Dr Gabor Maté on Addiction, Trauma & Why You Were Never Broken

consider myself in recovery. I like to think of myself as recovered. We don't have any cravings. I feel better than I've ever felt. Do you think it's possible to be recovered rather than in recovery? If I said no to your question, would I change you review of yourself? No, it would make me reflect because I deeply value your yeah, but automatically. No. Okay, so what's the difference? What I say? So you were living example at the question you asked, it's entirely possible. What does it mean when you recover something? To get it back. You get it back. Well, exactly. Yeah. Where did you get it back when you recovered? Your life, your sense of self, your authenticity. You've got back yourself. You know, and yeah. Okay, which means that yourself, your true life, your true self was never damaged because it was never lost. Yeah. I mean, you lost sight of it, but it never disappeared. You know, people say, I'm in recovery. It's used. Look, I don't know the criticize the language because it helps a lot of people to talk that way, but do I believe in it? Do I agree with them? No, I don't. I'm with you. So let me come back at this backwards of all that. You had many addictions. You were drinking, you had the cocaine, you had the heroin. I don't know what you didn't have. Tell us what the heroin did for you. It completely normed the agitation, the quiet and the mind. Everything went soft. It's how it explained it. And you talk about a warmth. A warm. Yeah. And warmth and safety. Yeah. Like a blanket. Exactly. Yeah. So the addiction wasn't your problem. Your problem was the lack of safety, the lack of inner warmth, the lack of a sense of belonging, the lack of peace. So my first point of addiction is that it's not a primary problem, it's not a disease. It's actually a solution to a problem. So the whole question is what are the problems come from? Your parents are in drinking and your terror, you would sit there at the window where your brothers were sleeping waiting for your parents to drive home hoping that they'll make it home alive from their drinking. So terrible fear. And let me ask you this, who don't you talk to about those feelings? Nobody. Exactly. Yeah. That gives us the message that kid you're all alone, you're on your own. And that creates coldness, anxiety, fear. And then the opiate comes along and says, Oh, no, Brian, no, you're safe. No, you're warm. And parent and infant are looking at each other's eyes and are really connected. They both have endorphins. Natural opiate's floating in their brains. Okay. So when the opiate comes along later, the method one or the heroin that you did is giving you what you should have had in the first place. That the shale and that I needed. Yeah. The feeling needed. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's your biggest trauma. Okay. It's how low and you were. Okay. So the pain in the fear or not the trauma itself, it's the being alone with it that creates the trauma. Yeah. I've never looked at it that way before. That's like shit to land on. I'm quite happy, huh? Yeah. Yeah. It's difficult there. You were just one representation of multi-generational family dynamic of trauma. He had addiction. So to have isolated you out and say, you wrote this problem. Actually, the whole family system's got the problem. Yeah. So anybody who wants to help somebody else, they need to recognize that they're part of the issue. Yeah. As much as the identified patient. The question I get asked from so many people with the work I do is how can I help my loved one who struggled with addiction? Yeah. I wish I could bottle up what I have and give it to people. Yeah. But I can't and I don't know what it was like that shift in perspective like in a wake and in perspective shift. I don't know what to call it. How would you see that shift in perspective that happened to me that the switch where all of a sudden? I did get the sense reading your book that you had a way to make a shift. It's like almost certain and it was it came shortly after you lost the moment. I mean, literally you had a seizure where you beat your tongue, lost a lot of blood and you know, I think it's almost for all. But then somewhat after that and even when you're going through physical withdrawal, so that you haven't harvested yourself or the physical symptoms, but there was a mental spiritual shift. And you found peace inside and acceptance. I know that you really appreciate the writing of Eckhart Toley and as you described in your book, he has a very similar experience. He doesn't go through drugs and withdrawal, but he's in deep dispondence and then comes to this dark night of the soul which ends up with an awakening and a presence and a sense of peace. Some people get that. I've never had that kind of experience. And a lot of people that I know haven't had it either, not as dramatically, not as uniquely as you seem to have had what they do is they come to a peace by peace. What they do is they come to it gradually over time. You can't give it to anybody else. You can manifest it. People may be sensitive when you're in your presence, but you can't give it to them. Eckhart Toley can't give it to them either. They come to it on their own or they don't. You say something. I heard in a recent podcast that I believe, but it's you have to meet people where they are at that time and the hope change, and I suppose that's the answer. It's very passive. There's no, and you can do it. I think that's the struggle for many loved ones in addiction that they have to wait. The question is passive. What we're talking about is compassion. And compassion