Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Chris here. Oh that's my dog Penny
Speaker 1: barking in the background. We'll just leave that in. Uh.
Speaker 1: I wanted to let you know that I got married
Speaker 1: this Sunday and Eric officiated my wedding. So because of
Speaker 1: that and all the craziness and time involved, we are
Speaker 1: doing one more re release of an interview with gob
Speaker 1: or Mate. So enjoy and we will be back on
Speaker 1: track next weekend with a new interview. And if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard this interview with Gabarmatte, you definitely want to
Speaker 1: listen to it because he's a really amazing guy. So
Speaker 1: thanks everybody, and we will talk to you soon. By
Speaker 1: You cannot separate the individual from the environment, and you
Speaker 1: cannot separate the mind from the body. And so when
Speaker 1: people are living in a stressed culture, they have stressed minds,
Speaker 1: and stressed minds result in stressed bodies. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is a renowned speaker and
Speaker 1: bestselling author, Dr Gabor Mate. He's highly sought after for
Speaker 1: his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress,
Speaker 1: and childhood development. For twelve years, Dr Matte worked in
Speaker 1: Vancouver's downtown east Side with patients challenged by hardcore drug addiction,
Speaker 1: mental littleness, and HIV, including Vancouver's supervised injection site. As
Speaker 1: an author, Dr Mate has written several best selling books,
Speaker 1: including the award winning in the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts,
Speaker 1: Close Encounters with Addiction, and the book When the Body
Speaker 1: Says No, The Cost of Hidden Stress. His works have
Speaker 1: been published internationally in twenty languages. To get a free
Speaker 1: download of Eric's favorite Gabor Mate quotes, go to one
Speaker 1: new feed dot net slash gabb or. Our sponsor on
Speaker 1: this episode is Fracture. Fracture is a great company that
Speaker 1: is out to rescue your favorite photos from your camera
Speaker 1: role by transforming how they are printed and displayed. They
Speaker 1: print your photos directly onto glass and add a solid
Speaker 1: mount pad on the back so you can hang it
Speaker 1: right on the wall out of the box, no frames needed.
Speaker 1: The best part is that you can get ten percent
Speaker 1: off right now by using the promo code Wolf when
Speaker 1: you enter your fractures at fractured dot me. And here's
Speaker 1: the interview with Gabor mate Hi Gabo or welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. I am really excited to get you on.
Speaker 1: You're known as a real expert in the field of addiction,
Speaker 1: as a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic myself. It's a
Speaker 1: topic that comes up a lot on the show and
Speaker 1: we talk about and we'll talk a lot about your
Speaker 1: book in the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts um as
Speaker 1: well as your forthcoming book that's yet to be released.
Speaker 1: But first let's start like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and he thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second, and he looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start it off by asking you what that
Speaker 1: parable means to you in your life and in the
Speaker 1: work that you do. The parable is a helpful teaching
Speaker 1: tool as a metaphor, but truth to tell, and despite
Speaker 1: the fact that this is the theme of your program,
Speaker 1: I don't find it a compelling understanding of what life
Speaker 1: is all about. Because it would all be rather easy
Speaker 1: if feeding the good wolf would be a matter of choice,
Speaker 1: and then we could all thrive and do well and
Speaker 1: have great relationships and great jobs, and great bodies and
Speaker 1: great and great souls for that matter. But is it
Speaker 1: a matter of choice. I've never found a simile addict
Speaker 1: who actually chose to be an addict. I don't know
Speaker 1: anybody that wakes up one morning and says, my ambition
Speaker 1: in life is to become a drug addict or sex addict,
Speaker 1: or shopping addict, or a food addict, or an internet
Speaker 1: addict or gambling at or any other kind of addict. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, the metaphor implies a freedom to make
Speaker 1: that choice, and of course freedom is a subtle thing,
Speaker 1: but it's not as clear as that metaphor in that
Speaker 1: story would have it. We can talk more about where
Speaker 1: I think addiction comes from, but let me just makes
Speaker 1: the first point that it's not so much a matter
Speaker 1: of choice. Secondly, the good and bad implies an acceptance
Speaker 1: and oh celebration of the one and the rejection of
Speaker 1: the other condemnation of the other. So there's a judgment
Speaker 1: involved different parts of ourselves, some of which are good,
Speaker 1: others are bad. On the contrary, I find that it's
Speaker 1: those parts that we consider bad that we have to
Speaker 1: be most compassionate with. That's the part of us that
Speaker 1: we have to understand. That's the part of us that
Speaker 1: we have to recognize. What role that so called the
Speaker 1: wolf actually played in our life, why he or she
Speaker 1: came along, and why we became so attached to it.
