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June 6, 2008
Reach out to other people
Dr. Gabor Maté believes "addicts are not born, but created."
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Most of us are familiar with the notion that, to conquer a problem, we must first admit that we have one. But where do we go from there, if we are addicted to alcohol, gambling or another substance or activity? What is addictive behavior and what supports are there for people with addiction?
Dr. Gabor Maté considers these and many other questions in his new book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). Maté has been a physician for more than 30 years. Currently, he is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre for the people of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He sees many patients who suffer from drug addiction and, in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, he introduces some of them to readers. He also shows that addictive behavior crosses socioeconomic lines and is not a problem relegated to one area of town or one group of people. For those who would be quick to judge his patients, he suggests introspection.
"Ethical traditions of all faiths and backgrounds teach us that judgment is a divine attribute, not a human one," Maté told the Independent in an e-mail interview. "Whenever humans arrogate to themselves the right to make moral judgments of one another, they create more suffering for themselves – as I know from personal experience. It's a basic truth that any moral judgment we make of another person is always about ourselves. A creative way to work with this is to observe the automatic tendency of the human mind to make judgments, and to use that to learn about ourselves."
And Maté doesn't shy away from sharing his own personal experiences – he is quite open in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and his other books, which include Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder and When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. But, separate from the relevance to him personally of such topics, he seems to have more empathy and a greater desire to understand his patients than many doctors.
"It may go back to my experience as an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide," he said. "It's never enough to look at the surface: if we are to transform the world, we need to understand the underlying dynamics of human behavior and to see the connections between things that, on the surface, may seem disconnected."
As for what sometimes must seem an uphill battle in the Downtown Eastside, Maté said, "It's not personal to me, any more than World War II was or, say, the Middle East conflict. There is a universal human experience and it is a privilege to be engaged with it. It's always our individual choice to decide how to be engaged, in the face of tragedy as in the face of joy. It's not a matter of optimism, but of recognizing human possibility."
In another area, Maté also sees the positive, rather than focusing on the negative. With all of the infrastructure work going on in Vancouver and elsewhere in anticipation of the 2010 Olympics, there is a concern that the homeless, drug-addicted and other residents of the Downtown Eastside will be further marginalized.
"Things are always moving in many directions at once. There is a drive toward gentrification, towards displacing the addicted and socially oppressed population in the DES [Downtown Eastside]; at the same time, there are many people working together to create more human approaches, better treatment, a more cohesive community," said Maté, using as an example last week's B.C. Supreme Court ruling. It said Canada's trafficking and possession laws are unconstitutional when applied to addicts using Vancouver's Insite for Community Safety's supervised injection facility and that Insite should be allowed to remain open for now. The federal government has expressed its intent to appeal the decision.
As for what governments and people in general should be doing to help ease Vancouver's drug issues, Maté said, "The first step is to understand: to understand that drug addicts are not born, but created. Created by childhood abuse, by unbearable stress on the parenting environment, by social dislocation. So prevention needs to begin in the crib, in the support for young parents, in the prevention of the abuse of children, in the protection of dislocated and marginalized minorities. The second step is to see that the addicted adult is a not a social enemy but a human being in dire need of compassion and acceptance, and expert support."
He concluded, "If society took to heart the teaching of Rabbi Hillel, that the essence of the Torah is to reach out to other human beings and that the task may not be ours to finish, but neither are we free not to take part in it, we would be far ahead of where we find ourselves today."
More information about Maté, his work and future speaking engagements, can be found at www.drgabormate.com.
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