“What is addiction, really? It is a sign,
a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be
understood.” Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence
In the Buddhist’s conception of the universe, the wheel of life revolves through 6 realms,
each representing a different approach to existing in the world. One of these, the realm
of the hungry ghosts, is inhabited by “creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated
limbs, and large, bloated, empty bellies.” (Gabor Mate, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts)
This is the realm where the addicts of the world reside. For no matter how much the addict
consumes, ingests, or possesses, they always want more – even as they experience a decline
in health and a ruining of their relationships and finances. “I lose myself when caught in one of my
addictive spirals. Gradually I feel an ebbing of moral strength and experience myself as
hollow. Emptiness stares out from behind my eyes.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
In this video, drawing from Gabor Mate’s book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, we will
investigate the nature and roots of addiction. “Addictions can never truly replace the
life needs they temporarily displace”, writes Mate. “The false needs they serve, no matter
how often they are gratified, cannot leave us fulfilled. The brain can never, as it were,
feel that it has had enough, that it can relax and get on with other essential business.
It’s as if after a full meal you were left starving and had to immediately turn your
efforts to procuring food again.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Mate defines an addiction as “any repeated behavior, substance-related or not, in which
a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the
lives of others.” (Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts) When thinking of addictions, it is typical
to focus on substance addictions. However, behavioral addictions are also common and
can be just as destructive to the individual’s life. Compulsive social media, pornography,
or video game use; gambling, sex, shopping, or even activities such as exercise or work,
can potentially turn into addictions, and so as Mate further clarifies: “Any passion can become an addiction; but
then how to distinguish between the two? The central question is: who’s in charge, the
individual or their behavior? It’s possible to rule a passion, but an obsessive passion
that a person is unable to rule is an addiction…If in doubt, ask yourself one simple question:
given the harm you’re doing to yourself and others, are you willing to stop? If not,
you’re addicted. And if you’re unable to renounce the behavior or to keep your pledge
when you do, you’re addicted.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
There has long been a debate as to what produces an addiction. Is it the person or the thing?
While some have explained addiction as a problem that resides in people, a more accurate explanation
is that addiction is the result of an interaction between subject and object. An addiction arises
when an individual regularly craves a change in their subjective, or felt, state of being,
and becomes dependent on an object or activity to produce the desired experiential change.
In her book Addiction by Design, Natasha Dull Schultz explains: “Just as certain individuals are more vulnerable
to addiction than others, it is also the case that some objects, by virtue of their pharmacological
or structural characteristics, are more likely than others to trigger or accelerate an addiction.
Their distinctive potency lies in the capacity to engender the sort of compelling subjective
shift on which some individuals come to depend.” Natasha Dull Schultz, Addiction by Design
But given that we are, and always will be, surrounded by objects and activities that
have an addictive potential, in this video we are going to explore the personal side
of the addictive equation and investigate what it is that makes some individuals more
susceptible to addictions than others. Gabor Mate spent his career working with hard
drug addicts in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, and as he argues, every addiction, severe
or mild, substance-related or behavioral, is an attempt to find relief from distress
and emotional pain. “Addictions always originate in pain, whether
felt openly or hidden in the unconscious…Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance
use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
The forms of pain that lead an individual into an addiction are numerous and varied.
Some become addicts as a way to self-medicate depression, insecurities or anxiety disorders;
others to cope with highly stressful jobs or relationships; still others to ward off
the pain of aimlessness or despair over the meaninglessness of their lives. Gabor Mate
asked a 57 year old who had been addicted to drugs since he was a teen, why he continued
to use: “I don’t know, I’m just trying to fill
a void,” he replied. “Emptiness in my life. Boredom. Lack of direction.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
In many cases, the emotional pain one seeks to escape from through an addiction has roots
in the past – specifically, in childhood. Studies have shown that the majority of hard
drug addicts grew up in abusive households. “All parental difficulties reflect themselves
without fail in the psyche of the child, sometimes with pathological results.” Carl Jung, The Development of Personality
Parental influence on the child’s development and susceptibility to addictions later in
life cannot be overstated. For just as the child in the uterus is embedded in, and completely
dependent on, the mother’s body, so too in the first years of life, when the brain
is most malleable, a child is emotionally and psychologically fused with the parents.