Speaker 1: That takes understanding, and some compare what I call compassionate
Speaker 1: curiosity and some willingness to accept. So the split between
Speaker 1: the good and the bad, the good wolf and the
Speaker 1: bad wolf psychologically, to me is hurtful. And secondly, as
Speaker 1: I said in the beginning, it's not so much a
Speaker 1: matter of choice as a matter of actually seeing where
Speaker 1: both those parts of ourselves arise from. So I could
Speaker 1: say more, and yes, by all meanes we show it
Speaker 1: as best we can feed the wholesome, healthy parts of ourselves,
Speaker 1: but we have to have a lot of understanding and
Speaker 1: compassion for that other part as well. Without that, we
Speaker 1: will never liberate ourselves. Well, that is a great way
Speaker 1: to lead into it. And one of the things I
Speaker 1: did want to talk about, we'll get to it a
Speaker 1: little bit, is that idea of freedom or choice and
Speaker 1: how much free him in choice do we really have
Speaker 1: in certain situations. To start off, I would like to
Speaker 1: just read a paragraph from very early in the book
Speaker 1: um to give people a sense of of what the
Speaker 1: title of the book means. And I think it's a
Speaker 1: really beautiful description of a really awful state. You say,
Speaker 1: the inhabitants of the Hungry Ghost Realm are depicted as
Speaker 1: creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs, and large,
Speaker 1: bloated empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction where
Speaker 1: we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb and insatiable
Speaker 1: yearning for relief or fulfillment. The aching emptiness is perpetual
Speaker 1: because the substances objects are pursuits we hope will soothe it,
Speaker 1: are not what we really need. And I think that
Speaker 1: is a great description of a really awful state, and
Speaker 1: uh paints a real picture of addiction. But the first
Speaker 1: question I'd like to ask you is what is addiction.
Speaker 1: That's a widely disputed topic and there's lots of different
Speaker 1: ideas on it, but I'd like to see if we
Speaker 1: can come up with a working definition for the rest
Speaker 1: of this conversation. That's great, and that will also allow
Speaker 1: me to go back to your code about anger ghosts
Speaker 1: and and make a comment about it. So addiction for
Speaker 1: me is it's a complex physiological, psychological, neurobiological, social, cultural phenomena.
Speaker 1: But the essence of it shows up in behaviors which
Speaker 1: may have to do with substances, but it could also
Speaker 1: be non substance related like sex or gambling, food and
Speaker 1: so on. As I've said before, So any behavior that
Speaker 1: a person craves finds temporary pleasure or relief in and
Speaker 1: then suffers long term negative consequences as the result of
Speaker 1: but is incapable of giving up despite those negative consequences.
Speaker 1: So the features of addiction are craving relief, temporary pleasure, negative,
Speaker 1: a long term consequence, inability to give it. That's what
Speaker 1: eviction is. Any addiction, and I don't care again whether
Speaker 1: it's the substances to what it's to. That's what the
Speaker 1: essence of addiction is. Then, now, if you ask yourself
Speaker 1: this question, and you know you've talked about your own
Speaker 1: substance addiction, let me ask you a question if I may,
Speaker 1: If I asked you know what was wrong with your
Speaker 1: heroin addiction? And what else did you mention? Was it
Speaker 1: cocaine you said? Or alcohol? Alcohol, alcohol and heroin? Okay?
