In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction
Winner of the 2009 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.
About the Book
From street-dwelling drug addicts to high-functioning workaholics, the continuum of addiction cuts a wide and painful swath through our culture. Blending first-person accounts, riveting case studies, cutting-edge research and passionate argument, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (available for order in Canadian and U.S. editions, as well as an acclaimed audiobook version) takes a panoramic yet highly intimate look at this widespread and perplexing human ailment. Countering prevailing notions of addiction as either a genetic disease or an individual moral failure, Dr. Gabor Maté presents an eloquent case that addiction – all addiction – is in fact a case of human development gone askew.
Dr. Maté, who for twelve years practiced medicine in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside – North America’s most concentrated area of drug use, begins by telling the stories of his patients, who, in their destitution and uniformly tragic histories, represent one extreme of the addictive spectrum. With his trademark compassion and unflinching narrative eye, he brings to life their ill-fated and mostly misunderstood struggle for relief or escape, through substance use, from the pain that has tormented them since childhood. He also shows how the behavioural addictions of society’s more fortunate members – including himself – differ only in degree of severity from the drug habits of his Downtown Eastside patients, and how in reality there is only one addiction process, its core objective being the self-soothing of deep-seated fears and discomforts.
Turning to the neurobiological roots of addiction, Dr. Maté presents an astonishing array of scientific evidence showing conclusively that:
1) addictive tendencies arise in the parts of our brains governing some of our most basic and life-sustaining needs and functions: incentive and motivation, physical and emotional pain relief, the regulation of stress, and the capacity to feel and receive love;
2) these brain circuits develop, or don’t develop, largely under the influence of the nurturing environment in early life, and that therefore addiction represents a failure of these crucial systems to mature in the way nature intended; and
3) the human brain continues to develop new circuitry throughout the lifespan, including well into adulthood, giving new hope for people mired in addictive patterns.
Dr. Maté then examines the current mainstream social and legal frameworks for dealing with the addiction epidemic, and shows why they are doomed to failure. He proposes an evidence-based, compassionate approach to treating and healing addiction in ourselves, in our families, and in our society.
Read from IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS
The following chapters are available to read online:
Introduction - Hungry Ghosts: The Realm of Addiction
Chapter One - The Only Home He’s Ever Had
Listen to an excerpt from IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS
From the award-winning audiobook, narrated by Daniel Maté, published by Post Hypnotic Press:
Praise for IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS
“Gabor Maté is a voice of reason and compassion in a sea of white noise. In the realm of the hungry ghost, where so many others see only the comeuppance of lives of sloth and foolishness, he sees the human spirit battered by the crush of indifference.”
Ed Burns
Former Baltimore City Homicide detective and co-creator,
HBO’s The Corner and The Wire
“Gabor Maté is a common-sense doctor and a truth-teller. By looking at causes and their effects, he helps you find your way home.”
Jamie Lee Curtis,
‘Author, Actress, Activist, Alcoholic’
“Maté’s resonant, unflinching analysis of addiction today shatters the assumptions underlying our War on Drugs.”
Norm Stamper
Retired Former Police Chief of Seattle
Member, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
“Gabor Maté’s connections – between the intensely personal and the global, the spiritual and the medical, the psychological and the political – are bold, wise and deeply moral. He is a healer to be cherished and this exciting book arrives at just the right time.”
Naomi Klein
Author, The Shock Doctrine
“With superb descriptive talents, Gabor Maté takes us into the lives of the emotionally destitute and drug addicted human beings who are his patients. In this highly readable and penetrating book, he gives us the disturbing truths about the nature of addiction and its roots in people’s early years-truths that are usually concealed by time and protected by shame, secrecy and social taboo.”
Vincent Felitti M.D.
Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California
Co-Principal Investigator, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study
“I recommend this wonderful book for anyone struggling with the heartache of addiction personally or professionally. Dr. Maté makes the thought-provoking and powerful arguments that human connections heal; and that the poverty of relationships in the modern world contributes to our vulnerability to unhealthy addictions of all manner. His uniquely humane perspective-all too absent from much of the “modern” approach to addictions-should be a part of the training of all therapists, social workers and physicians.”
