Gabor MatéRezensionen

It's taken me over 8 months to finish this book, as I decided about a third of the way through I hated it but stubbornness kept me committed to finishing it.

I bought this book originally as it's a joint effort between Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté and I'd enjoyed a previous book of Maté's, although with a dollop of scepticism. The bit of the blurb that caught my eye was reattaching to your kids, and at the time that I bought this my (then) 13 year old was proving harder to communicate with and I was keen to recapture our bond.

The first few chapters had me nodding my head in some agreement, particularly in relation to immaturity and a tendency for some adolescents to need to fit in with their peers. So far our set of circumstances at home. But then Neufeld and Maté completely lost me. The book became full of sweeping statements and generalisations which I felt are totally unfair on the majority of our young people. It seemed totally lost on these two 'experts' that lots of kids want to fit in during their teens and that friends are an important part of your rite of passage through adolescence. In their eyes, spending time with peers means peer attachment issues and a slippery slope to bullying, aggression and goodness knows what else. There was no middle ground of teenagers figuring out who they are and coming out the other side OK - it was either devils or angels.

I do get and agree with the main point of the book, which is that it's important for children and young people to develop and keep a firm attachment with a parent/s or guardians / trusted adult, but for scientists to have written this book there seemed to be so much that was subjective and based on opinions rather than firm data.

And it went on and on and on about the same basic point, page after page in small print. Talk about repetitive and filler content.

So I'm delighted to at last to be done with this book that is a horrible read on several levels.

1.5 stars - I'm done now with both of them.½

Blame your mother.

This should be required reading for everyone who encounters people struggling with addictions, and all addicts struggle. Mate tells stories about patients he has known as the physician to many drug addicts and alcoholics, but he also tells of his own and others behavioral addictions. He is sensitive to the people he describes as people and honest about the times his awareness of themas troubled and traumatized people slips into judgement. I have ordered my own copy because this book is inspiring and filled with excellent ideas about harm reduction and addiction.

Full of information and insight, some of which I knew and believed in broadly, but with much less specific knowledge. This is a book that will convnce your parents of the importance of harm reduction and broad drug decriminalization, but may be less useful if you already have a strong understanding of those concepts.
Dr. Maté does occasionally overreach in his analysis--particularly, I noted, in his understanding of overeating as an "addiction"; the passages in which he posits this are some of the most consistently under- or unsourced sections of the book. I also think this book could have used a tighter edit, as it is sometimes repetitious.

This book gives the best diagnosis of the state of our society through the prism of mental health. It is by no means an easy read (took me months to get through it, chapter by chapter) and doesn't provide an easy way out, so it's not a prophetic answer to all our troubles. But if you want to have a better understanding of why things are so bad and why a holistic, systemic change is the only way out - this is a book for you.
What I love about Gabor Maté is his ability to show true compassion. I don't think I have ever read an author who is as compassionate to people who are dealing with trauma (and we all are, whether we are aware of it or not). The trauma he describes is not only "the bad things that happen to us", but all of that withheld from us that should be a part of our human experience, even if we are seemingly happy. Maté is very open in identifying the toxic dynamic of current late-capitalist societal trends as being the core issue in the mental health crisis.

While these ideas are not new if these topics are something you are interested in and Maté has written about them before, this is by far the most comprehensive work on this subject with an incredible bibliography. It is scientific, but also philosophical and provocative. I don't agree with everything Maté claims in this book, but it is good to be challenged and reflect.
This is a seminal work that people should read and talk about.

This book is mostly about trauma, but the brilliant author discusses and comments on various other subjects. I will be reading his other books if I can get hold of them.

Sadly, I had to return the book to the library as soon as I had read it, so did not have time to write a detailed review.

His main point seems to be that, although we generally regard a trauma as resulting from a dramatic event, in actual fact we can get trauma from all sorts of seemingly minor events both in childhood and later.

In the author’s own case, he tells us that in 1945 when he was 14 months old, his mother felt obliged to send him away to his aunt’s in order for him to live in relatively safe circumstances.

Dr Maté explains how losing his mother at such an early age resulted in such a trauma that it affected him for the rest of his life in such a way that he reacted unwarrantedly strongly to minor events which triggered his trauma.

I would highly recommend the book to every thinking person.

