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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gabor Maté
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October 23 - December 22, 2022
“It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.”
What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood. ALICE MILLER Breaking Down the Wall of Silence
In the search for truth, human beings take two steps forward and one step back. Suffering, mistakes, and weariness of life thrust them back, but the thirst for truth and stubborn will drive them forward. And who knows? Perhaps they will reach the real truth at last. ANTON CHEKHOV The Duel
This is the domain of addiction, where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb an insatiable yearning for relief or fulfillment. The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances, objects, or pursuits we hope will soothe it are not what we really need. We don’t know what we need, and so long as we stay in the hungry ghost mode, we’ll never know. We haunt our lives without being fully present.
Not every story has a happy ending, as the reader will find out, 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.
These are people who are frequently viewed as liabilities, blamed for crime and social ills, and … seen as a waste of time and energy. They are regarded harshly even by people who make compassion their careers.”
how to soothe souls inflamed by the intense torment imposed first by childhood experiences almost too sordid to believe and then, with mechanical repetition, by the sufferers themselves?
“Freedom isn’t for us,” he told his fellow prisoners. “We’re chained to this place for the rest of our lives, even though we aren’t wearing chains. We can escape, we can wander about, but in the end we’ll come back.”
Where does a commitment to serve such a community originate? In my case, I know it is rooted in my beginnings as a Jewish infant in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944. I’ve grown up with the awareness of how terrible and difficult life can be for some people—through no fault of their own.
“As a nurse, I thought I had some expertise to share. While that was true, I soon discovered that, in fact, I had very little to give—I could not rescue people from their pain and sadness. All I could offer was to walk beside them as a fellow human being, a kindred spirit.
Yes, they lie, cheat, and manipulate—but don’t we all, in our own way? Unlike the rest of us, they can’t pretend not to be cheaters and manipulators.
In our secret fantasies, who among us wouldn’t like to be as carelessly brazen about our flaws?
What a wonderful world it would be if the simplistic view were accurate: that human beings need only negative consequences to teach them hard lessons.
Dismissing addictions as “bad habits” or “self-destructive behavior” comfortably hides their functionality in the life of the addict.1 VINCENT FELITTI, MD
Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious.
“Our difficulty or inability to perceive the experience of others … is all the more pronounced the more distant these experiences are from ours in time, space, or quality,” wrote the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi.
We readily feel for a suffering child but cannot see the child in the adult who, his soul fragmented and isolated, hustles for survival a few blocks away from where we shop or work.
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.
best the brain can do is to shut down conscious awareness of it when pain becomes so vast or unbearable that it threatens to overwhelm our capacity to function.
think deep in his heart there must live a desire for a life of wholeness and integrity that may be too painful to acknowledge—painful because, in his eyes, it’s unattainable.
Imprinted in the developing brain circuitry of the child subjected to abuse or neglect is fear and distrust of powerful people, especially of caregivers. In time this ingrained wariness is reinforced by negative experiences with authority figures such as teachers, foster parents, and members of the legal system or the medical profession. Whenever I adopt a sharp tone with one of my clients, display indifference, or attempt some well-meant coercion for her benefit, I unwittingly take on the features of the powerful ones who first wounded and frightened her decades ago. Whatever my intentions, I
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Our ideas and feelings about a person congeal around our limited experience of them, and around our judgments.
“What happened to you is truly horrible. There is no other word for it, and there is nothing I can say that comes even close to acknowledging just how terrible, how unfair it is for any being, any child to be forced to endure all that. But no matter what, I still don’t accept that things are hopeless for any human being. I believe there is a natural strength and innate perfection in everyone. Even though it’s covered up by all kinds of terrors and all kinds of scars, it’s there.”
“It’s a chance for a new life, not just for the baby, but for you individually—and for the two of you together. But you know you have some obstacles to overcome.”
“There’s a fine line,” he offers, “between healthy boundaries and codependency, where you’re just getting walked over. In the heat of the moment, it’s so tough for me to discern that.”
If as a Jew and infant survivor of genocide I can receive these ravings calmly, it’s because I know they’re not about me or my grandparents or even about World War II or Nazis and Jews. Ralph is showcasing the terrible unrest of his soul. The suffering Germans and rapacious Jews in his narrative are projections of his own phantoms.
can’t help thinking that at this very same moment Ralph, supported by his cane, is holding vigil somewhere in the dusky and dirty Hastings Street evening, hustling for his next hit of cocaine. And in his heart he wants beauty no less than I—and, no less than I, needs love.
“You know, what concerns me most is that it isolates you. I guess the way you learned to get along in the world is to be overly hostile.”
