Dr. Gabor Mate´ - Re-Release

listen to it because he's a really amazing guy. So thanks everybody, and we will talk to you soon. By You cannot separate the individual from the environment, and you cannot separate the mind from the body. And so when people are living in a stressed culture, they have stressed minds, and stressed minds result in stressed bodies. Welcome to the

one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is a renowned speaker and bestselling author, Dr Gabor Mate. He's highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress,

and childhood development. For twelve years, Dr Matte worked in Vancouver's downtown east Side with patients challenged by hardcore drug addiction, mental littleness, and HIV, including Vancouver's supervised injection site. As an author, Dr Mate has written several best selling books, including the award winning in the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction, and the book When the Body Says No, The Cost of Hidden Stress. His works have

been published internationally in twenty languages. To get a free download of Eric's favorite Gabor Mate quotes, go to one new feed dot net slash gabb or. Our sponsor on this episode is Fracture. Fracture is a great company that is out to rescue your favorite photos from your camera role by transforming how they are printed and displayed. They print your photos directly onto glass and add a solid mount pad on the back so you can hang it right on the wall out of the box, no frames needed.

The best part is that you can get ten percent off right now by using the promo code Wolf when you enter your fractures at fractured dot me. And here's the interview with Gabor mate Hi Gabo or welcome to the show. I am really excited to get you on. You're known as a real expert in the field of addiction,

as a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic myself. It's a topic that comes up a lot on the show and we talk about and we'll talk a lot about your book in the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts um as well as your forthcoming book that's yet to be released. But first let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start it off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the

work that you do. The parable is a helpful teaching tool as a metaphor, but truth to tell, and despite the fact that this is the theme of your program, I don't find it a compelling understanding of what life is all about. Because it would all be rather easy if feeding the good wolf would be a matter of choice, and then we could all thrive and do well and have great relationships and great jobs, and great bodies and great and great souls for that matter. But is it

a matter of choice. I've never found a simile addict who actually chose to be an addict. I don't know anybody that wakes up one morning and says, my ambition in life is to become a drug addict or sex addict, or shopping addict, or a food addict, or an internet addict or gambling at or any other kind of addict. So, first of all, the metaphor implies a freedom to make that choice, and of course freedom is a subtle thing, but it's not as clear as that metaphor in that

story would have it. We can talk more about where I think addiction comes from, but let me just makes the first point that it's not so much a matter of choice. Secondly, the good and bad implies an acceptance and oh celebration of the one and the rejection of the other condemnation of the other. So there's a judgment involved different parts of ourselves, some of which are good, others are bad. On the contrary, I find that it's those parts that we consider bad that we have to

be most compassionate with. That's the part of us that we have to understand. That's the part of us that we have to recognize. What role that so called the wolf actually played in our life, why he or she came along, and why we became so attached to it. That takes understanding, and some compare what I call compassionate curiosity and some willingness to accept. So the split between the good and the bad, the good wolf and the

bad wolf psychologically, to me is hurtful. And secondly, as I said in the beginning, it's not so much a matter of choice as a matter of actually seeing where both those parts of ourselves arise from. So I could say more, and yes, by all meanes we show it as best we can feed the wholesome, healthy parts of ourselves, but we have to have a lot of understanding and compassion for that other part as well. Without that, we will never liberate ourselves. Well, that is a great way

to lead into it. And one of the things I did want to talk about, we'll get to it a little bit, is that idea of freedom or choice and how much free him in choice do we really have in certain situations. To start off, I would like to just read a paragraph from very early in the book um to give people a sense of of what the title of the book means. And I think it's a

really beautiful description of a really awful state. You say, the inhabitants of the Hungry Ghost Realm are depicted as creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs, and large, bloated empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb and insatiable yearning for relief or fulfillment. The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances objects are pursuits we hope will soothe it,

are not what we really need. And I think that is a great description of a really awful state, and uh paints a real picture of addiction. But the first question I'd like to ask you is what is addiction. That's a widely disputed topic and there's lots of different ideas on it, but I'd like to see if we can come up with a working definition for the rest of this conversation. That's great, and that will also allow me to go back to your code about anger ghosts

and and make a comment about it. So addiction for me is it's a complex physiological, psychological, neurobiological, social, cultural phenomena. But the essence of it shows up in behaviors which may have to do with substances, but it could also be non substance related like sex or gambling, food and