A somewhat disappointing book from the author of the quite revelatory and impressive In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.

In this book, Dr. Maté, with help from his son, set out to chart the ways in which trauma and “inauthentic” lifestyles trap us in illness and depression, and keep us a state of spiritual paralysis, unable to make positive personal and societal improvements.

They set out to prove a) That we live in “toxic” culture, and b) We generally fail to take the basic steps needed to make ourselves deeply happy and fulfilled.

Dr. Maté, I’ll give him credit, is a physician. And I get why he is obsessed with healing us.

And I kind of agree with him, things could be better on many levels.

But this book is so interlaced with personal anecdotes that I feel it rises neither to the level of the expertise nor clear-eyed biography to be taken entirely seriously. It’s a self-help book, and not a very original one.

In Close Encounters the personal anecdotes explicate the author’s personal revelations about addiction, his own included. In this book there is a lot of name-dropping and cute but ultimately unsatisfying literary allusions.

A good part of the book seems to about medical pathology, and shortcomings in the practice of medicine. But what the title of the book “The Myth of Normal” is actually about, well, I’m not really sure. Is it that medicine tells us we’re normal when we’re really not? Or the other way around?

In his earlier volumes Dr. Maté made a good argument that what looks like maladaptive behaviours such as addiction make perfect sense when viewed through the prism of childhood trauma. This book attempts to generalize that insight across many aspects of society and life.

But it’s a very difficult argument to make, in my opinion, if you don’t have a lot of hard data to back it up. And you need either a lot of first hand data or a very persuasive meta-study arguing the point. This book flits from anecdote to anecdote.

It is entirely possible that this book was really not meant for me, for a general reader. Its climax is a kind of cumbaya moment when Dr. Maté recounts a shamanic experience to let go of his own ghosts.

He generalizes upon therapeutic methods to solve societal problems and lost me on the path to Nirvana. And on one too many metaphors for society’s ills.

4 stars: Very good

Mate' was born in 1944 in Hungary, and his experience with extreme trauma and attachment issues informed his experience. Specifically, this book is a critique of how society breeds disease and how can we move towards healing. "Western" medicine ignores cultural stresses, is steeped in racism, sexism and ageism. Other systems look more at the whole individual and their place in the larger "village" as well as "mind body connection" for a path to healing. His theories are not without controversty but this was a compelling read.

Description from amazon:

"In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?

Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. "

This book gives too much credence to the "it's in your head" school of medicine but, as someone with a chronic illness which is "poorly understood", I am of the firm opinion that if medical science sucked less, there would be a lot fewer people reading this book.

enlightening, I understand so much more about addictions now. It shifted my perception completely.

Gabor Maté's rich book synthesizes newest scientific data on the connection between trauma and chronic illnesses and relates it to the pressures of the environment created by capitalism. The problem that the latter poses to medicine (and sciences involved in biomedical research, my own field) is enormous and only getting worse, as the main objective of healing the sick is routinely undermined by the infinite greed of "for profit" mindset.

The vast majority of humanity is getting poorer by the day, no matter how many jobs they hold, as wages keep dropping, benefits keep getting cut, the environment keeps deteriorating. That this chronic state of stress is spreading even to the "well off" since the triumph of neoliberalism, is no news either. Note that "stress" here doesn't mean simply some vague "state of mind", akin to the "vapours" of Victorian damsels, but measurable physical state expressed in various kinds and degrees of discomfort, pain, illness. Hunger, fear, humiliation, rage, exposure to the elements, cold, heat, to say nothing of physical violence and chronic insecurity, all induce stress acutely and, over long term, chronically.

A society is doing only so well as its most disadvantaged citizens. Ask yourself what happens to those in yours. Why is poverty and food bank use on the rise in the wealthiest countries on Earth, the US, the UK, Canada? Why are we seeing a flood of homelessness and public displays of mental illness? At such blessed times when billionaires like Jeff Bezos, who restricts his workers' pee time and took Covid tax breaks, is rocketing off into space? Where's YOUR jetpack, mate?

When Maté says we're living in toxic and insane societies, he is merely being descriptive. All the conditions of our lives bent to the ideology of capitalist consumption are toxic and unhealthy. The social contract is broken, and we've destroyed the natural world before ever acknowledging its rights.