Speaker 1: If you ask if I asked you not, what what
Speaker 1: was wrong with those behaviors? Which we all we know
Speaker 1: we don't have to spell it out, everybody knows. But
Speaker 1: what was right about it? What did it do for you?
Speaker 1: What did it give you in a short term? What
Speaker 1: was the value of it in your life? Can you
Speaker 1: tell me that sure. I mean I think the value
Speaker 1: in it for me was it changed the way I
Speaker 1: felt in any given moment, and I was not really
Speaker 1: capable of feeling anything. I think originally the drugs and
Speaker 1: alcohol brought me to life in a way. And you
Speaker 1: you talk about that in your book about the emotional
Speaker 1: deadening that a lot of us do. So I think
Speaker 1: it brought me to life initially, and then I think
Speaker 1: after enough time it was also then used to kill
Speaker 1: the pain that was, you know, continuing to rise. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it did two really important things for you. It
Speaker 1: gives you a sense of vitality, aliveness, vivacity, and secondly
Speaker 1: it's soothe your pain. Now those are are they not
Speaker 1: perfectly normal human aspirations? Absolutely? Who does not want to
Speaker 1: feel a life? Who does not want to have a
Speaker 1: pain relief? And so therefore the real question is what
Speaker 1: realm were you escaping from? Now? The in order to
Speaker 1: get into the under ghost from which is the addiction realm?
Speaker 1: Now this is a Buddhist concept, These these separate realms,
Speaker 1: you know, one of them is the under ghost, from
Speaker 1: another is the hell realm where we experience fear and
Speaker 1: dread and pain and terror and isolation. In other words,
Speaker 1: Donga ghost round served their role for you. So the
Speaker 1: purpose for you you're entering the don ghost round into,
Speaker 1: in the words, into the addiction, was you attend to
Speaker 1: escape the pain of being in the hell realm of
Speaker 1: pain and isolation and fear and deadness. In other words,
Speaker 1: the addiction served the purpose. And so that to call
Speaker 1: it a bad wolf, it's to miss the fact that
Speaker 1: already there was suffering before that so called bad wolf
Speaker 1: came along. And I'm saying that the first question in
Speaker 1: addiction is never why the addiction, will why the pain?
Speaker 1: Because all addictions, ultimately, and again I don't care what
Speaker 1: they're too. They could be the power to profit, to relationships,
Speaker 1: to physical looks, to anything in the world. All addictions
Speaker 1: are matter of escaping pain. And so the demantra that
Speaker 1: I propose is not why the addiction, but why the pain.
Speaker 1: In order to look at why the pain, you have
Speaker 1: to look at people's lives and what actually happened to them.
Speaker 1: And then we can see once we do that that
Speaker 1: it really wasn't a matter of choice at all. You
Speaker 1: say that hurt is at the center of all addiction.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about what that hurt is
Speaker 1: where it comes from. Um, the things that has in
Speaker 1: common with everybody, depending on where you are on an
Speaker 1: addiction scale, so to speak, from being extremely addicted to
Speaker 1: something very harmful to um moderately Uh, you know, obsessed
Speaker 1: with something less harmful. Where is this coming from? What's
Speaker 1: what's the root of it? Well, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: important what you just said, because what you just pointed
Speaker 1: up was that addiction exists on a spectrum, on a
Speaker 1: on a continuum. So it's not that there are the
Speaker 1: addicts over there and the rest of us over here.
Speaker 1: Is that most of us, if you look at my
Speaker 1: definition of addition, we'll find ourselves somewhere on that continued However,
Speaker 1: they fundamental source it's always in some life experience of pain,
Speaker 1: and always in childhood. And that pain can be caused,
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, by two types of experiences. One is direct trauma,
Speaker 1: such as sexual abuse. Parents would beat you, parents are
Speaker 1: abandoned you, parents have screamed at you, parents who were
Speaker 1: absent because they were jailed or because they were mentally ill,
Speaker 1: or because there was a lot of fighting amongst the
Speaker 1: parents and a child felt alone. And fighting is in
Speaker 1: a case of a bad divorce, or a parent dying.
