Chapter 1: What is the real reason behind addiction according to Dr. Gabor Maté?
The things that are considered normal in society are not at all normal from the point of view of human life and human needs. The addictions that people develop are actually normal responses to an abnormal situation. Dr. Mate is a world-renowned physician, best-selling author, whose work dives deep into childhood development and the impact of trauma. Dr. Gabor Mate.
If you were the average neurologist with symptoms of MS, nobody's gonna ask you about your trauma. There's a huge gap between the scientific evidence and how we practice medicine.
Why do you think in our modern society with all the medical and scientific advances that there's so much suffering when we have more information and knowledge and tools than ever before? What I read about your stuff, what I see about your content, is a lot of people are lost based on trauma.
And past traumas cause certain addictions or certain behaviors and routines that maybe are some healthy addictions or unhealthy addictions, but it seems to be like a lot of unhealthy addictions.
Well, can I interrupt right there? Yes, please. No such thing as a healthy addiction. No such thing. If it's healthy, it's not an addiction. If it's an addiction, it's not healthy. There are passions, there are habits that are healthy, but they're not addictions. Like working out. Yeah, well, that can be an addiction, or it can be healthy. Like eating can be healthy, but it can be an addiction.
I define addiction as any behavior in which a person finds temporary pleasure or relief and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and cannot give it up.
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Chapter 2: How does childhood trauma influence adult behaviors and addictions?
So if you're suffering negative consequences, so it's craving, relief, pleasure in the short term, harm in the long term, inability to give it up. That's what an addiction is. Now, if you have a behavior that's ongoing, but it has no negative consequences, it's not an addiction. It's a passion, it's a pleasure, it's a habit.
It's a healthy habit.
It's a healthy habit. So for me, it's not an addiction. And also, a healthy habit, a person, if it no longer works for them, they can give it up. So for me, there's no healthy addiction. There's no healthy addiction. In fact, the word addiction comes from a word for slavery. So there's no... There's no healthy slavery. Interesting. So addiction, what is the root of addiction? The word? Yeah.
So in Roman times, an addict was somebody who was assigned to another person to serve them because they owed them money and they couldn't pay it back. An addictus. Yeah, an addictus was like an indentured slave who had to work off the debt. So that's where the word actually comes from, is a form of slavery.
So if you're addicted to something, you are a slave to that craving.
Absolutely, absolutely. You have no choice. A slave has no choice. Wow.
They have no free will, essentially.
Yeah, and I've had my own addictive behaviors, and um nothing like the patients that i worked with but in so far as i had them literally even though i was a well-paid middle-class successful doctor i was not exercising any free choice really or my behaviors no when did you what was the main uh addiction that you were you know tied to and when did you learn yeah how to break free of that well
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Chapter 3: What role does shame play in addiction and healing?
So in my life, the main addictions have been to work. To work. Yeah. Work hard, achieve, succeed. More and more patience, more and more success, more and more. More and more is the essence of addiction. It's always more and more. And there's a reason why I developed that addiction. And that's the hardest one to give up. Then I was addicted for a long time to shopping for classical compact discs.
And when I say addicted, I mean I would spend thousands of dollars a day. On CDs? Yeah. Really? Yeah, really. And I would lie to my wife about it and I would neglect my patients. And as soon as I left the store, Thinking now I'm complete, my collection is full. Half an hour later, I had to run back.
And as I described in my book, An Addiction in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, I once left a woman in labor in a hospital to go get a symphony. So that's an addiction. Really? Yeah, yeah. Now, the interesting thing about addiction is that I wasn't using substances.
You weren't smoking or drinking or drugs.
But I was looking for a chemical hit. Dopamine. Dopamine, yeah. So I was on a dopamine fiend, you might say, and I get it through those particular behaviors. And so that's what my addiction was.
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Chapter 4: What is the connection between emotional safety and addiction?
How did I give it up? Well, it took a long time. Really? Yeah, a lot of struggle, a lot of, you know, and finally I just realized that the cost was greater than the, in fact, you know, In fact, if I started listening now to all the CDs that I have at home and did nothing but listen for the rest of my life.
You wouldn't finish. I probably wouldn't finish. Wow. So how long would you say, when did you realize, okay, this is an addiction? This is an unhealthy. I realized it long before I gave it up. Like years, decades? Years. Years. Yeah, years.
how long does it normally take for someone when they realize this is unhealthy this thing i'm doing this addiction is not good for me until they actually give it up is there any data on that i couldn't answer that one i think it's a highly variable and individual issue it has to do with what resources they have to heal it has to do with what support they have it has to do with
what cost this habit is exacting on their lives. It has to do also with some belief that there's a part of us that's actually healthy and we can get in touch with it. There has to be a cool combination of factors. And it's very individual.
Chapter 5: How can understanding triggers help in overcoming addiction?
It also depends, of course,
the degree of trauma a person suffered and addictions are always about like you've heard my definition of addiction and I'm sure if I asked you like if I asked from talking to a thousand people put your hands up if according to my definition you get an addiction virtually everybody in the room will put their hands up maybe there'll be two liars who but 998 and then I asked them
Not what was wrong with the addiction, but what was right about it. What did you get from it? So if I asked you that, so you had your behaviors. If I asked you, I don't care what it was to, but if I asked you, what did you get from it? What would that be? You get some type of relief.