And we're witnessing wholesale destruction of humanity for the sake of the 1%. Capitalism turned our food, our work, our cities, our schools, into pure shit, but apparently we'll sooner go extinct, gullets filled with pills, than we'll manage to demand a society dignifying every human being.

Addendum: at the time of writing there is a disparaging review of the book by someone who doesn't seem to understand cancer biology. Nowhere does Maté say, suggest or imply that it's "all" the enviroment's doing. Most common cancers depend on several steps or discrete events in order to develop, and in this are greatly influenced by environmental factors. Genetic disposition for cancer may entail a more or less definite outcome. As for animals such as dogs, they are in fact subject to stress and used as models in a number of cases (as are rabbits, rats, mice etc.)

I finished this a while ago but since then have gone back to it on multiple occasions to reread sections, to make notes of things that particularly resonated with me, and to continue processing what it taught me. I have found an awful lot in this book that is of immense value to me.

Dr. Gabor Maté is an interesting, albeit controversial, character, who has found popular fame in later years as a self-declared trauma specialist (prior to he was a GP before working in the area of addiction for many years). I've listened to one of his podcasts, and was interested in reading this book as I deal with stress pretty poorly and firmly believe it's at the root cause of the IBS I suffer with.

This is a hugely interesting book, which I would caveat with the point that I have no way of fact checking the science he claims supports his theories. In each chapter he covers a wide myriad of diseases and conditions, including MND (or ALS, if you're North American), digestive diseases such as Chrohn's and ulcerative colitis (plus IBS), cancer (in particular bowel and melanoma), MS and arthritis. Whilst Maté believes there are particular nuances with each, a common theme is that he believes people's emotions (or rather their handling of them) have a part to play in how likely you are to get certain diseases and your prognosis once you have them.

It certainly doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility to me that stress (or lack of effective stress management or outlet) could play a key role in the development of disease. Maté goes a step or two further, suggesting that certain personality types are more likely to develop specific diseases. For example, MND / ALS patients he suggests have been widely reported by specialists in this area to commonly have a very nice / amenable persona, always putting on a bright face and not wanting to be any bother. For melanoma patients (which was of personal interest to me), Maté talks of how it was in relationship to melanoma that led to the development of the notion of a "Type C" personality, a combination of character traits more likely to be found in those who develop cancer than in people who remain free of it.

Type C personalities have been described as "extremely cooperative, patient, passive, lacking assertiveness and accepting... the Type C individual, in our view, suppresses or represses 'negative' emotions, particularly anger, while struggling to maintain a strong and happy facade".

All very interesting, and I can certainly personally tick a number of those boxes off quite easily, but is that the power of suggestion? If other adjectives had been used would I have automatically been drawn to identify with those?

It's up to the individual reader to determine how much they do or don't agree with what Maté has to say in this book. Whilst I can't vouch for how well it scientifically stands up, I do believe that stress is behind many diseases, so whilst I still question some of Maté's statements, I'm interested in what he has to say.

At the end he covers 7 A's of healing: acceptance, awareness, anger, autonomy, attachment, assertion, affirmation. I didn't find any silver bullets to becoming better at handling stress from this chapter, but there's certainly enough of interest in the rest of the book to lead me to do my own further research in how to get better at this.

There will be many who strongly oppose the sweeping generic statements relating to the diseases and conditions covered, but in all I found this to be a really interesting book. Maté may not be 100% correct in his assertions, but I do believe there is more than a grain of substance to his arguments.

4 stars - a popular science book well worth a read.

Awful.

A good look into the addicted mind - a fair blend of science, psychology, and reviews of therapies such as harm prevention to improve quality of life and better long term outcomes for those who suffer.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Mate-Quand-le-corps-dit-non/997411

