Addiction and Psychological Pain: Some Reflections

February 23, 2023 by

During the many years I spent working in the addiction and mental health field, first as a neuroscientist and later (2000-2008) in the UK helping empower people to facilitate their recovery (healing), I rarely heard the word ‘trauma’ being used.

Few practitioners I met mentioned that the person with the substance use problem might be self-medicating to ameliorate psychological pain. And yet in society, there were plenty of people visiting their doctor and obtaining a prescription of benzodiazepines such as librium, which are highly addictive substances, or antidepressants, which also produce problems, to help them deal with unpleasant psychological states of anxiety or depression.

When I sat down and talked to people who were on their journey to recovery from substance use problems, they would sometimes mention problems in their life that pre-dated their excessive use of substances and often were the reason they started to use the substance in question. This was particularly the case with former heroin users.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20

February 3, 2023 by

Canadian physician Gabor Maté’s theme at TEDxRio+20 was addiction – from drugs to power. From the lack of love to the desire to escape oneself, from susceptibility of the being to interior power – nothing escapes. And he risks a generic and generous prescription: “Find your nature and be nice to yourself.” TEDx Talks. [18’46”]

Filed Under: Film Tagged With: , , , , ,

‘The Myth of Normal’ by Gabor Maté

November 24, 2022 by

Whilst in the UK, I bought a hardback copy of Gabor Maté’s thought-provoking new book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. Yes, today’s Western society capitalist culture is toxic, according to one of the world’s leading trauma experts.

Here is what the book’s introduction says:

‘”It all starts with waking up… to what our bodies are expressing and our minds are suppressing.”

Western countries invest billions in healthcare, yet mental illness and chronic diseases are on a seemingly unstoppable rise. Nearly 70% [!] of Americans are now on prescription drugs. So what is ‘normal’ when it comes to health?

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , ,

Gabor Maté: Our Strange Indifference to Aboriginal Addiction

June 19, 2021 by

Unknown-8“Addicts are made, not born, and the most common precursors are early childhood privation, neglect and abuse. For several generations, Canada’s native children have been far more likely to suffer grinding penury, abuse and childhood substance addictions than non-natives.” Gabor Maté

Marlene, a 46-year old native woman, sat in my office last week, slumped on her chair, blinking away her tears. I’d just shared the news that her most recent blood test confirmed she had “seroconverted” to HIV, become infected with the AIDS virus.

Although an injection drug user, Marlene had always been careful to use clean needles. Her route of infection was sexual contact – with the resigned naiveté characteristic of so many aboriginal women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, she had trusted a man, himself a drug addict, who assured her that he was a safe partner.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Healing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Addiction and Psychological Pain

June 19, 2021 by

During the many years I spent working in the addiction and mental health field, first as a neuroscientist and later helping empower people to facilitate their recovery (healing), I rarely heard the word ‘trauma’ being used.

Few practitioners I met mentioned that the person with the substance use problem might be self-medicating to ameliorate psychological pain. And yet in society, there were plenty of people visiting their doctor and obtaining a prescription of benzodiazepines such as librium, which are highly addictive substances, or antidepressants, which also produce problems, to help them deal with unpleasant psychological states of anxiety or depression.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog, Healing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Factors Facilitating Recovery: Understanding

May 24, 2021 by

Here is the next section from my chapter Factors Facilitating Recovery in  my eBook Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction.

Understanding is essential for recovery. People with substance use problems and those on a recovery journey need information and education about a variety of matters, including: the nature of addiction and their own substance use problems; the range of interventions they can use to help them overcome or manage these problems; opportunities that allow them to exercise their strengths and assets; supports they can use to facilitate their recovery journey, and self-management skills that help them cope with situations that might lead to relapse. 

Recovering people are a major source of information that can facilitate another person’s recovery journey.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

‘Willingness To Be Puzzled’ by Gabor Maté

February 12, 2015 by

Dr. Gabor Maté talks about how important it is to be puzzled and to ask the question “what’s really going on here?” rather than assuming that we know all the answers.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , ,

Gabor Maté: When The Body Says No – Mind/Body Unity and the Stress-Disease Connection

December 3, 2014 by

‘Stress is ubiquitous these days – it plays a role in the workplace, in the home, and virtually everywhere that people interact. It can take a heavy toll unless it is recognized and managed effectively and insightfully.

Western medicine, in theory and practice, tends to treat mind and body as separate entities. This separation, which has always gone against ancient human wisdom, has now been demonstrated by modern science to be not only artificial, but false. The brain and body systems that process emotions are intimately connected with the hormonal apparatus, the nervous system, and in particular the immune system.

