In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

by Gabor Maté

If I examine my addictive behaviors without judgment and ask “Why?” in the spirit of compassionate curiosity, what do I find? More to the point, whom do I find? What is the full truth of me? Is it that I’m a respected thirty-year veteran of medical practice, spouse and parent, counselor, public speaker, activist, and author? What about the anxious, insecure man who has often felt empty and incomplete and has looked to the outside to allay some insatiable hunger? As fellow addict and author Stephen Reid said during our conversation in the cafeteria of the William Head penitentiary: “… makes my teeth hurt, the work of pulling back from all those outside things and looking inside myself.” In my case, the unconscious tension literally made my teeth hurt—so forcefully have I ground my teeth at night since childhood that by the end of my fifth decade most of them were whittled stubs with the pulp exposed.