Bruce Perry M.D., Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Child Trauma Academy, Houston, TX
Former Director, Mental Health Services for Children, Alberta
Co-Author, The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog
“Dr. Gabor Maté distills the suffering of injection drug users into moving case histories and reveals how clearly he himself, as music collector and workaholic physician, fits his own definition of addiction. Informed by the new research on brain chemistry, he proposes sensible drug laws to replace the War on Drugs. Inspired by the evolving spirituality that underlies his life and work, he outlines practical ways of overcoming addiction. This is not a fix-it book to hurry through, but a deep analysis to reflect upon.”
Dr. Bruce Alexander
Professor Emeritus (Psychology), Simon Fraser University
Author, The Globalization of Addiction
“With unparalleled sympathy for the human condition, Gabor Maté depicts the suffocation of the spirit by addictive urges, and holds up a dark mirror to our society. This is a powerful narrative of the realm of human nature where confused and conflicted emotions underlie our pretensions to rational thought.”
Dr. Jaak Panksepp
Distinguished Research Professor of Psychobiology, Bowling Green University
Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Medical College of Ohio
Author, Affective Neuroscience
“Whether you are an addiction medicine professional, a family member of a loved one struggling with addiction, a student or a curious member of the public, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts is a clarifying and positive work that can bring optimism and hope for transformation and change. Dr. Maté’s experience, eloquence, insights and conclusions contribute to improving ourselves, our work and society.”
Ken Saffier, MD
CSAM News (California Society of Addiction Medicine)
“If you are a victim of crime, a police officer, politician, lawyer or judge; if you are the parent of an addict, child of an addict, a recovering addict yourself; if you believe that drug users are simply immoral or weak; if you are like millions of other angry citizens, read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. I cannot begin to tally how many revelatory, shocking and reassuring words, lines, paragraphs and whole pages I have highlighted in this astonishing book.”
Susan Musgrave
Writer and Poet
“He would dispute it, pointing instead to a deep clinical understanding of the nefarious workings of addiction, but Dr. Gabor Maté is something of a compassion machine, hugely wary of casting the first stone… In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (the title refers to a point on the Buddhist Wheel of Life) is enormously compelling and Maté, as noted, is admirably, sometimes inexplicably, empathetic to all who cross his path.”
Toronto Star
(read full review)
“…Yet for all the suffering in these addicts’ lives, Maté does not regard them as victims. By listening to them and capturing with a novelist’s precision their language and other ways of expressing themselves, he posits an unusual, bold twist on the classic doctor-patient relationship and its built-in imbalance of power… A powerful and compassionate work.”
NOW Magazine (Toronto, ON)
(read full review)
“A moving, debate-provoking and multi-layered look at how addiction arises, and the people afflicted with it.”
The Globe and Mail
“One of the book’s strengths is Maté’s detailed and compassionate characterization of the afflicted addicts he treats, but this is not just a memoir. Rather, using his own experience as well as the most advanced recent research, he attempts to delineate the closely interrelated psychological, social, and neurological dimensions of addiction…”
The Walrus (Toronto, ON)
(read full review)
“Maté does a great service by forcing us to confront the us-and-them mentality that drives the get-tough responses to addiction… I highly recommend Hungry Ghosts to everyone seeking insight into addiction.”
Dr. Gerald Thomas
Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia
Vancouver Sun
(read full review)
“[An] excellent scientific and personal read, and a solid starting point to developing an informed perspective on addiction.”
Canadian Family Physician
(read full review)
“If stigma still shapes the ways we understand and respond to addictions in contemporary society – and it does – then this book deserves our attention. Gabor Maté employs both passion and reason in shaping an ambitious, sprawling book that is engaging and provocative.”
Canadian Medical Association Journal
(read full review)
“If the book succeeds, it is not by offering tidy proposals to solve a sprawling problem, but by reaching a wide audience, provoking more open, active (and not always polite) dialogue about what we think addiction is, and what needs to be done about it.”