so on. As I've said before, So any behavior that a person craves finds temporary pleasure or relief in and then suffers long term negative consequences as the result of but is incapable of giving up despite those negative consequences. So the features of addiction are craving relief, temporary pleasure, negative, a long term consequence, inability to give it. That's what eviction is. Any addiction, and I don't care again whether it's the substances to what it's to. That's what the

essence of addiction is. Then, now, if you ask yourself this question, and you know you've talked about your own substance addiction, let me ask you a question if I may, If I asked you know what was wrong with your heroin addiction? And what else did you mention? Was it cocaine you said? Or alcohol? Alcohol, alcohol and heroin? Okay? If you ask if I asked you not, what what was wrong with those behaviors? Which we all we know we don't have to spell it out, everybody knows. But

what was right about it? What did it do for you? What did it give you in a short term? What was the value of it in your life? Can you tell me that sure. I mean I think the value in it for me was it changed the way I felt in any given moment, and I was not really capable of feeling anything. I think originally the drugs and alcohol brought me to life in a way. And you you talk about that in your book about the emotional

deadening that a lot of us do. So I think it brought me to life initially, and then I think after enough time it was also then used to kill the pain that was, you know, continuing to rise. Okay, so it did two really important things for you. It gives you a sense of vitality, aliveness, vivacity, and secondly it's soothe your pain. Now those are are they not perfectly normal human aspirations? Absolutely? Who does not want to feel a life? Who does not want to have a

pain relief? And so therefore the real question is what realm were you escaping from? Now? The in order to get into the under ghost from which is the addiction realm? Now this is a Buddhist concept, These these separate realms, you know, one of them is the under ghost, from another is the hell realm where we experience fear and dread and pain and terror and isolation. In other words,

Donga ghost round served their role for you. So the purpose for you you're entering the don ghost round into, in the words, into the addiction, was you attend to escape the pain of being in the hell realm of pain and isolation and fear and deadness. In other words, the addiction served the purpose. And so that to call it a bad wolf, it's to miss the fact that already there was suffering before that so called bad wolf

came along. And I'm saying that the first question in addiction is never why the addiction, will why the pain? Because all addictions, ultimately, and again I don't care what they're too. They could be the power to profit, to relationships, to physical looks, to anything in the world. All addictions are matter of escaping pain. And so the demantra that I propose is not why the addiction, but why the pain.

In order to look at why the pain, you have to look at people's lives and what actually happened to them. And then we can see once we do that that it really wasn't a matter of choice at all. You say that hurt is at the center of all addiction. Let's talk a little bit about what that hurt is

where it comes from. Um, the things that has in common with everybody, depending on where you are on an addiction scale, so to speak, from being extremely addicted to something very harmful to um moderately Uh, you know, obsessed with something less harmful. Where is this coming from? What's what's the root of it? Well, first of all, it's important what you just said, because what you just pointed up was that addiction exists on a spectrum, on a

on a continuum. So it's not that there are the addicts over there and the rest of us over here. Is that most of us, if you look at my definition of addition, we'll find ourselves somewhere on that continued However, they fundamental source it's always in some life experience of pain, and always in childhood. And that pain can be caused, broadly speaking, by two types of experiences. One is direct trauma,

such as sexual abuse. Parents would beat you, parents are abandoned you, parents have screamed at you, parents who were absent because they were jailed or because they were mentally ill, or because there was a lot of fighting amongst the parents and a child felt alone. And fighting is in a case of a bad divorce, or a parent dying. It's any number of these traumas, and and there's been a lot of research on this, so I mean, I'm not making this stuff up. This is just what the

research shows. And it's astonishing to me that the addiction ruled in general, including the twelve step cruse, which I in many ways support and respect, and including most addiction to eating programs, have got no concept of trauma whatsoever. So that's one kind of way of being heard. Not in the way of being heard is more subtle. It's what's called developmental trauma. This is not a question of

bad things happening, but if good things not happening. The child has certain needs, and the greatest need for the child is to be emotionally held and met and understood, and to be communicated with in such a way that the child's feelings are received and respected and held by the parents. Now, all kinds of really good parents who love their kids, who do their best, can't do that for their children because they're to stress themselves. They can't

be emotionally pleasant for the child. It's not a question do they love the child, It's a question of are they from the moment to moment in that interaction with the infant and a small child, are they able to be present emotionally in such a way that the child is received and seen and heard and understood and accepted for who they are? And art stress society, a lot of parents are incapable as much as they want to provide most qualities of the child. And that's called developmental trauma.

