make it up.

But it's not taught in the medical schools.

The average physician doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about.

Not because the information is not being published in major medical journals, but because it doesn't penetrate the medical ideology.

But the human brain is a social organ.

It develops an interaction with the environment beginning in the womb.