Cross Currents (the Journal of Addiction and Mental Health)
(read full review)
Reader Feedback
“I have been reading, nay, devouring your addiction book. Thank you for your insights and for your bold compassion. I have been able for the first time to identify as an addict without any shame, and to accept the mission of recovery.”
Hannah
“I have worked in the field of addictions treatment for 20+ years, and also suffered the recurrent torment of the illness in my own life. You offered some very fresh and humane ideas that have caused me to reflect a lot on my own basic assumptions, as well as my experiences. That’s the kind of gift we experience all too infrequently.”
Finn
“I am a Registered Nurse and work for Alberta Health Services. The portfolio that I work in is currently training all Corrections staff (officers and health care) in addictions and mental health…. [We] have incorporated some of your work into our training and I have to tell you that it has made the addiction section of the day so much more vibrant and conducive to learning… [We] have seen a change in attitude and learning during the sessions… I believe your work is a great catalyst for an overall change in attitude.”
Andrea (RN, BScN)
“I truly believe your book is an absolute blessing. I am now 1/3 of the way through and I cannot put it down. I was always in denial about how my personal traumas as a child reflecting the need for me to numb my post-traumatic stress with opiates. I always believed my addiction was simply a substance issue, and your book has been proving to me that the issues are much deeper than that. It has been a difficult process, however; I am truly grateful to have recognized the deeper truths to my addiction. This has helped me heal slowly but surely every day.”
Eric
“I am an Alaskan native woodcarver in Washington State… I thank you deeply for your work with the drug addicted… My attitude was radically changed from reading your book. I still have it, and have loaned it out once, but am always looking to have it go to another person, who can also have a life-changing enlightenment…”
Jerry
“I just finished your book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. I want to thank you for taking the time and effort for creating such a brilliant masterpiece. I have read a lot of self-help books in the last couple of years, trying to heal from an eating addiction, and your book was everything I am looking for all in one read. I rarely have the patience to finish a book of that sort, or I end up skimming a lot of it – but your book, I read word for word… I love the rawness of your material and the intensity it brings about in me…”
Denali
“Thanks for this book! As a drug and alcohol counselor, this is a book that makes sense, is compassionate and equally realistic. You have made it easier for me to do my work and to spread the word about about the people we serve in the realm of compassion and understanding. Thank you again!”
Deb
“I worked in the field of addiction for a number of years, (I am now in private practice as a psychotherapist in Dublin, Ireland), and I teach. A lot of my students work in the addiction field. I absolutely love your approach to addiction and have sent the links to your interviews, lectures, etc, to anyone and everyone that I know who’s working in this field.”
Norah
“I just wanted to tell you, reading about you and reading this book – it has touched me, on the inside, finally I wasn’t alone – you reached me down to my bones – I saw myself, my lifelong struggles, my difficult inner fights with myself, finally put into writing – clear – not alone. ..thank you….”
Karen
“Thank you for confirming in your book what my heart knew all along yet did not know the ways in which to convey truth… We need you in our native communities, keep working and keep writing…our lives and families depend upon such great contributions.”
Bonnie
“I have recently finished reading In the Realm… and I have to say it has changed me forever… Hungry Ghosts made me look at my addiction in a totally new light and now I understand on a deeper level WHY the cravings were so bad and I feel less guilt for the powerlessness over the whole thing. I am still accountable but at least now I know that my brain wasn’t working at 100% and it wasn’t just my personal weakness.”
Lisa
“I have just finished reading your book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and I just wanted to say thank you. I have been an alcoholic for over twenty years, the last seven years being the worst… I am saying thank you because you have explained the reasons (abandonment, sexual abuse) behind my addiction in layman’s terms and that has allowed me to accept the “why” and to start to re-wire my brain in a healthy way.”
Diane
“Your book has really helped me see that I actually have an addicted brain. Because my substance abuse flies under the radar (i.e. it’s sugar and food and not hard drugs) it’s been harder for me to get that I am dealing with addictive patterns… I am especially hearted by your distinction between the mind and the brain, and how the mind can actually be pressed into service to help mediate with a brain that has been wired to be primitive, reactive and at times, desperate… [Your] self-disclosure is brave and encouraging and adds a level of compassion and understanding that is rare.”