So that's got nothing to do with bad things happening. It's just the necessary good things not happening. Now, the more sensitive you are, and there could be genetic sensitivities here. Addiction is not caused by genes contragyd all the nonsense that a lot of people speak about that, But the sensitivity could be genetic. And the more sensitive you are, the more you will be hurt by the bad things

that happen or by the good things that don't happen. Now, if you look at populations of severely addictive people, such as I work within Vancouver, britsh Columbia, in the Downtowny Side, which is North America's most notorious and contributed the area drug use. By the way, there was nobody there who wasn't hurt in that first since there's not a single female patient, as I keep saying, who had not been sexually abused. I didn't meet single one in twelve years.

All the men have been similarly traumatized, some of them sexually, some in other ways. And that's also what a large scale study shows again is that the more trauma there is, the greater risk of addiction. Exponentially the greater risk of addiction. And then there's a lot of other people who whose addictions may not be quite so severe, or who cannot

look back on a childhood realise terrible things happened. In every case, though, you'll find that those good things that should have happened didn't happen, and a very sensitive person was hurt by that. So that's that's at the heart of it. M M. And here's the rest of the interview with gab moor Motte. You mentioned how critical these developmental stages are, um even all the way back to being in the womb, and you make it more concrete

than oh, you know, somebody's feelings were neglected. You talk about the actual parts of the brain that do not develop, where you end up with various systems in the brain that aren't functioning properly. And those tend to be a

lot of the systems that are directly affected by addiction. Well, there's a new film note directed by um Kathy Gillian Hall, who's married to Stephen Glean Hall, who's the father of the two very famous actors, and it's called In Usual and it's all about the impact of stress in the

womb on the developing fetus. So already stresses on the mother why she's pregnant, carrying the infant will in fact, in fact affect the child's brain development and then during the first few years the essential brain circuits that are implicated in the addiction such as stress regulation and the body is the internal opioid and doorphin regulation, and the emotional self regulation and attention and the sense of aliveness, reward motivation, the circuits that have to do with the

chemicals dopamine, or the circuits or their chemicals and doorphins, or the chemical serotonin which is implicated in the mood regulation. All these key circuits developed actually an interaction with the environment. And as an article from Harvard published in two and twelve showed or or you know, summarized it up that the most important quality of the environment in shaping in these brain circuits is the mutual responsiveness of adult child interactions.

So whenever parents are stressed and unable to be emotionally present for their children, these circuits are impaired within their development, let alone a child was actually traumatized. So it's not a question of just emotional heart it's also a question of that key brain circuits that later on become and enrolled in the service of addiction just don't develop properly, and then when the addictive behavior substance comes along, it

feels like a huge relief. As a matter of fact, I would wager that for somebody like yourself, probably when you did alcohol or herald you probably felt normal for the first time in your life. Oh yeah, I always say that, you know, two drinks was the best antidepressant I ever found. Unfortunately it never stayed at two drinks, but it was definitely worked. In other words, what what

what the substances were doing for you? Was giving you what your own brain chemistry should have given you had the circumstances being the appropriate ones for your brain developed, But clearly they weren't. And I don't know what happened to you, and I don't I don't know what you want to talk about it, but I I can just from the fact that you were I think the alcohol and a and I can tell you what kind of show I do you had now I I've got a

pretty good idea of that. The other thing that I think happens as addiction goes on is we start out with these chemical issues in our brain, let's call them that. And so then we start taking drugs or alcohol that makes us feel better. But those very drugs and alcohol begin to further eroad both the um ability of our brain to make the chemicals that make us feel good, as well as the parts of the brain that are

able to exercise impulse control. So we're taking a bad situation, and the actual physical changes that happened as we uh move into addiction and alcoholism make the situation worse in regards to our brain's ability to even stop what it's doing. That's exactly how it works. And you know who said it best was Jesus when he said the rich get richer in the program. You know that that that that those that have more shall be given to them, and those that have little, even a little to have, will

be taken away And that's what addiction does. So that um, just as you stated it. If you do brain scans a lot of adults, and you know, medicine plays a lot of attention these days to these brain scan studies, and we look at the abnormal brains and we think, oh, yeah, it's biological, therefore it's going to be genetic. No, it's not true. The biology is actually shaped by the environment.

