In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

by Gabor Maté

There would be much less confrontation and more effective care, I am convinced, if medical and allied staff all took some mindfulness training and if we practiced observing, with awareness and curiosity, our mind-states and our reactions to these unconventional people. We would spare ourselves a lot of tension and stress, and protect our patients from further psychological trauma, if we learned to take responsibility for what we bring to our encounters with them. Five minutes of mindful meditation in the middle of a shift in the context of an emergency ward may seem like an absurd luxury, but the time saved and the bruised and inflamed emotions prevented would be a rich payoff. We may not be responsible for another’s addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff.