'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts'

Dr. Mate is correct. I have watched this happen to my son over a 15 year period. Severe stress as his brain was developing led to his severe alcohol addiction. Most addicts with whom I have worked have been abused. People are not honest about the abuse, especially at the higher levels of society.

Except for sumyunggai, these comments somehow make Lennon's lines drift into mind,

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone . . . but it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me

And McCartney's ---

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
Where do they all belong?

I wasn't impressed with Dr. Mate when he did an interview with NPR a couple of months ago. My somewhat testy synopsis:

Dr. Gabor Mate spoke on NPR this morning. It didn't reflect well on his book. He talks vaguely about "research" that supports his views on the causes of addiction but all of his evidence is actually based on his own experience and those of his patients. He treats severely addicted HIV-positive people in Vancouver, and his extrapolation of their experiences to general addictive behavior like smoking is a stretch.

Dr. Mate also made several claims that are untrue:

* He says that addiction only started in recent Western societies and there are no examples of addiction in indigenous societies or in ancient Western cultures. Plenty of counter-examples to this: ancient Greek and Roman literature, kava kava in the Pacific Islands, etc.

* He says that vulnerability to addiction is caused by childhood stress and trauma. It's possible that psychic pain makes one more likely to try addictive substances, but lots of people who had pleasant formative years end up addicted to drugs or to destructive behaviors. There's a major part of this that is biochemistry. His handwaving around "dopamine" and "endorphins" is so uninformed it's laughable.

* He claims that peyote is an addictive drug of abuse akin to alcohol and tobacco. Anybody with a shred of a clue knows this is ridiculous even if generalized to psychedelics in general. Sure, they can cause psychological harm if used wontonly but when is the last time you saw a psychedelic fiend wandering around Pioneer Square?

Dr. Mate may have drawn insights into psychology and human nature from his practice but he's no addiction scientist, and he blows his credibility by trying to be one.

yes this man knows his shit

I haven't read his books. I agree that the presentation may seem simplistic to the point of being pejorative to a lot of casual users. I think that there is however a powerful point to what he is saying - draconian policies aren't going to deter a lot of drug users, as they are well outside of the social system already, and may have been for a long time. I don't think he's implying that everyone who he deals with is 'In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts', but that this is an important aspect to present about what he sees.

I just watched this interview and while I agree with some things I find Dr. Mate's arguments extremely simplistic. His case studies are all from clinical work and skew to lower classes. He has no explanation for why children who are nurtured and from wealthy families might wind up addicted to cocaine or heroin. He completely discounts any genetic factors for ADD or addiction, meaning that he assumes everyone is born with the exact same genome for receptor expression (completely untrue). Abuse at an early age can clearly lead to maladaptive plasticity and addiction, but that does not mean every addict or person with ADD was abused. Poor corollary research; middle-class kids who are treated well get ADD and wind up addicts too, not just the impoverished and abused.