Sheila
“I have just finished reading this magnificent book. I have lived and/or worked in the crossroads of addiction, mental health and corrections for most of my life. I learned a great deal from your excellent and comprehensive book. I wish that I had read it years ago. Also I found better understanding of my family, myself and my sister in it.”
Bert
“I am writing to express my appreciation for In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. It was illuminating to read a truly holistic exploration of addition, one which posits addiction as a fluid, experiential phenomena rather than an inherent, static defect.”
Stephanie
“First let me thank you for ‘getting it’. I’ve been reading your book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts for the past 3 graveyard shifts and can’t put it down. I’ve shared excerpts with my clients and we’ve laughed and cried. I’m a recovering crystal meth addict of just over 5 years… Thanks again for your incredible intuitiveness and from all addicts everywhere for the great work you do, both as a physician and as a writer.”
Kerri
“The tears are rolling down my cheeks as I write to you. I just finished the book and I can’t tell you how much it aided me in fuller understanding of addictions. My husband is currently in [treatment] for crack addiction. The problem had gone on for a year without my knowledge. After reading the book, I am better able to help and support him on the road back to our life… Thank you for your amazing compassion. I look at humans in a whole different light.”
Janey
“An anecdote: I was lying with my niece reading your book while she was watching television and she wanted to know what the book was about, and initially I didn’t know what to say to her – she is 5 – and then it came to me. I told her it was a book about learning to love.”
Loren
“I just finished your book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and found it truly amazing. I love someone very much who is an alcoholic and reading your book has really helped me understand the bigger picture about addiction and has also pointed out some areas in my own life I need to work on before I can try to assist him in correcting his own.”
Fran
“I was a Buddhist monk for eight years back in the 1980s, and now teach meditation in the guise of stress management. I’ve struggled for years to convey a true sense (not just description) of compassion… Reading your book creates a sustained sense of empathy that cuts to the bone, and your ability to write about abject misery in such a riveting way is amazing.”
Stephen
“I have just finished reading In the Realm… and I feel compelled to tell you what a powerful and helpful experience it has been, not to mention amusing and touching… Thank you for the section on healing, it gives hope and encouragement with a strong dose of reality. As an avid reader of the human condition, and as one trying to learn to live life more happily, I am so appreciative.”
Helen
“I am a doctor from Australia undergoing training in Physical and Rehabilitation medicine, with an interest in chronic pain. Your book has inspired me to look very closely at myself and how I want to practice medicine… I will insist your book is read by as many of my colleagues as possible.”
Kim
“I am recently retired and have had by most measures a good life to this point. However, for as long as I can remember I have had trouble with addictive behaviors, particularly sexual addictions. I have seen therapists about this in the past but nothing has really made sense for me until I read your book. I am also going to start reading the book all over again because there is so much in it on so many levels that I think a 2nd or 3rd reading will be even more helpful to me…”
Allan
“I was so moved by this book, your openness, your compassion …the willingness you have to share your insights about yourself. I am a R.N. It isn’t often that one sees a doctor like you…I appreciated your comments about nurses and doctors and the things they need to look at to benefit the patient.”
Lisa
“…Thank you for shedding light on this important topic and for being honest about your own struggles. I thinking having our so-called ‘experts’ admit their own vulnerabilities is key to humanizing addiction and the only way we can take steps towards healing.”
Anne-Rachelle
“If I were reviewing your book, I would say make room on your bookshelf for this one by clearing your shelf of so many shortsighted tomes on addiction gathering dust. This is the best one yet.”
Maggie
“I have finished reading your latest book and it has helped me to understand my 37-year-old adopted son. He has suffered with ADHD all his life and is now addicted to smoking crack cocaine. He is a talented artist. He has been in rehab twice and incarcerated as well. You have helped me understand his craving for cocaine as well as his mental illness.”
Sharon
“Dear [Canadian] Prime Minister Harper,
I am writing for three reasons: to insist that you change your drug policies, that you keep InSite open and that you read Dr. Gabor Maté’s book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction… This intelligent, well researched and ultimately compassionate book is necessary reading for you and anyone else involved in developing policies to address addictions.”
Lenore