So yes, it's biological. That doesn't make it genetic. Then when you add the burden of addictive substances, but you know, not just addictive substances, even addictive behaviors. Like if you are, let's say, um, shopping addict, and the reason you're shopping addict is your your brain lax in the dopamine, which is the incentive motivation chemical. But when you go shopping, your dopamine levels go really high. That's that's the incentive.

That means you're artificially increasing your dopamine levels. And that also means when you're not shopping, your own withdrawal, not to the same degree, of course, but in the same way as if you were a cocaine addict and increasing your dopamine levels through the stimulant cocaine, so yes. In

the long term, addictive behaviors and especially addictive substances. Of course, especially addictive substances, they further erode the ability of the individual to make rational choices, to hold onto relationships, to regulate impulses, to deal with their emotions, to handle stress in a healthy way. So that these things were impaired to start with because of maldevelopment in childhood, and now they're further impaired by the addictive behaviors and substances themselves.

So it's a double lammy and then a game. So when we come back to the question which wolfly feed, well, that so called bad wolf, which came out of deficiency and came out of a desperate attempt to feel better for a short time, has become very, very powerful. You mentioned genetics, and so I was, you know, one of the things that I read your book that I really found comforting, and I'm curious if the science since you wrote the book continues to support it is that there

isn't such a genetic basin. I have a son who I'm an addict. His mother is an addict, and I've always worried about his genetic predisposition but based on what you're saying, it's really more about the environment that we've raised him in and the way we've raised him than a particular set of genes that he inherited. Yeah, there are no addiction genes. There are genes that make it more likely that person might become addicted simply because certain chemicals are not handled in the same way as the

average person, or because the child is more sensitive. But here's the study from the Journal of Consulting Clinical Psychology two thousand and nine February. They looked at the long term study in Georgia African American news residing in rural Georgia, and they looked at certain their genes from you know, looking they looked at the NA analysis of their saliva, and there was a couple of genes that were increased that were linked with increased substance use over time. But

look at what it says here. However, this association was greatly reduced when used to receive higher levels of involved supportive parenting. This study demonstrates that parenting processes have the

potential to ameliorate genetic risk. And I would say that when children received the parenting they need, you don't just familiarate, you actually eliminate any genetic risk called together, and even in children where things didn't go well in the beginning, if you then provide the right kind of parenting, you

can still greatly reduce that risk. So Janes made pros an increased risk, but they cannot determine a predisposition is not the same as the predetermination and the assistance of the medical profession and addiction specialists and the toast goose that you got this genetic disease. It's just bad science. Well,

like I said, I find that to be comforting. In the section in your book where you talk about that, we don't have time to go into but the way that you explore where people have thought that it's genetic um and the way they arrive at those through a variety of twin studies and different things. You really talk about how that's not an effective mechanism, and so if people are interested in that, that would be a great,

great part of the book to check out. You've talked a lot about the role of the parents and and that the parents can be stressed, or they can be depressed, or lots of different things, and that sort of leads us into cultural issues. And the book that you're working on that will be coming out is really about the culture that we live in and how that culture breeds dysfunction. And so I'm going to read something else that you wrote and then maybe let you take it from there.

You say, a sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture. The drug addict is more painfully conscious, is void than most people, and has limited means of escaping it. The rest of us find other ways of suppressing our fear of emptiness or of distracting ourselves from it. So what what's happening in our culture that you think is breeding

this dysfunction? Well, if you'll permit me to be self referential here, um, I'd like you to make your way of another book I wrote, or Core, What got hold Onto Your Kids? Why apparents need to matter more than peers? So one of the things that we pointed in that book, In fact, what we do pointed in that book is that children have this primary need to attach to a parent, to to to attach to nurturing adults. That's just the need of all mammals and birds for that matter. Below

that the child doesn't survive. So as long as the culture provides an environment in which children are related to nurturing adults, especially in a village or clan or or or community setting, that child is very secure. One of the things that our culture has done is it as broken up the clan, that tribe, the community, the neighborhood.

