The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté

When you’re trying to survive, you turn malady into a coping strategy, and loss into culture. —Stephen Jenkinson

“superautonomous self-sufficiency,”

If we are not made to feel important for just who we are, we may seek significance by becoming compulsive helpers—a syndrome I know intimately.

“For the greater part of humanity, self-interest as we know it is unnatural … it is considered madness

“We are freer from genetics than any other species on earth.”

Sensitivity can be the quintessential combo package: gift and curse, all in one.

“Our policy was: ‘You get 15 people hooked on opioids, and you’re a thug who deserves to rot in hell; you get 150,000 people hooked, and you’re a marketing genius who deserves a huge bonus.’”

Socially entrenched bigotry, whether in its subtle or overt forms, takes an enormous and, until very recently, mostly unspoken toll on health.