In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

by Gabor Maté

The mind and brain processes are the same in all addictions, no matter what form, as is the psycho-spiritual emptiness that resides at the core.

It originates in a human being’s desperate attempt to solve a problem: the problem of emotional pain, of overwhelming stress, of lost connection, of loss of control, of a deep discomfort with the self.

The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances, objects or pursuits we hope will soothe it are not what we really need.

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.

When we flee our vulnerability, we lose our full capacity for feeling emotion. We may even become emotional amnesiacs, not remembering ever having felt truly elated or truly sad. A nagging void opens, and we experience it as alienation, as profound ennui, as the sense of deficient emptiness described above.

The fundamental addiction is to the fleeting experience of not being addicted. The addict craves the absence of the craving state.

The three environmental conditions absolutely essential to optimal human brain development are nutrition, physical security and consistent emotional nurturing.

Early stress establishes a lower “set point” for a child’s internal stress system: such a person becomes stressed more easily than normal throughout her life.

A brain pre-set to be easily triggered into a stress response is likely to assign a high value to substances, activities and situations that provide short-term relief.

The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress for human beings: uncertainty, lack of information and loss of control.

Oddly enough, the addiction really isn’t over until I can see the emptiness (in a Buddhist sense) of the behaviour: not good, not evil, and certainly not exciting, just an outside “thing” I’ve been using unintelligently to dull the suffering edge of life. I say “unintelligently” because no addiction in the history of the world ever alleviated more suffering than it ended up causing.

that I have to be responsible for my own fear of emptiness. The fear is not personal—on the contrary it’s pretty much universal—but I got the void I got and it’s not going anywhere. When I can recognize that, I don’t make the mistake of confusing it with who I am, or worse, expending a lot of energy trying to make it go away by any available means. Instead, I can be vigilant, patient and good-humoured with it.

Attempting to obliterate the sense of deficiency and emptiness that is a core state of any addict is like labouring to fill in a canyon with shovelfuls of dust.

“It takes a lot of discipline and courage to work through a negative thought and negative emotion,” Ms. Giard points out. “Replacing a negative emotion with a positive one is the core of addictive behavior.”2

believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is about giving, not getting.

My judgments of others are an accurate gauge of how, beneath the surface, I feel about myself.

The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only towards the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future—the two elements that make the present intolerable.

“One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove the emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.”10 So writes Eckhart Tolle. Even our 24/7 self-exposure to noise, emails, cell phones, TV, Internet chats, media outlets, music downloads, videogames and non-stop internal and external chatter cannot succeed in drowning out the fearful voices within.

My anxiety clothes itself in concerns about body image or financial security, doubts regarding loveability or the ability to love, self-disparagement and existential pessimism about life’s meaning and purpose—or, on the other hand, it manifests itself as grandiosity, the need to be admired, to be seen as special.

chronic anxiety is not rooted in the experience of the moment. It precedes thought. We may believe we’re anxious about this or that—body image, the state of the world, relationship issues, the weather—but no matter what story we weave around it, the anxiety just is. Like addiction itself, anxiety will always find a target, but exists independently of its targets.

I see now that the underlying anxiety and sense of emptiness have been pervasive. Emotionally they take the shape of chronic, low-grade depression and irritability. On the thought level, they manifest as cynicism—the negative side of the healthy skepticism and independent thinking I’ve always valued. Behaviourally they mask themselves as hypomanic energy or as lethargy, as the constant hankering for activity or for oblivion.

Once I see my anxiety and recognize it for what it is, the need to escape dwindles.

Why attempt to escape some old brain pattern laid down when I was a frightened infant during a terrible time in history? It’s there and the circuits in which its wordless stories are embedded are indelibly a part of my brain.