And it has also put to mendus stress in the nuclear family, so that the parents don't see their kids most of the time, most of the day, and very often, of course, children come from broken families where it's not even two parents. Children have to attach to somebody. They cannot handle life without being connected to somebody. And who do they attached to? Who do they connect to? They connect to the peer group. So now you have this

phenomenal pere attachment. But children are not getting their modeling and their values, and they're mentoring and their emotional nurture and such as it is not from adults in their life anymore, but from other children. And of course immature creatures cannot lead one other to maturity. So this is all kinds of negative consequences. So any parent who's bringing up kids at lescent or at any age or or below, that's just the book that I think it's important to read,

and it's not my work. Actually, it is the work of a psychologist friend of mine, a billiont man called Gordon new Fault. I did the writing with him. But one of the things that happens in our culture is the bake up of family and community and clan, and that leaves children without the proper modeling, mentoring and cultural guidance.

Talk about a depressed mother, for example, who you know, postpartum depression, whatever, you make the point that in in the past, when there was more, as you said, clan or village or bigger family, there would be other people to pick up that slack, so to speak. There would be other people to help give the child maybe what they weren't able to get in that period with the mother. But in what even in the culture we live in,

sometimes that's the only person. It goes beyond that. First of all, we know that postpone depression and the mother is associated with an increased risk of behavior problems, a d h D and a whole lot of other things that predisupposed to addiction in the child. But it goes beyond that because in a society, with his private support from others, you don't have the risk of postpone depression post on depression is not an automatic biological thing that

happens to women. It happens in a context, and the context is lack of emotional support. And I can tell you that as a husband whose wife had a postpontum depression and at a time when I was a work callic doctor who was not available to support her, so and and and so, and that an impact on our children. And so even the risk of postpartum depression and and the rates of which is going higher and higher in

our culture has to do with cultural factors. And the book I'm working on and I don't have a working title for it yet, but the general theme is toxic culture. And what I mean by that is that a culture is the context in which we live, the social, emotional, relational um interactions that we have, the work that we do, the entertainment that we pursue, the practices that we engage. And that's, broadly speaking, is what means to have a culture.

There's another meaning for the world culture, which is simply a laboratory broth in which you imach you rear or or or your nurture micro organisms. And what would you call a laboratory culture in which many you know, the mike organisms were sick. You would call it a toxic culture. I'm suggesting that our culture, if you look at the rates of disease takes of American adults, are some kind

of at least on one medication or another. This isn't the richest and almost medically advanced society and is to the world what's going on. What's going on is that the culture that we live in and in a whole lot of ways, some of which we've talked about, others

of which I'm writing about, actually undermines people's health. And so that when we look at individual disease, individual addiction, whether we're looking at mental health issues chilter desonal issues like a d h D or so called opposition and defined disorder or depression, anxiety, whether we're looking at cancer, autoimmune disease, we're actually looking at the impact of the

culture on the individual. Because you cannot separate the individuals from the environment, and you cannot separate the mind from the body. And so when people are living in a stressed culture, they have stressed minds, and stressed minds result in stressed bodies. In the book that you're working on and in the research that you do, do you have recommendations for those of us who live within that culture today of how we can be more immune to it or how we can avoid some of the more toxic

parts of the culture. The first point, of course, is to recognize the culture that we're living in, to see it, not to absorb it uncritically, but to see in what way is it actually undermines human needs? As much as it has provided and is creative and as economically dynamic and scientifically advanced this culture has been, at the same time, in some ways it significantly ignores and even insults some deep human needs, and so we have to understand that

and not buy into it. Now, the various books that have written, whether it's an A d h D or stress and physical health like cancer or immune disease and so on, there's recommendations. Are my prediction book that you've been mentioning, there's recommendations in each of them, um, and the new book will be more focused on, yes, what we can actually do because we can't, you know, obviously, just because I publish a book, where anybody publishes a book,

that's not going to change the culture. So We're gonna have to live with this for a long time, surely in my lifetime. But the more awhere we are, the more we set up conscious practices that in our lives that do not feed the bad wolf and move back to your analogen in a positive sense. The more mindful of you where we are, the more we recognize that our value and our ritish human beings is not depending on what other people think of us. It's not depending

on how good we look. It doesn't depend on how much we own or what we can do. The more we can actually respect and on our own value, the more immune we are to the blandishments of our culture that for the most part, would have us believe that our value depends on externals. And of course, what is addiction but a desperate way to fill in from the outside that emptiness that you mentioned that we experience from within. So, um, what I'm saying all so has, of course social and

cultural implications, positical implications. I will talk about that in my new book, but probably that's a discussion I would defer for some other time. Sure, you talk about how important conscious awareness is, and that's sort of what you were just saying. They're being aware of what the culture is, being aware of our decisions. You say that when not governed by conscious awareness, our mind tends to run on

automatic pilot. It is scarcely more free than a computer that pref that performs pre programmed tasks in response to a button being pushed. Exactly, So that question of freedom as to the levels of consciousness, people who are not conscious simply have no freedom. They may believe they do, but they don't make decisions. The decisions are made for them by automatic emotional reactions that are the result of

early experiences. So there's a I think Austrian Swiss or German Swiss writer and psychologists called Alice Miller, who was one of the first ones who wrote about the impact of child trauma an adult dysfunction, and her most famous book is called The Drama of the Gifted Child, but the original title of the German title that book was actually much better. It was called The Prisoners of Childhood.

And what she was implying is that until we are aware and create some gap between our emotional reactions and our behavior, were actually held prisoner by what happened to us in childhood. And I find myself at age seventy two, still very often reacting like I was a two year old child unless I create that gap of consciousness in which I have a moment to reflect upon and make a conscious decision. And in our society which makes this

unconsciousness so many ways, that's constant work. That's for most of us, I would say that significant work. And that's why I think so many people are increasingly drawn to practices that support mindful awareness because they don't want to

be free that are only automatons. And and and even for me, you know, as a you know, a middle class, successful person, I cannot claim freedom as long as my reactions and behaviors and preferences are governed by unconscious factors that come out of a childhood sense of insufficiency that goes back to my first year of life. So freedom does demand consciousness. And Eckart tole it was a great spiritual teacher. He probably knew of his work, and he lives here in Vancouver as well. You know, he says

as much. He says, you can't talk about freedom without consciousness. He says, no, there's no freedom without consciousness. So again that feeding the good wolf takes a lot of consciousness yep. And I think for me that's what the parable mostly speaks to. I mean, I I there's all sorts of reasons why it's a it's a story and not a not a truth. But I think for me the story is about is about having that awareness what am I doing? You know, like, moment to moment, day to day? What

am I doing? What am I thinking? What am I acting? What am I Because I love your description of um being on autopilot. That's such a great description of of the way I get. I just sort of I just go. I do what's in front of me and not necessarily thinking about what's important to me or who I want to be or all those things that consciousness implies, Yes, what am I doing? And also who am I being? Like? Who? Right? I'm going to give a talk in Vancouver in a

couple of weeks called who do I Think? Who do you think you are? Or who do I think I am? Who do we think we are? So let me a cook example. Are at home from a speaking true from Baltimore to Vancouver four months ago. I gave a great talk, well received. I think I'm just I think I'm just great. I've in Vancouver. I get a text from my wife who had says she picked me up, that she hasn't left home yet. I immediately feel hurt, rejected, and I go into her rage. Why what's the problem. I was

seventy one years old at the time. I can't take a taxi home? What's the big deal here? Right? Or can't I understand that my wife maybe got caught up in her paint She's an artists, so she got caught up in her painting. You know which artists do that, They get caught up in their painting or there or this decreative work and the time to schools? You know what am I so upset about? Who do I think

I am at that moment? Well, the upset part of me and you might call that the bad wolf because it's full of rage at that moment, But who it actually is? He thinks he's a one year old child who's who's being abandoned by mommy. So this constant question of who do I think I am? It needs to come up at every moment, almost right Where am I

coming from at this particular moment? And just because I answered the question appropriately one time, it doesn't mean that five minutes later, the same question does not arise again in a different way. So that awareness and ultimately, I think whatever people have to do to overcome their addiction, I would say, first of all, get in touch with your pain. Don't run away from your pain. Your al addiction is an attempt to run away from pain, and it just creates more pain. So don't be afraid of it.

