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.

The first question is not “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?”

In our civilized times we are punishing and tormenting people for having suffered trauma.

Parent-blaming is emotionally unkind and scientifically incorrect. All parents do their best; only our best is limited by our own unresolved or unconscious trauma.

Addictions arise from thwarted love, from our thwarted ability to love children the way they need to be loved, from our thwarted ability to love ourselves and one another in the ways we all need. Opening our hearts is the path to healing addiction—opening our compassion for the pain within ourselves, and the pain all around us.

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.

As an authority figure, the doctor triggers deeply ingrained feelings of childhood powerlessness in many of us

“Forget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life,” writes the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. “Your life situation exists in time—your life is now.”

“The first time I did heroin,” she said to me, “it felt like a warm soft hug.” In that phrase she told her life story and summed up the psychological and chemical cravings of all substance-dependent addicts.

The obesity epidemic demonstrates a psychological and spiritual emptiness at the core of consumer society.

our sneers always tell us who we feel we are. A powerful person’s self-esteem may appear to be high, but it’s a hollow shell if it’s based on externals, on the ability to impress or intimidate others. It’s what psychologist Gordon Neufeld calls conditional or contingent self-esteem: it depends on circumstances. The greater the void within, the more urgent the drive to be noticed and to be “important,” and the more compulsive the need for status. By contrast, genuine self-esteem needs nothing from the outside.

We despise, ostracize and punish the addict because we don’t wish to see how much we resemble him. In his dark mirror our own features are unmistakable. We shudder at the recognition. This mirror is not for us, we say to the addict. You are different, and you don’t belong with us.

Incompleteness is the baseline state of the addict. The addict believes—either with full awareness or unconsciously—that he is “not enough.” As he is, he is inadequate to face life’s demands or to present an acceptable face to the world. He is unable to tolerate his own emotions without artificial supports. He must escape the painful experience of the void within through any activity that fills his mind with even temporary purpose, be it work, gambling, shopping, eating or sexual seeking.

If refusal to take on responsibility for another person’s behaviours burdens you with guilt, while consenting to it leaves you eaten by resentment, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide.