Dr. Gabor Mate: Addiction

and joining us now dr. Gabor Mate is the author of the latest in the realm of hungry ghosts, close encounters with

addiction

. It's good to have you back on Evo Pleasure, but there's a lot on this channel. I guess people are very interested in both you and this topic, no surprise there. You are a doctor who treats patients who have serious

addiction

s to some of the most illicit drugs, so you are a good person to ask this first question about what is causing the addiction. You know that in medicine it is a mistake to try to attribute things. only to one cause, but if there is a single root cause, dominant cause, then the root cause of severe substance addiction is always childhood trauma, childhood trauma, yes, not just in my experience, and my experience is that it doesn't.

I have no one in the center of the east side. of Vancouver, where they work who were not abused as children, not even by accident, and all the women were sexually abused specifically, but there was also all the research done that the more adverse a person's childhood experience, the exponentially greater the likelihood of substance abuse later. So those who say that everything is hereditary, you say what is nonsense, nonsense, yes, yes, genes can have some predisposing role, but predispositions are not the same as determinations of P. I mean, I know that genes They are actually activated and deactivated by the environment.

There was a study. A couple of weeks ago it came out that showed that even people who have a genetic predisposition to addiction, that gene is turned off if they were raised well, but we hear all the time that if your father was an alcoholic, you're probably too safe. Under what conditions do you go up? Yes your parents. If your father was an alcoholic. In other words, how is that trait transmitted? Is it transmitted genetically? Was it transmitted through the fact that you had stressful early experiences? Even if you were adopted. still had stressful experiences because her mother was stressed for nine months and we already know that the stress of the party girl and the pregnant woman has an impact on the development of the child and the stress levels on the graph and then of course there is a separation from the biological mother, so whether you look at medical studies or linear family histories just because the father is addicted and the child also becomes addicted, it doesn't say anything about genetic causality, that's fine, but it must also go Beyond childhood trauma, even if you are blessed with childhood, but something extraordinary has happened to you as an adult, you can also become addicted, isn't it very unlikely?

What we know now about the human brain is that it is actually shaped by the early environment in which the physiology and chemistry In fact, the part of the brain is physiologically under the influence of the early environment, so those circuits are configured or They are not set up early enough in life. No one with a blessed childhood becomes addicted. Some people think she has less childhood but that's only because they haven't looked at what went wrong in her childhood some people have terrible life experiences and don't become addicted to drugs other people overcome their addictions even though they have a terrible childhood, so where does willpower factor into everything?

The question of this willpower is a difficult question to discern because if we really look at the brain circuits that make conscious decisions, they are very weak and very dominated by our impulses that come from deeper brain centers and the gap between a impulse and and a decision is only a split second, so when you look at people who had many negative experiences but did not become addicts in the first place, addiction is not the only result, many people compensate for terrible experiences by becoming in code. really good people and they end up getting sick because they repress a lot and I read in the book about that too, other people may have had terrible experiences, but they may have had a chance to process them, maybe there was a sympathetic testimony in their lives. lives with whom they could share and at least emotionally resolve the trauma, then they don't need to become addicts, but overwhelming people will become severe substance users or people who were traumatized early and had no one there to help them process the experience.

What percentage of Do you think your patients would overcome their addictions or my patients in an incident in downtown Vancouver? Yes, yes, if I could say 5%, I am hailed as an international genius, it would be less than that, less than 5%, oh yes, and that is simply not. Those aren't just my stats, that's Jenny; in all areas, however, the question is why not what keeps them and that is what we had to come to our society, how does it twist the addict with force to use, the addict punishes the addict in the context that we have now. authorization of social exclusion and this war on drugs the only thing we are doing is entrenching tens of thousands of people and very addictive behaviors in other words, we do not have the context to cure or redeem people, we simply do not have it, they say in baseball, if you're a hitter and you miss seven out of ten times, you're a star because you're still getting three hits out of every ten mm, are you saying you're not succeeding at more than 95% of your ability? patients, but you are still doing very well by the standards of your profession, it is true.

