If somone you love is addicted, a way of understanding

[SunSurfer]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/nov/24/joanna-moorhead-gabriel-mate-trauma-addiction-treat

"What’s your poison, people sometimes ask, but Gabor Maté doesn’t want to ask what my poison is, he wants to ask how it makes me feel. Whatever it is I’m addicted to, or ever have been addicted to, it’s not what it is but what it does – to me, to you, to anyone. He believes that anything we’ve ever craved helped us escape emotional pain. It gave us peace of mind, a sense of control and a feeling of happiness..."

"...One of the best things that ever happens to him, he says, is when a parent whose child has died of an overdose comes up to him and tells him that, through his book, they can understand why it happened. And when readers tell him – sometimes accusingly, sometimes gratefully – that his work humanises addicts, he can only answer: addicts are human. The only question for him is, why has it taken us so long to realise that?"

[davekempmeister]

20 hours ago, SunSurfer said:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/nov/24/joanna-moorhead-gabriel-mate-trauma-addiction-treat

"What’s your poison, people sometimes ask, but Gabor Maté doesn’t want to ask what my poison is, he wants to ask how it makes me feel. Whatever it is I’m addicted to, or ever have been addicted to, it’s not what it is but what it does – to me, to you, to anyone. He believes that anything we’ve ever craved helped us escape emotional pain. It gave us peace of mind, a sense of control and a feeling of happiness..."

"...One of the best things that ever happens to him, he says, is when a parent whose child has died of an overdose comes up to him and tells him that, through his book, they can understand why it happened. And when readers tell him – sometimes accusingly, sometimes gratefully – that his work humanises addicts, he can only answer: addicts are human. The only question for him is, why has it taken us so long to realise that?"

Excellent and most worthwhile post, Sunsurfer.  Thanks

 

 

[fish]

Gabor Mate has a lot of excellent material available on YouTube. His theories on the causal role of traumatic childhood experiences on adult mental as well as physical illness appear to be gaining traction.