> QUAND LE CORPS DIT NON, de Dr Gabor Maté - Éd. de l’Homme. — Comment peut-on encore nier que notre corps, nos émotions, nos croyances et nos comportements (visibles et invisibles) s’influencent les uns les autres, et que le résultat de leurs interactions puisse être un grand bonheur... ou l’irruption d’une maladie comme le cancer ou la sclérose en plaque ? La psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunonologie le démontre par A + B. Depuis 1965, les fondements de cette “pluridiscipline” futuriste n’ont fait que se renforcer. Mais l’establishment médical, voué à une spécialisation telle, que la vision de l’être entier lui devient inaccessible, continue de nier le rôle déterminant des émotions refoulées et du stress chronique dans le déclenchement des maladies. Présenté par un pur scientifique, ce dossier pourrait être aride. Raconté par le docteur Gabor Maté, il devient aussi passionnant et émouvant qu’un grand roman d’investigation dans les profondeurs de l’âme. Médecin de famille pendant vingt ans, travaillant aujourd’hui dans un grand centre de soins palliatifs à Vancouver, Gabor Maté sait nous fait partager son propre cheminement : personnel - depuis le ghetto de Budapest où il est né en 1943 - et professionnel - dans cette Amérique, qui est à la fois le temple de la fermeture et le siège de la révolution holistique en cours. Avec sept clés : l’acceptation, la prise de conscience, la colère, l’autonomie, l’attachement, l’affirmation générale et l’affirmation de soi. Une prodigieuse traversée. (Patrice van EERSEL)
—Nouvelles Clés

Hoe heerlijk is het om eindelijk eens een gerenommeerd arts en traumadeskundige mijn zienswijze volledig te zien delen, ook als het gaat om de bipolaire stoornis. Iemand die als arts zelf depressief is geweest en als gelover in het ontbrekende-hersenstofjes model opknapte van Prozac en een enthousiast voorschrijver werd van antidepressiva. Totdat gaandeweg de schellen van zijn ogen vielen en hij breder en vooral dieper leerde kijken, wat leidde tot een radicale ommekeer in zijn visie en werkwijze. Ik heb het hier over Gabor Mate, de Canadese arts en (inmiddels) psycholoog van Joods-Hongaarse afkomst. In dit monumentale boek betoogd hij hoe onze samenleving steeds verder afdrijft van fundamenteel menselijke waarden en behoeften waardoor steeds meer mensen in de knel komen en ziek worden.
In hoofdstuk 17 en 18 gaat Mate in op geestelijke gezondheidsproblemen en beschrijft hij aan de hand van diverse casussen hoe mensen jarenlang in een medisch ziektemodel gevangen kunnen blijven zonder enige voortuitgang te boeken. Waarna ze door contact met een andersdenkende ontwaakten uit hun passieve patientenrol en een pad naar herstel insloegen, vaak resulterend in compleet herstel. Ook Mate zelf heeft deze transformatie doorgemaakt:
Voor mij was het heel transformerend om te beseffen dat mijn eigen geestelijke gezondheidsproblemen een bepaalde betekenis hadden die voortkwam uit mijn leven binnen mijn gezin van herkomst dat in een bepaalde historische context plaatsvond. Ik heb ontdekt dat dit voor alle zogenaamde geestesziekten geldt, ongeacht waar ik kijk, naar wiens geestelijke ziekte ik kijk of hoe extreem de aandoening is.
Kortom: een must read voor iedereen die in dit veld werkzaam is of zijn of haar visie op gezondheid wil verbreden en verdiepen. Wat mij betreft het beste boek in dit genre na Traumasporen!

Rating: 2.5

Gabor Maté is a physician-author who has long been interested in the psychological and social factors that impact patients’ health. He’s written books on ADHD, addiction, and psychosomatic medicine, and co-authored one on child development. In all his books, he’s demonstrated particular interest in attachment theory—ideas concerning children’s relationships with primary caregivers—and the long-lasting effects of distressing early-life experiences. “Health and illness are not random states in a particular body or body part,” he writes in his new book.” They are, in fact, an expression of an entire life lived, one that cannot, in turn, be understood in isolation.” They arise from “a web of circumstances, relationships, events, and experiences.”

Maté opines that we live in a toxic culture. What we have come to accept as “normal” is actually abnormal and fails to meet natural, inborn needs. In terms of physical health alone, stats from the US, “the epicentre of the globalized economy,” speak volumes about how wrong things are: 60% of American adults have a chronic disorder, such as diabetes or hypertension; over 40% have two or more such conditions; and nearly 70% are on at least one prescription medication. Diagnoses of mental illness, especially anxiety and depression, are also skyrocketing in the Western world.

