Gabor Maté is a celebrated Canadian-Hungarian MD, with decades of expertise in treating addiction and childhood trauma.

His contrary approach to addiction has earned him success with patients and recognition in the field.

I want to share his ideas, because his arguments challenge us to be more present with our own behaviors, especially ones that seem addictive, and ask - what am I trying to escape from?

How Gabor Maté Defines Addiction

A more traditional definition of addiction might be to describe it is a brain disease, a genetic issue, and in the case of the criminal justice system, a choice which we might punish or condemn.

Maté takes a different view, uses three criteria to define addiction:

1. Having a craving for a behavior

2. Engaging in the behavior to experience pleasure or temporary relief from some kind of pain

3. The inability to give the behavior up

He intentionally makes no specific mention of substances. He argues, while substances are certainly one behavior which some adopt (usually those suffering from more acute pain), there are thousands of other "honorable" or socially acceptable addictions.

Some of these might be: over eating, binge watching TV, social media addiction, even exercise or work.

This definition encourages us to look back at ourselves and ask, what addictive behaviors I am engaging in, and what relief are they providing?

The Source of Addiction

Maté makes a strong (research based) case that addictive behavior is the result of us trying to alleviate pain from past trauma.

Much of this trauma comes from experiences we may have had as children.

He makes a point to highlight that most of this trauma happens accidentally. Parents try their best, but modern day child-raising is more isolated and stressful because we lack strong and rich communities.

For example, if a parent is grieving from the loss of a loved one, they might be emotionally unavailable to their child. A more "sensitive" child (one which might feel more emotional pain from less stimuli) could feel acutely alone, and suffer.

What we can take away

• The saying "it takes a village" is powerful. In modern days, we lack the rich support structure of community and family which might prevent children from suffering emotionally, because they have more adults to be there for them.

• We can inspect our own addictive behavior (honorable or not) and ask what relief this brings us, and what is really causing the discomfort in the first place.

If you are interested to learn more about Gabor's treatment methods, I encourage you to listen to his 1 hour podcast interview with Rich Roll (linked in the tweet), or check out his book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.