I'm not saying I'm doing very well. I am saying that I am doing what I am doing in the current situation as it is established. Let's continue with this war against drugs and by the way there is no war against drugs you cannot wage war against inani

mate

objects but there is a war against drug addicts when there is a war against drug addicts it is very difficult to save someone what I do is to treat people's illnesses I reduce the damage of their addictions and of the social attitude towards addictions if I wanted to redeem and cure many more people I would need many more people behind me I need to be a politician Holmes I need this crazy and counterproductive board to get there to its end, I need resources now that are not put into prisons and police work to go to treatment, we need a lot more, in other words, we could do a lot more, so in the current context our failure rate is high if we fail. we define that people give up their addictions there must be a wide spectrum of obsession or compulsion however you want to describe this every time you buy one end I guess it's that you pick up your blackberry too often on the other end your main heroine know five times a day or so whatever, okay, given that broad spectrum, are you addicted to something?

Well, that's the point in our society that is based on addictive behaviors and I define addictive behavior as a compulsive repetition of behaviors that give you temporary pleasure. and long-term relief create problems and negative consequences that you still persist in, you still relapse no, by that definition, yes, I have had addictive behaviors to work with, a constant negative in my family by bringing my children there under health emotional. I have a negative attachment to buying compact classical music. Spend a lot of money. I ignore my family and you lie. You went out one weekend dressed in blue and eight thousand dollars worth of CDs.

It's not like I woke up Monday morning and said, what should I spend this eight thousand dollars on? It's more like I have to keep going back and back. Thirty percent of Canadians know they are workaholics between the ages of 19 and sixty. five according to STATS they can and that means they are apathetic and irritable and they are not at work their mind is at work they are not with their families there are types of negative consequences but this is how they calm their feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction some of the most wonderful creative, even though it arises from addictive behavior, wouldn't you agree with that?

No, you don't agree. I think there is a difference between passion and addiction. You can be passionate about something dedicated to it, but be aware, alert and aware. and being in charge of it any addiction is the addiction that is in charge you are driven you are not in charge you are not in the driver's seat that always has negative consequences now there may be some good things that come out of it but the negative is always always there That's the good thing you talk about your own compulsive behavior or addiction whatever you want to call it with your patients I do, they know it oh yes, I'm sure they do, in fact they laugh and shake their heads and say oh Yes, I get it, they usually get it. completely.

You know, it's qualitatively, it's the same quantitatively, not that they are much worse, but they have suffered much more than I have, so their need to calm them down is much greater. I've also had fewer advantages in terms of education and stable upbringing than I have had, but do they ever tell you that you know, given your own problems with addiction, who are you to tell us or give us advice? I do not know how. not live our lives, on the contrary, what they say is that it's good to talk to someone about the fact that she's gone and he doesn't see himself as someone superior, that's fine, you work as you told us in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver , which some people have described. kind of like the poorest zip code in the entire country, yeah, and that's how you describe it in your book, let's do an excerpt here, it's not like we lack a real infestation in downtown Eastside, rodents thrive between the walls of the hotels and in the alleys of garbage scattered by vermin. many of my patients beds clothes and bodies bed bugs lice scabies cockroaches occasionally crawl out of shirts and pants shivering in my office and scurry for cover under my desk now this neighborhood couldn't always have been like this how did it get so good ?

Actually, today I discovered that filmmaker Alan King made a movie in the Skid Row area of ​​Hoover in 1957, so it's been that way for a long time. What you have in Vancouver are advocates for relatively cheap housing and irrational cli

mate

, etc. Vancouver has really become the receptacle of dysfunction generated throughout the country, but because of the climate and the cheap housing available in that part of the world, we have this large concentration of addicted people and of course then the services come to support them . The people, because they have to be supported, they have to be served, they have to be fed, people take care of them and then, given the lack of services in other parts of the country, in fact, the negative attitudes and ostracism that people experience in other places where they also congregate except with others. of their own species where they have a type of community that falls into dysfunction at least gives them a sense of belonging and to some extent security.

You're trying to provide a service to some of the most unfortunate people in society, but my hunch is the people in The rest of Vancouver aren't as enthusiastic about having this community among them, how does that manifest itself in your life? Well, people don't like it, to be honest, some people, just on a human level, believe that we should do better than do it. ghettoize people like we have done in my career. Some people don't like the Downtown Eastside because it looks bad, for example, the next two Olympic cities take the shine off our feeling that Vancouver is a great place to live and so I want to make changes for that reason, although these Moms and dads say they are planning to do something in this part of the city now because the Olympics are coming up, yeah, it's not nice, is it good?

It's good that they want to do something. I don't care why people want to do it as long as they provide some services and decent housing. On the other hand, they have been depriving the area of ​​housing support for decades, so you know, are we doing it to look good? We do it because what you want to say and that's the question we have to ask you do you care what the reason is as long as it's done? I care because if you're doing it because we're committed to being human, that's going to Continue, if you're just doing it to look good, once the camera cuts us off, we'll stop it, but do you believe the moms and dads in the city when they say that it is now a priority of ours to help clean this area?

There are a lot of people in Mancora politics who were very candid about it and I think that crosses the political spectrum fortunately, so what is the Portland hotel? The portal hotel is a domicile for the most unhealthy ball. People in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside are the average person staying there. Actually a hotel is simply called because the average person there would have had five or six addresses in the 12 months before being admitted there, so people have been provided with accommodation, medical services, my clinic has been in those facilities for the last ten years, their medications. They are given to them in the morning and we are trying to mitigate the effect of the harshness of their lives and the harshness of social authorization. fortune doing anything else, yes, not a fortune, you can make a living doing anything else, what do these kinds of people have,that place and this world that draws you there?

Well, you know, that's always a complex question because there's always a combination of consciousness. and unconscious that motivates any of us, but from what I can tell with myself, I have a genuine commitment to working with people who suffer, which is why I went into medicine in the first place and I have a very clear sense that some people suffer. for it not to be their fault because no, no one at three years old has to be sexually abused, so I resonate, I mean, I understand that they are very similar to that, so something attracts me there and then it is a very authentic place to work, I want That is, people can lie. a cheater but they don't"They pretend to be other than who they are.

It's a tough crowd, although I don't have to tell you that now that I read it in your book. You're dealing with very tough people who have been through terrible things and you know they're tough people. very tough. They are very sweet people, very sweet, warm, their own, people who have an immeasurable capacity for loving responses, if they are giving the opportunity for that, that is what is behind that veneer of hardness, they can see a lot. vulnerability, yes, that's right, but manipulative to the lower right, but who is not okay, it's fair, I mean, you know I can be manipulative, at some point your friends or partners can tell you that you can be that way, these people are manipulated because they are weak, they are in a weak position the weak have to manipulate that is taken for granted but that is not unique to them in any way, ultimately I guess you have two different types of days, there are days when you wake up and you say you know if it wasn't for me these people would fall from the end of the world because no one cares about them and then I guess there are days when you wake up and think you know I could work 80 hours a day and it doesn't matter 24 and no It would be like that and it wouldn't be like that. will be enough and I'm not making the kind of progress that I would like, what do you have more days of Oh, many more of the first type of days of no where I think if it were not for me, they would fall, but, without a doubt, but ?

For the type of work that is being done there, myself included, these people would suffer a lot more and that makes it really worth it, so you feel like you are having an impact. Yes, you have an impact on people because you are giving them something. that otherwise they would never get it, which again, is not personal to me. I'm talking about the work itself, not about me, but about acceptance, non-judgment, a compassionate response to their suffering, practical help, but for the people who worked there, these people wouldn't. be receiving that and all that would happen is that their early trauma would be visited daily until the end of their lives, which is largely what happens anyway, but at least it will be mitigated to some extent, it is understood that the book is calls in the realm of hungry ghosts. close encounters with addiction it's good to have you here on tbo tonight it's a pleasure, thank you