Other health professionals might reasonably attribute at least some of these conditions to the daily consumption of ultra-processed foods, which set people up for metabolic syndrome—insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and obesity—as well as autoimmune disease. Harvard psychiatrist Christopher Palmer has recently put forward the theory that psychiatric illness may arise from dysfunction of mitochondria, the “powerhouses” of cells that turn glucose into ATP, the compound that fuels physiological processes. Palmer has noted that metabolic disorders and cardiovascular disease rates are extremely high in those who suffer from severe mental illness. Psychiatric conditions, therefore, may essentially be metabolic disorders. Maté, however, is almost exclusively focused on how our society’s failure to meet human needs creates stress (or “trauma”), which in turn causes physical and mental dysfunction. Chronically stressed people’s bodies are flooded with the hormones adrenaline and cortisol. Tissues become inflamed, blood vessels narrow, blood clots form, bones can thin, and the immune system, which normally destroys aberrant cells (including cancer), is suppressed.

In the first of the five parts of his book, Maté expands the concept of trauma. The word is generally used to characterize profound distress related to the experience of war, natural disasters, or extreme abuse. He believes there’s another dimension: what he calls “small-t” trauma, the painful daily events that adversely affect individuals and predispose them to both physical and mental illness. He states many times that it’s not what happens to you, but what happens inside you that is the issue. It doesn’t take a war; a person can become disturbed in seemingly “normal” environments. People with psychic wounds carry residual burdens: suppressed, repressed, or unexamined emotions; shame; poor coping techniques; and automatic neurotic reactions. There appears to be no shortage of papers linking suppressed anger/“niceness,” PTSD, grief, or a history of child sexual abuse to a variety of ailments, including cancer, ALS, or cardiovascular disease.

Maté believes that only a few outliers in our society are not traumatized. I don’t buy this, probably because I do not think of “trauma” and being “traumatized” (or use those words) as liberally as Maté does. I believe there’s value in differentiating between intense, disabling distress arising from extreme conditions or life-threatening events and the suffering that is the result of less skillful or poorly “attuned” parenting, for example. This is not to say that emotionally painful events—in the family, for example—cannot cast a long shadow. Maté points to studies that show that stress can impact humans even before birth. The quality of a potential father’s sperm can apparently be affected by the life pressures the man is under, and the development of a fetus’s stress apparatus can be compromised by the tensions or depression experienced by the mother. Ideally, negative stress should be minimized, but in reality expectant mothers cannot avoid exposure.

Parts II and III of The Myth of Normal focus in turn on the distortion of human development and the need to look at afflictions as adaptations. Maté writes about the ways that children’s needs in particular go unmet. The problem starts with the medicalization of pregnancy and birth and parents’ deferring to experts rather than trusting their own instincts about what their kids need. (In my opinion, he presented no compelling evidence to support either of these ideas.) He does single out Dr. Benjamin Spock’s 1946 Baby and Child Care which continues to have some influence on childrearing practices. In that bestseller, Spock counselled parents not to respond to an infant’s cries once the child had been put to bed. The baby needed to learn that nighttime was for sleeping; “tyrannical” tendencies had to be curbed. Maté counters that a caregiver’s failure to respond to children’s distress induces panic. The preverbal child gets the message that the world is unsafe, that no one will help him when he’s scared. Anxiety and other psychological problems begin to take root. According to Maté, two human needs—attachment and authenticity—compete during childhood. Attachment, he says, will always win out over authenticity. The child learns early that nothing must threaten the bond with his parent; survival depends on it. If certain of the child’s tendencies—the expression of anger, for example—are considered unacceptable or unlikeable by the parent, the child will suppress or repress them so as not to compromise the relationship. It is this stifling of aspects of one’s essential nature that leads to problems, including physical illness, down the road. I think this is a valuable insight, but I’m doubtful that a child’s having a time-out to calm down after an angry or aggressive outburst (for hitting a sibling, for example, or not getting something he wants) is going to damage him for life. Learning to self-regulate and self-soothe are important early lessons.

Maté summarily dismisses genetics and contends that many mental afflictions are understandable adaptations to needs that went unmet early in life. He laments that so few clinicians ask patients, even those who present with autoimmune disorders, what they’ve gone through in the time leading up to symptom presentation. For him, the clues lie in the patient’s story. Maté goes so far as to suggest that even the delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia of a psychotic patient make sense in light of the person’s early-life story. He presents cases in which extreme psychiatric symptoms resolved when patients were invited to tell what happened to them or to articulate what they believed to be the problem. If only it were that simple. It may work for some, but severely mentally ill people often experience anosognosia: they don’t recognize they are ill and are incapable of being insightful about their condition. Maté does allow that such a patient’s understanding may be facilitated by the use of psychotropic drugs.