Emotional stress, especially of the hidden kind that people are not aware of, undermines immunity, disrupts the body’s physiological milieu and can prepare the ground for disease. There is strong evidence to suggest that in nearly all chronic conditions, from cancer, ALS, or multiple sclerosis to autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease or Alzheimer’s, hidden stress is a major predisposing factor.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,

‘Addictions & Corrections’ with Gabor Maté (Part 1of 2)

May 16, 2014 by

JUST REALISED – this is my 500th blog on the website!

“What is it that the correctional service actually corrects? In my view very little…and…the justice system is completely criminal and it should be studied…” So begins a provocative presentation by trauma and addiction treatment expert, Gabor Maté, M.D.

You can find Part 2 here.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , ,

‘Mental illness, addiction & most chronic physical illness is the result of childhood loss & trauma’ by Monica Cassani

December 31, 2013 by

UnknownI love Gabor Maté. He’s one of my favourite people working in the recovery field and you can find a number of blogs referring to his work on this website. And I’m not the only person who loves his work. Here’s the latest blog (slightly modified) from Monica at Beyond Meds.

‘Here, Gabor Mate tells us the medical profession are the most difficult to speak to about what he’s learned in his work because they don’t recognize that so-called mental illness and most physical chronic illness is the result of childhood loss and trauma.

We don’t need anymore research he says. We know the cause of these issues.

He points out that the barrier to the health professionals is that they’ve not cared for their own trauma. This is clearly true. Many professionals are afraid of their own darkness. This makes it impossible for them to correctly recognize issues in their patients and clients.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Roots of Addiction – Dr. Gabor Maté

November 7, 2013 by

‘It is critical to understand that although addiction is a problem it is also an attempt to solve a graver problem, that is, unbearable psychic pain. To understand addiction, we need to understand human pain and that takes us to focus on childhood experiences.

One of the outcomes of childhood distress is addiction and the more adversity an individual experiences in his or her childhood the higher their risk of resorting to addictive behaviour to sooth their pain, even temporarily. In other words addiction (alcohol, drugs, shopping, Internet, etc.) is an attempt to seek something from the outside that the individual is not able to generate from within.

What makes childhood experience significant is that the circuitry that modulates the brain’s reward chemicals is underdeveloped in traumatized children thus making them more susceptible to addictive behaviours and conduct disorders.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

‘Our Strange Indifference To Aboriginal Addiction’ by Gabor Maté

October 30, 2013 by

imagesHere’s an important blog from one of my favourite writers, Gabor Maté.

‘Marlene, a 46-year old native woman, sat in my office last week, slumped on her chair, blinking away her tears. I’d just shared the news that her most recent blood test confirmed she had “seroconverted” to HIV, become infected with the AIDS virus.

Although an injection drug user, Marlene had always been careful to use clean needles. Her route of infection was sexual contact – with the resigned naiveté characteristic of so many aboriginal women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, she had trusted a man, himself a drug addict, who assured her that he was a safe partner.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

‘A Celebrity Death, Addiction, and the Media’ by Gabor Mate

October 9, 2013 by

rsz_1gabormateabout-330x330One of my favourite people in this field is Gabor Mate from Vancouver, whose book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts is a classic. Here is the first posting on Gabor’s new blog, well worth a look.

‘It is always big news when a celebrity is stricken dead by a substance overdose. What never makes the news is why such tragedies happen.

The roster of drug- and alcohol-related show-business deaths is ever expanding: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Keith Moon, Kurt Cobain; in the recent past, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston; and, most recently of all, Cory Monteith. A complete list would, of course, include many others.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Stress, trauma and addiction: the role of society

August 19, 2013 by

410dgJSNaQL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_SX342_SY445_CR,0,0,342,445_SH20_OU02_“Addicts are locked into their addiction not only by their painful past and distressing present but equally by their bleak view of the future as well. They cannot envision the real possibility of sobriety, of a life governed by values rather than by immediate survival needs and by desperation to escape physical and mental suffering.

They are unable to develop compassion to wards themselves and their bodies while they are regarded as outcasts, hunted as enemies, and treated like human refuse.

As we have seen, a major factor in addiction that medical and social policies must take into account is stress. If we want to support people’s potential for healthy transformation, we must cease to impose debilitating stress on their already-burdened existence.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20

July 25, 2013 by

“I am not afraid of dying, I am more afraid of living” patient of Gabor Maté in Vancouver.

‘The question we must ask is, ‘Why are people afraid of life?’ If you want to understand addiction, you cannot ask what is wrong with the addiction, you have to look at what is right about it. In other words, what is the person getting from the addiction, what are they getting that they don’t otherwise have?

And what addicts get is relief from pain. What they get is a sense of peace, a sense of control, a sense of calmness. Very, very temporarily, and the question is, ‘Why are these qualities missing from their lives? What happened to them?’

Please check out Gabor Maté’s brilliant book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,