And if you're one of these people that you think you had a really happy childhood, let me tell you. If you're addicted, that tells me you didn't, which doesn't mean that happy things didn't happen. It just means that you've repressed. You've you haven't dealt with you haven't allowed yourself to experience the child's feelings that you distance yourself from as a way of surviving it. Uh So, so be aware of your pain and and and help get some help with it. And we have compassion for yourself.

Don't judge yourself. Don't metaphorically. It's fine to talk about the bad wolf, but don't reject the bad wolf part of you. Have compassion for it. Understand that it came along really to meet needs that otherwise we're not being met. And then create that gap of awareness, that mindfulness that you and I have been talking about, in which you can make free choices to feed that good wolf. So last question. We're nearly out of time, and this is

the last and hardest question. But I'm just I don't think there's an answer, but I'm interested in your thoughts

on it. And as someone who is recovering, I've been around recovery for a long time now, most of my adult life, and I see a lot of people who get sober, and I see a lot of people who never do, and I see people that die, and and I can't help but have that why And I know there's not a simple answer for that, But do you have any thoughts on on Is it simply level of trauma some people are so damaged that the recovery processes is too much? Do you have I guess what do

you think? Well, yeah, you're right, it's a very difficult question. Um, I don't think anybody is so trauma does that they beyond redemption. Um. We've seen examples of people who have endured traumas that we can't even comprehend, and yet they they find redemption in one way or another. So there's

nobody beyond redemption. At the same time, the greater degree of trauma and the greater the defenses that you've erected against the trauma, the more you've had to escape from that hell round, the more difficult will be for you to to recovery. That. That's totally true, I believe. Ultimately

the question is compassion. And I everybody I know and I I'm gonna make a guess here that at some point or another in your recovery process, you either encountered people that treated you with compassion despite all the steff bothing you might have had, or somehow you find you find a way to develop compassion for yourself, or maybe both. I think it's definitely both. I mean, I think that's the at the heart of twelve step recovery. For me,

that's that's the heart of it right there. Is that is that the community that one alcoholic talking to another, that that ability to see like, oh I'm not I'm not the only person that's like this exactly. And I think that is the strength of the twist step groups I'm among the specific strengths of They're the twist steps and selves, which I think are just steps for a

healthy life, addiction or not addiction. But but quite apart from that, it's that being received and heard and not judged that compassion and I think some people just don't meet that. And unfortunately it's even two that depending on where you go to the TOSS step group, you may or may not find that compassion. You you may come across a lot of judgment and and and rejection. Not that's not the intention, but that's what you're going to receive.

So to go back to the original question, I think the people that have been redeemed and and have recovered, I think they're the ones who find some compassion along the way which ultimately led them to some self compassion. That doesn't fully answer your question, because as you said,

there is no full answer to your question. But but as as a way to move forward, compassion is it if imagine if the prison system, if the legal system, Never mind the prison system, the legal system, the educational system with all these troubled kids, the medical system, the addiction treatment industry, what if they had this huge infusion of compassion, how many more people could be redeemed? The

numbers are infinite. Well, I think that is a beautiful place to end I agree with you, and you know, my hope is that you know part of what certainly not everybody listening to this identifies in it is an addict. But we all know people who are, and and to your point, a lot of us have that in ourselves. And I think that idea of um compassion you say that the best attitude is one of compassionate curiosity towards ourselves.

Why did I do that? Why did I? Um? You know, instead of instead of judgment, well, you know, and and the why did they do that? You can ask you in two ways. You can say why did I do that? Which is not a question at all. It's a state, right, you know, but you can actually say, huh, why did I do that? Right? And then that's the way to ask it. Incidentally, as to your reference about many people, not all of your listeners may have stuff identified addicts.

I just wonder if they tried on that definition of addiction that we proposed the earlier, how many really are who've never had those kind of patterns in their life. I'll grant you that song, but I don't they'll be too many, No, particularly not people who listen to this show, any any show. An Yeah, I mean, yeah. The fact that they you know, that we relate to these concepts and people come back is a is a sign that, you know, we're recognizing some degree of of wishing we

were more conscious and in control of our lives. Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed um talking with you. I loved your book. I'm looking forward to the new one and maybe we'll get a chance to talk more than I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Thank you, Bye bye. M H. You can learn more about Gabor Morte and this podcast at one you Feed on Night slash Garboard