A Refreshing New Perspective on Addiction

The denial of addiction has commonly been likened to "an elephant in the living room."  In his recent book, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts--Close Encounters with Addiction, Dr. Gabe Mate argues provocatively that this "elephant" has become nearly universal in the modern world.  In his view, substance addiction and behavioral addiction have a common basis in brain chemistry and can therefore be understood much as different colors in a spectrum.

Through my extensive experience as a psychotherapist, I resonate very strongly to this view; in fact, I personally arrived at a very similar perspective at least two decades ago and, since then, have referred to it somewhat playfully as Shears' Folly.

In my version, which was more open-ended than Dr. Mate's, I simply hypothesized that brain research would eventually show that ALL addictive behavior, whether it be to drugs, sex, food, gambling, work, cutting/burning oneself, exercising excessively, etc., etc. is mediated by one or more common forms of brain chemistry.  More specifically, I posited that--as Dr. Mate now holds--endorphins would prove to be at least one of these "final common pathways."

My clinical experience also strongly supports Dr. Mate's contention that ALL addiction is driven by pain--including, very importantly, emotional pain--and that the origins of this pain are most commonly found in abuse/deprivation from early childhood.

Finally, I also strongly agree with Dr. Mate's compassionate appraisal of our collective
human predicament vis-a-vis the myriad forms of addiction.

Not surprisingly then, for all of these reasons--and more--I want to do all I can to propagate and support his enlightened understanding, as well as his efforts to develop interventions that are both effective and compassionate.

I strongly recommend all of his books and, especially, the one mentioned above.  In addition, THIS VIDEO offers an excellent introduction and overview to his work.