Gabor Mate Quotes & Sayings

A tone of voice or a look in another's eyes can activate powerful implicit memories. The person experiencing this type of memory may believe that he is just reacting to something in the present, remaining completely in the dark about what the rush of feelings that flood his mind and body really represents. Implicit memory is responsible for much of human behavior, its workings all the more influential because unconscious. — Gabor Mate

The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development; they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don't have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver who wasn't sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again. That's what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief, and neurobiological development to early adversity. — Gabor Mate

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

People jeopardize their lives for the sake of making the moment livable. Nothing sways them from the habit - not illness, not the sacrifice of love and relationship, not the loss of all earthly goods, not the crushing of their dignity, not the fear of dying. The drive is that relentless. — Gabor Mate

Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person's unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum. — Gabor Mate

Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anesthetics. Heroin and cocaine, both powerful physical painkillers, also ease psychological discomfort. — Gabor Mate

Autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything. — Gabor Mate

Above everything Ralph aches for unity with the external feminine caritas - blessed, soul-saving, divine love. Divine here refers to not a supernatural deity above us but to the immortal essence of existence that lives in us, through us, beyond us ... a search for the external extends far beyond formal religious concepts. One consequence of spiritual deprivation is addiction, and not only to drugs. — Gabor Mate

Dr. Jaak Panksepp told me. "If you don't recognize that the brain creates psychological responses, then neuroscience becomes a highly impoverished discipline. And that's where the battle is right now. Many neuroscientists believe that mental states are irrelevant for what the brain does. This is a Galileo-type battle, and it will not be won very easily because you have generations and generations of scholars, even in psychology, who have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the notion - the Skinnerian notion - that mentality is irrelevant in the control of behavior."3 Dr. — Gabor Mate

Freedom in society is gauged by our success in getting what we want and conditioned by status and power, by race, class and gender. In the internal world of the psyche, however, freedom means something very different. It is the ability to opt for our long-term physical and spiritual well-being as opposed to our immediate urges. Absent that ability, any talk of 'free will' or 'choice' becomes nearly meaningless. — Gabor Mate

Six years later the lead scientist, pharmacologist Kenneth Blum, published a much more subdued assessment: Unfortunately it was erroneously reported that [we] had found the "alcoholism gene," implying that there was a one-to-one relation between a gene and a specific behavior. Such misinterpretations are common - readers may recall accounts of an "obesity gene," or a "personality gene." Needless to say, there is no such thing as a specific gene for alcoholism, obesity, or a particular type of personality. ... Rather the issue at hand is to understand how certain genes and behavioral traits are connected. — Gabor Mate

Adults envy the open-hearted and open-minded explorations of children; seeing their joy and curiosity, we pine for our own capacity for wide-eyed wonder. — Gabor Mate

When I am sharply judgmental of any other person, it's because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don't want to acknowledge. — Gabor Mate

We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world. — Gabor Mate

Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup, or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people's lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary. — Gabor Mate

The wondrous power of a drug is to offer the addict protection from pain while at the same time enabling her to engage the world with excitement and meaning. "It's not that my senses are dulled - no, they open, expanded," explained a young woman whose substances of choice are cocaine and marijuana. "But the anxiety is removed, and the nagging guilt and - yeah!" The drug restores to the addict the childhood vivacity she suppressed long ago. — Gabor Mate

In the rare moments I permitted any stillness, I noted a small fluttering at the pit of my belly, a barely perceptible disturbance. The faint whisper of a word would sound in my head: writing. At first I could not say whether it was heartburn or inspiration. The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art, or music or through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening, or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. When I did not write, I suffocated in silence. — Gabor Mate

We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the addict's stubborn refusal to give up something deleterious to his life or to the life of others. Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict, when as a social collective, we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations? — Gabor Mate

The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world's population but houses nearly a quarter of the world's prisoners. — Gabor Mate

The addict's reliance on the drug to reawaken her dulled feelings is no adolescent caprice. The dullness is itself a consequence of an emotional malfunction not of her making; the internal shutdown of vulnerability. Vulnerability is our susceptibility to be wounded. This fragility is part of our nature and cannot be escaped. The best the brain can do is to shut down conscious awareness of it when pain becomes so vast or unbearable that it threatens our ability to function. The automatic repression of painful emotion is a helpful child's prime defence mechanism and can enable the child to endure trauma otherwise be catastrophic. The unfortunate consequence is a wholesale dulling of emotional awareness. — Gabor Mate

Music gives me a sense of self-sufficiency and nourishment. I don't need anyone or anything. I bathe in it as in amniotic fluid; it surrounds and protects me. It's also stable, ever-available and something I can control - that is, I can reach for it whenever I want. I can also choose music that reflects my mood, or if I want, helps to soothe it ... music-seeking offers excitement and tension that I can immediately resolve and a reward I can immediately attain - unlike other tensions in my life and other desired rewards. Music is a source of beauty and meaning outside myself that I can claim as my own without exploring how, in my life, I keep from directly experiencing those qualities. Addiction, in this sense, is the lazy man's path to transcendence. — Gabor Mate

Settling for the view that illnesses, mental or physical, are primarily genetic allows us to avoid disturbing questions about the nature of the society in which we live. If "science" enables us to ignore poverty or man-made toxins or a frenetic and stressful social culture as contributors to disease, we can look only to simple answers: pharmacological and biological. — Gabor Mate

Another powerful dynamic perpetuates addiction despite the abundance of disastrous consequences: the addict sees no other possible existence for himself. His outlook on the future is restricted by his entrenched self-image as addict. No matter how much he may acknowledge the costs of his addiction, he fears a loss of self if it were absent from his life. In his own mind, he would cease to exist as he knows himself. — Gabor Mate

Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. What seems nonadapative and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviours, it's only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry. — Gabor Mate

A long-term substance abuser, a few months before his death, penned this poem: Went downtown, Hastings and Main, looking for relief from the pain. All I did was find a ticket on a one-way train. ... Give me peace before I die. The track is laid out so well; we all live our private hell; just more tickets on the hell-bound train. — Gabor Mate

Passion creates, addiction consumes. — Gabor Mate

The sparser the innate joy that springs from being alive, the more fervently we seek joy's pale substitute, pleasure; the less our inner strength, the greater our craving for power; the feebler our awareness of truth, the more desperate our search for certainty outside of ourselves. The greater the dread, the more vigorous the gravitational pull of the addiction process. — Gabor Mate

In the Nazi Arbeit [work] camps back in '44 when a man was caught smoking one cigarette, the whole barracks would die," a patient, Ralph, once told me. "For one cigarette! Yet even so, the men did not give up their inspiration, their will to live and to enjoy what they got out of life from certain substances, like liquor or tobacco or whatever the case may be." I don't know how accurate his account was as history, but as a chronicler of his own drug urges and those of his fellow Hastings Street addicts, Ralph spoke the bare truth: people jeopardize their lives for the sake of making the moment livable. — Gabor Mate

While nervous tension may be a component of stress, one can be stressed without feeling tension. — Gabor Mate

The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain. — Gabor Mate

Why, then, are narrow genetic assumptions so widely accepted and, in particular, so enthusiastically embraced by the media? The neglect of developmental science is one factor. Our preference for a simple and quickly understood explanation is another, as is our tendency to look for one-to-one causations for almost everything. Life in its wondrous complexity does not conform to such easy reductions. — Gabor Mate

Brain-imaging studies and psychological testing indicate that the same areas are also impaired in drug addiction. And what is the result? If it wasn't enough that powerful incentive and reward mechanisms drive the craving for drugs, on top of that the circuits that could normally inhibit and control those mechanisms are not up to their task. In fact, they are complicit in the addiction process. A double whammy: the watchman is aiding the thieves. — Gabor Mate

Not why the addiction but why the pain. — Gabor Mate

I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. — Gabor Mate

It is worth recalling here that the injudicious use of rewards and praise can be pressure tactics no less than verbal or physical coercion. As we have seen, there are three dangers with motivating by means of reward and praise. First, they feed the anxiety that not the person but the desired achievement is what is valued by the parent. They directly reinforce the insecurity of the ADD child. Second, since children can sense the parents' will pushing them, even if under benign disguises such as gifts or warm words, counterwill will be strengthened. Third, praise and reward will themselves become the goal, at the expense of the child's interest in the actual process of what he is doing. Children thus motivated will sooner or later learn to get by with the least amount of effort necessary to earn the praise or the reward. Short cuts and cheating often follow. Accepting — Gabor Mate

In the real world there is no nature vs. nurture argument, only an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects — Gabor Mate

The question is never "Why the addiction?" but "Why the pain?" The research literature is unequivocal: most hard-core substance abusers come from abusive homes. — Gabor Mate

The very same brain centers that interpret and feel physical pain also become activated during experiences of emotional rejection. In brain scans, they light up in response to social ostracism, just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling hurt or of having emotional pain, they are not being abstract or poetic, but scientifically quite precise. — Gabor Mate

We may not be responsible for another's addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff. — Gabor Mate

Addiction is pretty simple. It's what happens when peolme don't get what they need, and end up soothing themselves. — Gabor Mate

When I'm reasonably balanced in my personal and spiritual life, I don't have difficulty finding compassion for my addicted patients. — Gabor Mate

The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. — Gabor Mate

No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side. — Gabor Mate

What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it. — Gabor Mate

In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there's one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking by itself will lead to addiction - in other words, that the cause of addiction resides in the power of the drug over the human brain. It is one of the bedrock fables sustaining the so-called War on Drugs. — Gabor Mate

The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control. — Gabor Mate

Why does chronic self-administration of cocaine reduce the density of dopamine receptors? It's a simple matter of brain economics. The brain is accustomed to a certain level of dopamine activity. If it is flooded with artificially high dopamine levels, it seeks to restore the equilibrium by reducing the number of receptors where the dopamine can act. This mechanism helps to explain the phenomenon of tolerance, by which the user has to inject, ingest, or inhale higher and higher doses of a substance to get the same effect as before. — Gabor Mate

Not every story has a happy ending, ... but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and in ourselves is the ultimate question. — Gabor Mate

Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden - but it's there. As we'll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain. — Gabor Mate

Many studies link addiction to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a cortical segment found near the eye socket, or orbit.5 In drug addicts, whether they are intoxicated or not, it doesn't function normally. The OFC's relationship with addiction arises from its special role in human behavior and from its abundant supply of opioid and dopamine receptors. It is powerfully affected by drugs and powerfully reinforces the drug habit. It also plays an essential supporting role in nondrug addictions. Of course, it doesn't function (or malfunction) on its own but forms part of an extensive and incredibly complex, multifaceted network - nor is it the only cortical area implicated in addiction. — Gabor Mate

It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour. — Gabor Mate

The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long-term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and her situation in it. All too often these ill-conditioned implicit beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies in our lives. We create meanings from our unconscious interpretation of early events, and then we forge our present experiences from the meaning we've created. Unwittingly, we write the story of our future from narratives based on the past ... Mindful awareness can bring into consciousness those hidden, past-based perspectives so that they no longer frame our worldview.'Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present ... Until you reach that point, you are unconscious.' ... In present awareness we are liberated from the past. — Gabor Mate

The war mentality represents an unfortunate confluence of ignorance, fear, prejudice, and profit ... The ignorance exists in its own right and is further perpetuated by government propaganda. The fear is that of ordinary people scared by misinformation but also that of leaders who may know better but are intimidated by the political costs of speaking out on such a heavily moralized and charged issue. The prejudice is evident in the contradiction that some harmful substances (alcohol, tobacco) are legal while others, less harmful in some ways, are contraband. This has less to do with the innate danger of the drugs than with which populations are publicly identified with using the drugs. The white and wealthier the population, the more acceptable is the substance. And profit. If you have fear, prejudice, and ignorance, there will be profit. — Gabor Mate

Environmental cues associated with drug use - paraphernalia, people, places, and situations - are all powerful triggers for repeated use and for relapse, because they themselves trigger dopamine release. People trying to quit smoking, for example, are advised to avoid poker if they are used to having a cigarette while playing cards. Unless they move to a different area of town or to a recovery home, my Downtown Eastside patients find it virtually impossible to stop drug use, even when they form a strong intention to do so. Not only are drugs readily available, but everything and everyone in the environment reminds them of their habit. — Gabor Mate

The acronym COAL has been proposed for this attitude of compassionate curiosity: curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love: — Gabor Mate

The distressing internal state is not examined: the
focus is entirely on the outside: What can Ireceive from the world that
will make me feel okay, if only for a moment? Bare attention can show
her that these moods and feelings have only the meaning and power
that she gives them. Eventually she will realize that there is nothing to
run away from. Situations might need to be changed, but there is no
internal hell that one must escape by dulling or stimulating the mind. — Gabor Mate

The War on Drugs, from the Hastings-facing window of the Portland
Hotel, is manifested in the pregnant Celia kneeling on the sidewalk,
handcuffed wrists behind her back, eyes cast on the ground. There
was no Detective-Sergeant Gillespie to protect her when, as a little
girl, she was raped by her stepfather and subjected to the nocturnal
spitting ritual, so in the War on Drugs she has become one of the
enemy. — Gabor Mate

As parents, we may as well accept that we will "lose it" at times. Perfect equanimity is beyond us. Temporary breaks in the relationship with the child are inevitable and are not in themselves harmful, unless they are frequent and catastrophic. The real harm is inflicted when the parent makes the child work at reestablishing contact, as in forcing a child to apologize before granting "forgiveness." There — Gabor Mate

The family therapist David Freeman once concluded a public lecture on intimacy and relationships by saying that if there was any one thing he hoped his audience would remember from his talk, it was the awareness that one does not know his or her spouse, his or her children. We may believe we have a perfect idea of why they act as they do, when in reality our beliefs reflect no more than our own anxieties. — Gabor Mate

It may be argued that, at least so far as work is concerned, what I call my addictions have benefited other people. Even if that were true, it still wouldn't explain or justify addiction. The contributions I have made in a number of areas that I am passionate about could have been achieved without the addictive zeal that often drove me. There is no such thing as a good addiction. Everything a person can do is better done if there is no addictive attachment that pollutes it. For every addiction - no matter how benign or even laudable it seems from the outside - someone pays a price. — Gabor Mate

The very essence of the opiate high was expressed by a twenty-seven-year-old sex-trade worker. She had HIV and has since died. "The first time I did heroin," she said to me, "it felt like a warm, soft hug." In that phrase she told her life story and summed up the psychological and chemical cravings of all substance-dependent addicts. — Gabor Mate

Olympics are coming to Vancouver in 2010 and with it the likelihood of gentrification in this neighborhood. The process has already begun. There's a fear that the politicians, eager to impress the world, will try to displace the addict population. — Gabor Mate