Speaker 1: It's any number of these traumas, and and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of research on this, so I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not making this stuff up. This is just what the
Speaker 1: research shows. And it's astonishing to me that the addiction
Speaker 1: ruled in general, including the twelve step cruse, which I
Speaker 1: in many ways support and respect, and including most addiction
Speaker 1: to eating programs, have got no concept of trauma whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So that's one kind of way of being heard. Not
Speaker 1: in the way of being heard is more subtle. It's
Speaker 1: what's called developmental trauma. This is not a question of
Speaker 1: bad things happening, but if good things not happening. The
Speaker 1: child has certain needs, and the greatest need for the
Speaker 1: child is to be emotionally held and met and understood,
Speaker 1: and to be communicated with in such a way that
Speaker 1: the child's feelings are received and respected and held by
Speaker 1: the parents. Now, all kinds of really good parents who
Speaker 1: love their kids, who do their best, can't do that
Speaker 1: for their children because they're to stress themselves. They can't
Speaker 1: be emotionally pleasant for the child. It's not a question
Speaker 1: do they love the child, It's a question of are
Speaker 1: they from the moment to moment in that interaction with
Speaker 1: the infant and a small child, are they able to
Speaker 1: be present emotionally in such a way that the child
Speaker 1: is received and seen and heard and understood and accepted
Speaker 1: for who they are? And art stress society, a lot
Speaker 1: of parents are incapable as much as they want to
Speaker 1: provide most qualities of the child. And that's called developmental trauma.
Speaker 1: So that's got nothing to do with bad things happening.
Speaker 1: It's just the necessary good things not happening. Now, the
Speaker 1: more sensitive you are, and there could be genetic sensitivities here.
Speaker 1: Addiction is not caused by genes contragyd all the nonsense
Speaker 1: that a lot of people speak about that, But the
Speaker 1: sensitivity could be genetic. And the more sensitive you are,
Speaker 1: the more you will be hurt by the bad things
Speaker 1: that happen or by the good things that don't happen. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look at populations of severely addictive people, such
Speaker 1: as I work within Vancouver, britsh Columbia, in the Downtowny Side,
Speaker 1: which is North America's most notorious and contributed the area
Speaker 1: drug use. By the way, there was nobody there who
Speaker 1: wasn't hurt in that first since there's not a single
Speaker 1: female patient, as I keep saying, who had not been
Speaker 1: sexually abused. I didn't meet single one in twelve years.
Speaker 1: All the men have been similarly traumatized, some of them sexually,
Speaker 1: some in other ways. And that's also what a large
Speaker 1: scale study shows again is that the more trauma there is,
Speaker 1: the greater risk of addiction. Exponentially the greater risk of addiction.
Speaker 1: And then there's a lot of other people who whose
Speaker 1: addictions may not be quite so severe, or who cannot
Speaker 1: look back on a childhood realise terrible things happened. In
Speaker 1: every case, though, you'll find that those good things that
Speaker 1: should have happened didn't happen, and a very sensitive person
Speaker 1: was hurt by that. So that's that's at the heart
Speaker 1: of it. M M. And here's the rest of the
Speaker 1: interview with gab moor Motte. You mentioned how critical these
Speaker 1: developmental stages are, um even all the way back to
Speaker 1: being in the womb, and you make it more concrete
Speaker 1: than oh, you know, somebody's feelings were neglected. You talk
Speaker 1: about the actual parts of the brain that do not develop,
Speaker 1: where you end up with various systems in the brain
Speaker 1: that aren't functioning properly. And those tend to be a
Speaker 1: lot of the systems that are directly affected by addiction. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a new film note directed by um Kathy Gillian Hall,
Speaker 1: who's married to Stephen Glean Hall, who's the father of
Speaker 1: the two very famous actors, and it's called In Usual
Speaker 1: and it's all about the impact of stress in the
Speaker 1: womb on the developing fetus. So already stresses on the
Speaker 1: mother why she's pregnant, carrying the infant will in fact,
Speaker 1: in fact affect the child's brain development and then during
Speaker 1: the first few years the essential brain circuits that are
Speaker 1: implicated in the addiction such as stress regulation and the
Speaker 1: body is the internal opioid and doorphin regulation, and the
Speaker 1: emotional self regulation and attention and the sense of aliveness,
Speaker 1: reward motivation, the circuits that have to do with the
Speaker 1: chemicals dopamine, or the circuits or their chemicals and doorphins,
Speaker 1: or the chemical serotonin which is implicated in the mood regulation.