In Part IV, the author tackles the sense of dislocation and lack of meaning many feel in Western capitalist society, where sociopathic corporations reign supreme. I found his brief discussion of our polarized political scene and the psychology underpinning people’s attraction to certain types of leaders interesting to read.

In the fifth and final part, Maté presents ways that healing might occur, as well as a few, hardly typical, stories of people who have been transformed by (and, in one case, spontaneously freed of) severe illness. He outlines principles and exercises for psychological healing, including a practice he calls “compassionate inquiry,” which struck me as a useful tool. Maté himself has undergone treatment with psychedelics and has facilitated retreats in which ayahuasca, a bitter traditional South American psychoactive drink, is used. Seeking answers to individual life problems and insights into personal conflicts, retreat participants drink the brew during ceremonies guided by indigenous shamans. I was surprised to read about this New-Age-style direction in Maté’s work—though I’m aware that psilocybin is being investigated as a treatment for depression and end-of-life distress. Many aspects of Maté’s work, including his interest in early trauma, reminded me of psychiatrist Stanislav Grof’s preoccupations. Years ago, Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, pioneered experiments with psychedelics, believing that these substances could provide people with transcendent or mystical experiences. Like psychologist Arthur Janov, who developed Primal Scream Therapy, Grof was also keenly interested in birth trauma. He thought hallucinogens might allow patients to retrieve otherwise inaccessible early memories. It seems that those ideas never went away.

The Myth of Normal is an ambitious and very long book. With endnotes included, the print version runs to an excessive 576 pages. Maté has synthesized a large body of information and refers to the research and big ideas of many social and neuroscientists, but at times it appeared to me that he wanted to document everything he’d read and every interview he’d conducted pertaining to his subject. A judicious selection of supporting evidence would’ve cut the book in half and increased its readability. I particularly question the need for separate “Woke” chapters on race and socioeconomic status, women and the patriarchy, and the medicalization of childbirth. These three chapters could easily have been collapsed into a single short one. Was the race and gender material (complete with pronouns and critical-race-theory/identity-politics jargon) actually necessary, or was it included primarily to put the author’s commitment to “social justice” on display? Only those who’ve lived under a rock for the past few years would be unacquainted with the key points in the chapter. Another feature of the book that I found strange in its excess was the author’s frequent obeisance to his wife, Rae, for her wisdom and forbearance in the face of his neuroses and self-absorption. At one point, he observes, “I talk a much better gender-equality game than I sometimes play.” Maybe the Rae-themed hymns of praise are further evidence of that tendency.

Having said all this, I did appreciate Maté’s discussion of the (new-to-me) work of many scientists and researchers. Also valuable were recaps of his interviews with people familiar with the food industry and big-tech’s strategies to hook people on their products—sugary or electronic. These corporations employ neuroscientists who can advise on how best to exploit the brain’s dopamine (reward/motivation/pleasure) pathways. Maté’s consideration of addiction is also informed and illuminating. This perhaps shouldn’t surprise, as he spent many years working with the homeless, marginalized, and addicted people of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. It’s unclear, however, why he chose to present quite so many snippets of his interviews with celebrities—including Darrell Hammond of Saturday Night Live fame, Lena Dunham, and Alanis Morrisette. After a while, I became irritated by these reports on the famous, which felt like so much name-dropping, but it’s possible that they were intended to highlight that the “successful” can be as troubled or addicted as the down-and-out.