You get some type of pleasure. You get some type of, yeah. Specifically. What do you get from it? What do you get from it? What did it give you temporarily? Whatever it was, I don't even care what it was. You know, you get to escape. Okay, escape, right. Yeah, you're not thinking about the pain or the shame or the insecurity. So who needs to escape?
Me? No, but I mean, what kind of person needs to escape?
Oh, a scared person.
Scared person is somebody who's imprisoned, isn't it? Somebody who's not free. Who's trapped. Yeah, somebody who's trapped, exactly. And I know in your book on toxic masculinity, you talk about being trapped. Trapped is the very word you use. Yes.
I felt trapped most of my childhood.
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Chapter 6: What does true healing mean in the context of addiction?
That's the whole point. So what I'm saying is that addiction is never a choice. and it's not some kind of genetic disease, which that is total nonsense. What it actually is, is an attempt to solve a problem in your life. In your case, you were trying to solve the problem of being trapped, which is based on your childhood trauma, which you publicly talk about. In my case,
The workaholism was about trying to prove to myself that I had the right to exist, that it was important. You're worthy of love. That I was worthy of love, exactly. Acceptance and all that. Now that also came from a childhood experience. So addiction is never like either a disease as such. It can behave like a disease, but it isn't a disease as such. It's also not a choice anybody makes.
It's actually an attempt to solve a deep life problem that was imposed on a person by trauma in every case.
Wow. Is it possible for someone to heal a deep wound on their own, a trauma from decades past that they've had an addiction to trying to escape from? Is it possible to do it on your own? Or does it really take support? Someone, someone's, a team. What's your thoughts on that?
Well, I think very rarely it is possible for an individual. Maybe they have some deep spiritual experience. Maybe they're out there in nature and all of a sudden they're at one with the universe.
They feel presence.
They feel connected. Exactly. So that can happen. It does happen to some people. And just to choose, I'm going to decide not to do this anymore.
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Chapter 7: How can individuals support their healing journey?
They realize they don't need to because they're free.
They feel free. Interesting.
Yeah. very rare for most of us people beings that walk this earth it takes a lot of self-awareness it takes a lot of support connection um guidance so i'd say if you're listening and you've got one of these issues where you're addicted to something in the way that Lewis and I are just talking about don't wait for that miraculous moment.
Get the help because you have a much better chance that way.
Yeah. So what would you say is the root cause of all addiction then? Is it feeling a wound? Is it feeling trapped by something that's happened in the past?
The being trapped itself is a sign of a wound. In fact, the word trauma means wound. The Greek origin of the word trauma is a wound. So children who are hurt, but they're not supported, seen, accepted, and helped, they get trapped in the wound. And being trapped in the wound and being trapped in the behaviors to escape the wound, That's how the trauma shows up in our lives.
Interesting. And in our culture and our society. I talk about this in my book as well, about how as a young boy growing up in the Midwest, in Ohio, I didn't see examples of... older men or athletes that I aspired to be like talking about their emotions or talking about healing or talking about, you know, I had a trauma talking about how to, you know, navigate the full range of emotions.
It was more you just get made fun of if you cried. Yeah. You get picked on and called, you know, things you don't want to be called. You're you're kicked out of the tribe. You're not accepted in the tribe. And you're, you know, boys group growing up. Yeah.
And so I feel like culturally, there's a lot of pain with men and women, obviously, but that it seems to be is causing a lot of the stress in the world right now. It's just this cultural pain.
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Chapter 8: What steps can be taken to break the cycle of generational trauma?
Well, if I may be self-serving, my new book is called The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. So just as you say, the trauma that people are experiencing massively isn't just personal to them. It's also a sign of a culture that's completely out of whack. And when I say out of whack,
The reason I call the book The Myth of Normal is what I'm saying is that the things that are considered normal in society are not at all normal from the point of view of human life and human needs. It's not healthy. It's totally unhealthy so that the addictions and the diseases and the mental illnesses that people develop are actually normal responses to an abnormal situation.
So that whatever addiction you had or even... this mask of rigid masculinity that you try to adopt for a while until it's cracked for you. Right, needing to win, needing to be the best. But that was a normal response. To survive. To survive, exactly. So that the abnormality wasn't in you, it was in the situation that you're in. That's what I mean by a toxic culture. Yeah.
I know again in your book, you talk about these public figures that all of a sudden you realize we're talking about their emotions. But that's fairly new. In the last like five, 10 years. So these days, athletes will talk about their sexual abuse.
This didn't happen until 10 years ago, really. And really more three to five years ago, right? And so now there's, why do you feel like people are now starting to open up who are more public figures? Why do you think that's happening?
Well, I think what's happened that the toxicity of the culture, one of my subtitles is toxic culture, and it's got so bad. There's a Greek playwright that I quote in my book. He's Aeschylus, and one of his plays, he said that the way that God's created us, human beings, that we have to suffer, suffer into truth.
And I think that the degree of suffering, now most people I know who engage in a path of self-exploration and truth, they didn't do it because all of a sudden they just made a decision. They just suffered so much. So the suffering can actually wake you up.
And I think to answer your question, this society has got to the point where the suffering is so intense and so widespread that something had to crack open. So I think that's why it's got so bad that it couldn't be hidden anymore.
Why do you think in our modern society with all the medical and scientific advances and all the knowledge out there that there's so much chronic pain though, so much suffering when we have more information and knowledge and tools than ever before?
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