A dysfunctional childhood spent bearing the brunt of parental anger and abuse imprints
the deep pain of trauma on the child’s mind and disrupts brain development in ways that
increase the likelihood of addiction. Mate explains: “It’s just as many substance addicts say:
they self-medicate to soothe their emotional pain—but more than that, their brain development
was sabotaged by their traumatic experiences. The systems subverted by addiction—the dopamine
and opioid circuits, the limbic or emotional brain, the stress apparatus and the impulse-control
areas of the cortex—just cannot develop normally in such circumstances.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
But it is not just childhood trauma which makes one more susceptible to addiction. Children
who grew up with emotionally cold or distant caregivers are also much more likely to turn
to addictions in adulthood. The psychologist Allan Schore called this situation of parental
emotional absence “proximal separation”; the parent is proximate, he or she is physically
present and satiates all the child’s physical needs. Yet due to stress, depression, or other
internal demons, the parent does not nurture the child psychologically or emotionally,
and as Mate explains further: “A child can also feel emotional distress
when the parent is physically present but emotionally unavailable…in normal circumstances
a child who senses emotional separation will seek to reconnect with the parent…Should
the parent not respond, or not respond adequately…the child will be left to his own inadequate coping
mechanisms—for example, rocking or thumb-sucking as ways of self-soothing or tuning out to
escape distress. Children who have not received the attentive presence of the parent are…at
greater risk for seeking chemical satisfaction from external sources later in life.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
But in the modern day, even individuals who were blessed with a nourishing childhood are
not fully immune to addiction. For just like during the fall of Rome when the people, en
masse, turned to pleasure-seeking to alleviate the anguish brought on by witnessing a dying
culture, so too in our day many turn to addictions as a way of self-medicating the despair stimulated
by a bleak view of the future of society. Add on the fact that to conform in the modern
world is to adopt consumerism as a way of life and to compulsively use technology, social
media, and entertainment as a means of escaping feelings of powerlessness and emptiness, and
what you have is the perfect social storm that has created a crisis of addiction. “A sense of deficient emptiness pervades
our entire culture. The drug addict is more painfully conscious of this void than most
people…Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the
spiritual black hole, the void at the center, where we have lost touch with our souls, our
spirit—with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting.
Our consumerist, acquisition-, action-, and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the
hole, leaving us emptier than before.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Given the number of people who grow up in abusive or emotionally absent households,
coupled with the corrupt state of society, it should come as no surprise that many people
turn to drugs, alcohol, and behavioral addictions as a way to cope with life. This turning is
not totally irrational, nor ineffective. For addictions do work; at least temporarily;
they are highly effective at easing distress and emotional pain. Mate notes of a hard drug
addict who reported that: “The reason I do drugs is so I don’t feel the…feelings
I feel when I don’t do drugs.” Or as Vincent Felitti explained: “Dismissing addictions as “bad habits”
or “self-destructive behavior” comfortably hides their functionality in the life of the
addict.” Vincent Felitti
Addictions are not only effective in providing relief from distress and emotional pain, as
indulgence can also temporarily lift one out of the monotony or misery of everyday life
and into experiences laden with excitement, meaning, and bliss. Thomas de Quincey, a 19th
century English writer and self-professed opium addict explained that: “The subtle powers lodged in this mighty
drug, tranquilize all irritations of the nervous system … sustain through twenty-four
hours the else drooping animal energies.…all-conquering opium… Thou only givest these gifts to man;
and thou hast the keys of Paradise.” Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English
Opium-Eate The early 20th century psychologist William
James elaborates on the powers of alcohol to not only take the “edge off”, but also
to induce a state which simulates a spiritual experience – at least until the alcohol
poisoning catches up with the mind and body, or as he writes: “The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably
due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature… Sobriety diminishes,
discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great
exciter of the Yes function in man…it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of
life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should
be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality
is so degrading a poisoning.” William James, The Varieties of Religious
Experience While addictions can work in the short-term,
in becoming dependent on shortcuts to emotional relief and bliss a price is paid over time.
The longer we persist in an addiction, the more our tolerance grows and the more we become
dependent on the substance or activity in order to feel any positive emotions at all.
Slowly, but surely, the addiction becomes the focal point of our life, and everything
else which could provide lasting fulfillment – our health, relationships, creativity,
a career, a life purpose – fades into the periphery. What is more, addiction changes the structure
of the brain in ways that undermine our capacity for voluntary control. When caught in the
grip of an addiction we often find ourselves in what is called “brain lock” – our
actions follow our addictive cravings all the while one part of our mind watches attentively,
yet helplessly, knowing full well we are destroying our mind, body, and potential. “The heart of addiction is dependency, excessive
dependency, unhealthy dependency—unhealthy in the sense of unwhole, dependency that disintegrates
and destroys.” Sam Portaro
Given the death-grip of addiction, the vital question arises: what is the possibility of
overcoming an addiction? The problem facing any attempt at a renewed, addiction free-life,
is that the very apparatus that needs to heal, the brain, is the thing which, in an addiction,
is damaged. And as Mate cautions: “The worse the addiction is, the greater
the brain abnormality and the greater the biological obstacles to opting for health.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Luckily, our brains are remarkably resilient. Even well into old age it is possible for
the brain to rewire itself in ways that allow one to live, perhaps for the first time, a
fulfilling, healthy, and addiction-free life. And in subsequent videos, we are going to
dive further into the nature of addiction and explore some insights into how we can
facilitate renewal and remove ourselves, once and for all, from the realm of the hungry
ghosts. “Not every story has a happy ending…but
the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul
all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal
exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and in ourselves
is the ultimate question.” Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
