This week we talk to Dr. Gabor Mate´ about addiction

A renowned speaker, and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development.

For twelve years Dr. Maté worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with patients challenged by hard-core drug addiction, mental illness and HIV, including at Vancouver’s Supervised Injection Site.

As an author, Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction; When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress; and Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, and co-authored Hold on to Your Kids. His works have been published internationally in twenty languages.

Dr. Maté is the co-founder of Compassion for Addiction, a new non-profit that focusses on addiction. He is also an advisor of Drugs over Dinner.

Dr. Maté has received the Hubert Evans Prize for Literary Non-Fiction; an Honorary Degree (Law) from the University of Northern British Columbia; an Outstanding Alumnus Award from Simon Fraser University; and the 2012 Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award from Mothers Against Teen Violence. He is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Criminology, Simon Fraser University.

In This Interview, Dr. Gabor Mate´ and I Discuss...

The One You Feed parable
The degree of choice we have in life
What is the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts?
What is addiction?
The characteristics of addiction
Recognizing what addicts get out of their addiction
The fundamental question is not “Why the Addiction” but “Why the Pain”
How all addiction comes out of some hurt or trauma
The different types of trauma
The role of neurotransmitters in addiction
How drugs and alcohol destroy the parts of the brain that allow us to make sound decisions
Whether or not genetics play a significant role in addiction
Whether our culture breeds addiction
How our children get most of their leadership from other children
How the breakup of family, community and clan is contributing to addiction
The critical role of the culture in our the development of our brains
Recognizing our inherent value
To what degree we have freedom over our choices
Without consciousness, there is no freedom
Paths to recovery
How compassion can help with recovery
Developing compassionate curiosity towards ourselves

Dr. Gabor Mate´ Links

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TED Talk

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