Speaker 1: All these key circuits developed actually an interaction with the environment.
Speaker 1: And as an article from Harvard published in two and
Speaker 1: twelve showed or or you know, summarized it up that
Speaker 1: the most important quality of the environment in shaping in
Speaker 1: these brain circuits is the mutual responsiveness of adult child interactions.
Speaker 1: So whenever parents are stressed and unable to be emotionally
Speaker 1: present for their children, these circuits are impaired within their development,
Speaker 1: let alone a child was actually traumatized. So it's not
Speaker 1: a question of just emotional heart it's also a question
Speaker 1: of that key brain circuits that later on become and
Speaker 1: enrolled in the service of addiction just don't develop properly,
Speaker 1: and then when the addictive behavior substance comes along, it
Speaker 1: feels like a huge relief. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I would wager that for somebody like yourself, probably when
Speaker 1: you did alcohol or herald you probably felt normal for
Speaker 1: the first time in your life. Oh yeah, I always
Speaker 1: say that, you know, two drinks was the best antidepressant
Speaker 1: I ever found. Unfortunately it never stayed at two drinks,
Speaker 1: but it was definitely worked. In other words, what what
Speaker 1: what the substances were doing for you? Was giving you
Speaker 1: what your own brain chemistry should have given you had
Speaker 1: the circumstances being the appropriate ones for your brain developed,
Speaker 1: But clearly they weren't. And I don't know what happened
Speaker 1: to you, and I don't I don't know what you
Speaker 1: want to talk about it, but I I can just
Speaker 1: from the fact that you were I think the alcohol
Speaker 1: and a and I can tell you what kind of
Speaker 1: show I do you had now I I've got a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea of that. The other thing that I
Speaker 1: think happens as addiction goes on is we start out
Speaker 1: with these chemical issues in our brain, let's call them that.
Speaker 1: And so then we start taking drugs or alcohol that
Speaker 1: makes us feel better. But those very drugs and alcohol
Speaker 1: begin to further eroad both the um ability of our
Speaker 1: brain to make the chemicals that make us feel good,
Speaker 1: as well as the parts of the brain that are
Speaker 1: able to exercise impulse control. So we're taking a bad situation,
Speaker 1: and the actual physical changes that happened as we uh
Speaker 1: move into addiction and alcoholism make the situation worse in
Speaker 1: regards to our brain's ability to even stop what it's doing.
Speaker 1: That's exactly how it works. And you know who said
Speaker 1: it best was Jesus when he said the rich get
Speaker 1: richer in the program. You know that that that that
Speaker 1: those that have more shall be given to them, and
Speaker 1: those that have little, even a little to have, will
Speaker 1: be taken away And that's what addiction does. So that um,
Speaker 1: just as you stated it. If you do brain scans
Speaker 1: a lot of adults, and you know, medicine plays a
Speaker 1: lot of attention these days to these brain scan studies,
Speaker 1: and we look at the abnormal brains and we think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's biological, therefore it's going to be genetic. No, it's
Speaker 1: not true. The biology is actually shaped by the environment.
Speaker 1: So yes, it's biological. That doesn't make it genetic. Then
Speaker 1: when you add the burden of addictive substances, but you know,
Speaker 1: not just addictive substances, even addictive behaviors. Like if you are,
Speaker 1: let's say, um, shopping addict, and the reason you're shopping
Speaker 1: addict is your your brain lax in the dopamine, which
Speaker 1: is the incentive motivation chemical. But when you go shopping,
Speaker 1: your dopamine levels go really high. That's that's the incentive.