In the end, I have a very mixed response to this book. I found some sections absolutely tedious. I did not see the themes as at all “groundbreaking,” but it’s possible that those who’ve never read Maté before might think otherwise. To me the book was mostly preaching to the choir. No doubt Maté’s audience of thoughtful readers already know the world is a pretty messed-up place and that stress obviously has a lot to do with both physical and mental illness. However, I think many illnesses are multifactorial, and to suggest that almost all are due to adverse events of early childhood and the stresses of living in Western capitalist society is gross oversimplification. (Our mammalian animal friends, cats and dogs, get cancer too. Can we attribute this to early small-t trauma of kittenhood and puppyhood? Could pet cancers be due to our human failure to meet our companions’ needs? They have bodies and emotions that function like ours, after all. We’re not as different as we might think. Chemical exposure, poor quality food, overfeeding, and genetic factors seem more likely culprits.) While I can’t say I disagree that the ills of our society are multitudinous, by the halfway point in the book I felt overloaded, even oppressed, by dysfunction laid before me. Even an occasional nod to human resilience would have been received with gratitude. At one point Maté comments on his “wondrously stubborn Eeyore setting;” I’d argue that the tone of The Myth of Normal generally reflects the author’s self-identified temperamental default. I regularly considered bailing, but did manage to complete this book relatively free of trauma. Overall, I’m relieved that the experience is over.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, for providing me with a digital copy of the book for review.½

Revolutionized my views on drug addiction. I believe that all politicians or anyone thinking of influencing society should read this book.

This is an account of a doctor who treats narcotics-addicted down-and-out people, narrates the lives and circumstances that led them to addiction... and (among other things in a very, very thorough book on addiction) develops his theory that addiction is directly correlated to how the developing brain adjusts or malforms in the context of childhood abuse or neglect.

If it's abuse, typically that results in substance addiction; if it's neglect, typically that results in behavior addiction.

He theorizes that all addiction is one; it just takes multiple forms.

And he suggests a number of mindfulness-based techniques to overcome the pull of addiction.

For me, important insights about mental illness and treatment.

By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

Challenging and inspiring

This book is likely to be a tough read, both for parents and for ADHD adults who rely on the neurological explanation to understand their disorder. Maté is aware of and supportive of the role of neurological factors in ADHD and the use of drugs in treatment, but in this book he uses current research, his clinical practice and episodes in his own life to indicate how much else is going on.

The book is tough for parents because it traces so much of the disorder to the relationship between the mothering figure and the infant in the first two years of life. Maté also indicates strategies for repair - both for children and for adults - is those first two years weren’t as attuned as May have been ideal for the child.

I have a little frustration that the repair strategies for adults are fairly commonplace - I was hoping for something more unexpected, but that’s probably just magical thinking on my part. If I simply did all the things to help myself that I know I ought to do, he may we’ll be right that life would be very different.

Strongly recommended to those dealing with ADHD in themselves and especially parents with ADHD kids. If you’re considering having kids, read this book!

Eye-opening and insightful!

Goodreads star rating system is as the following:
1 Star equals Did not like it
2 Stars equals It was okay
3 Stars equals Liked it
4 Stars equals Really liked it
5 Stars equals It was amazing

A friend and I were talking about Safe Injection Sites. We discussed the normal stuff that always comes up, like whether these sites were truly safe? Should taxpayer money fund these sites? What real advantages/disadvantages are there? Yada, yada, yada… Anyhoo, I realized I really didn’t have enough informed facts to have a well-versed opinion. I can say that after reading Mate’s, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, I now have a solid, unwavering opinion. For me this book is a 3.5- 3.75 but Goodreads doesn’t allow for such options. This book is an incredibly insightful read where every chapter offers something to learn. The information is on addiction, neurological development, brain chemistry, emotional impact, struggles and so much more. Gabor Mate’s book is highly technical but written for a layperson like me to understand. With this information, I have formed a whole new outlook towards addiction, be it drugs, sex, food, nicotine, basically all addictions.

The reason for not giving 4 or 5 stars, I found a couple areas dry and had to revisit the paragraphs that I zoned out on. Also, a few things I feel were a bit repetitive or lengthy and could have been shortened.

Overall, this was a great, informative book that answers the questions I was looking for.

"Perhaps there’s a fascination in that element of outrageous, unapologetic pseudo authenticity. In our secret fantasies, who among us wouldn’t like to be as carelessly brazen about our flaws?"
~Gabor Mate, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

This is the second book by Gabor Maté I've read. The first was about stress and the immune system. He has a way of using himself as a very human example of his subject so that the people he tries to help are human too, before they are seen as "cases"
This is not a self-help book for anyone in the depths of addiction but a plea to all of us to realise we're probably all on a spectrum of addiction. A plea for compassion in our lives and in government policy.
Recommended.