requires, first of all, that you care about the other person, but not just that you care. It has to be more than that. It also has to be curious about their experience. Like, you had to really interested in them. What's actually happening for you? How did you get here? You have something more as well, which is also not passive, which is, this is probably true for you. It's certainly true for me. Have you ever met any addicted person who was addicted to anything whatsoever, whether it's sex grounding, shopping, self-coding, eating, or drugs in whom you didn't recognize yourself? Yeah, which is what I call the compassion of recognition. So that means you're bringing some self-awareness to that engagement with the other person. Those are three levels of compassion. They're not passive. They really require you to be there very actively. I have to give you two other levels, but the point is that the compassion that you bring to the other is not a passive quantity, quality, I should say. And there's a teacher that I know that I work a lot for said that, only when compassion is present, will people allow themselves to see the truth? So that compassion that you are not able to bring to others allows them to see themselves. Because you talked in the book somewhere about the teacher of yours, Michelle. Yeah. I think it was through him and I may have got it wrong, that you learned not to reject yourself, to accept yourself. Accept yourself, yeah. Yeah. So what is there but her that allowed you to gain self-acceptance? It was her acceptance of you. Well, meeting exactly where you were. She didn't judge you. Yeah. She rail me. And not only she didn't judge you, she also saw qualities in you that didn't see in yourself. Yeah. So she saw you more clearly than. I didn't. Then even you saw yourself. Yeah. Which is what I call the compassion of possibility. When you look at that other person and you don't mistake them for their demeanor or their dysfunctions, when their behaviors or their problems, you see the actual real person there. She saw you before you saw yourself. So then you could see yourself. So that's the fourth level of compassion there. These are very active qualities. Yeah. It's more important when you put it that way. You're not waiting for the person you're actively working towards them. Oh yeah. For somebody at home, let's say a mother who comes to me and asks my sibling and my friend is really struggling. Yeah. Some of my answers to be compassionate. But if they were to help her, and it's very hard to generalise this, but it's a way of generalising an active compassion like that. Is it what would be the four steps? There are two dynamics that come to mind. The first one is you have to accept them whether they're at. Yeah. Look, your family is an example. So if they can actually bring that awareness, then it's not you're sick and we're healthy and we're going to fix you. But hey, we've got a problem here, which your addiction manifests, but we're all part of the problem. Yeah. And so we're all committed to healing. It's not just all about you. So that's the first thing. The second thing is not to judge them, but to understand like to go back to your heroin addiction. You give this warmth, the sense of belonging, this inner peace, really this feeling of love. There's a reason why you needed that from the heroin. Yeah. 'cause you didn't get it when you both needed it, when you were small and vulnerable. Why would I judge you for turning to the heroin for something that you so badly needed? I mean, I'd like it that you're in heroin, but I'm not gonna judge you for it. You know what I'm gonna say, "Oh, this guy's, this is what he needs to be doing right now to get something that we all need." So non-judgment is a second point. The third point is a little bit more subtle. I'm gonna ask you to put your hand out here for a minute. Push your hand. And what do you do since they push your hand? Spacke your push. Don't push these people. Okay. All you're gonna get is resistance. Push back. So for every forcing nature, there's an equal opposite counter force. And so this is an automatic resistance to being coerced. Yeah. Whether you try and cajole or convince or threaten or beg or manipulate somebody into the right behavior, what you're gonna get is a resistance. Yeah. Even though you want to go in the right direction, and even though you're coming from a sense of concern and love, if they sense the coercion, that's what you're gonna get. So drop it. When I talk to families of addicts or loved ones, I say look here at three options. Two of them are sane, one is insane. Unfortunately, insane, one that people most usually engage in what is sane is to stay to the person. You got this habit. I'm sure there's reasons in your life where you feel at this point that this is how the way we need to go. I don't like it 'cause I see that it's causing your arm, but it's your life and I'm here for you. Yeah. Okay. That's one, that's sane. Yeah. It's also sane to say, you got this habit, I'm not gonna judge you for it. You're doing it for your own reasons, but it's too painful for me. I can't handle it. I can't be around it. So as long as you're in it, I'm gonna have to separate myself. That's also perfectly sane. It's loving. What's insane is, you got this habit, I'm gonna be in your life, trying to control you, change you, influence you, force you, coercion, that's called co-dependency. Yeah. And I just create resistance and resentment and doesn't get you anywhere. So those are the three options to them are sane. And the common one is people trying desperately to change that person with understanding the context. It is.