Speaker 1: That means you're artificially increasing your dopamine levels. And that
Speaker 1: also means when you're not shopping, your own withdrawal, not
Speaker 1: to the same degree, of course, but in the same
Speaker 1: way as if you were a cocaine addict and increasing
Speaker 1: your dopamine levels through the stimulant cocaine, so yes. In
Speaker 1: the long term, addictive behaviors and especially addictive substances. Of course,
Speaker 1: especially addictive substances, they further erode the ability of the
Speaker 1: individual to make rational choices, to hold onto relationships, to
Speaker 1: regulate impulses, to deal with their emotions, to handle stress
Speaker 1: in a healthy way. So that these things were impaired
Speaker 1: to start with because of maldevelopment in childhood, and now
Speaker 1: they're further impaired by the addictive behaviors and substances themselves.
Speaker 1: So it's a double lammy and then a game. So
Speaker 1: when we come back to the question which wolfly feed, well,
Speaker 1: that so called bad wolf, which came out of deficiency
Speaker 1: and came out of a desperate attempt to feel better
Speaker 1: for a short time, has become very, very powerful. You
Speaker 1: mentioned genetics, and so I was, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I read your book that I really
Speaker 1: found comforting, and I'm curious if the science since you
Speaker 1: wrote the book continues to support it is that there
Speaker 1: isn't such a genetic basin. I have a son who
Speaker 1: I'm an addict. His mother is an addict, and I've
Speaker 1: always worried about his genetic predisposition but based on what
Speaker 1: you're saying, it's really more about the environment that we've
Speaker 1: raised him in and the way we've raised him than
Speaker 1: a particular set of genes that he inherited. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are no addiction genes. There are genes that make it
Speaker 1: more likely that person might become addicted simply because certain
Speaker 1: chemicals are not handled in the same way as the
Speaker 1: average person, or because the child is more sensitive. But
Speaker 1: here's the study from the Journal of Consulting Clinical Psychology
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine February. They looked at the long
Speaker 1: term study in Georgia African American news residing in rural Georgia,
Speaker 1: and they looked at certain their genes from you know,
Speaker 1: looking they looked at the NA analysis of their saliva,
Speaker 1: and there was a couple of genes that were increased
Speaker 1: that were linked with increased substance use over time. But
Speaker 1: look at what it says here. However, this association was
Speaker 1: greatly reduced when used to receive higher levels of involved
Speaker 1: supportive parenting. This study demonstrates that parenting processes have the
Speaker 1: potential to ameliorate genetic risk. And I would say that
Speaker 1: when children received the parenting they need, you don't just familiarate,
Speaker 1: you actually eliminate any genetic risk called together, and even
Speaker 1: in children where things didn't go well in the beginning,
Speaker 1: if you then provide the right kind of parenting, you
Speaker 1: can still greatly reduce that risk. So Janes made pros
Speaker 1: an increased risk, but they cannot determine a predisposition is
Speaker 1: not the same as the predetermination and the assistance of
Speaker 1: the medical profession and addiction specialists and the toast goose
Speaker 1: that you got this genetic disease. It's just bad science. Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, I find that to be comforting. In
Speaker 1: the section in your book where you talk about that,
Speaker 1: we don't have time to go into but the way
Speaker 1: that you explore where people have thought that it's genetic
Speaker 1: um and the way they arrive at those through a
Speaker 1: variety of twin studies and different things. You really talk
Speaker 1: about how that's not an effective mechanism, and so if
Speaker 1: people are interested in that, that would be a great,
Speaker 1: great part of the book to check out. You've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about the role of the parents and and
Speaker 1: that the parents can be stressed, or they can be depressed,
Speaker 1: or lots of different things, and that sort of leads
Speaker 1: us into cultural issues. And the book that you're working
Speaker 1: on that will be coming out is really about the
Speaker 1: culture that we live in and how that culture breeds dysfunction.
Speaker 1: And so I'm going to read something else that you
Speaker 1: wrote and then maybe let you take it from there.
Speaker 1: You say, a sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture.
Speaker 1: The drug addict is more painfully conscious, is void than
Speaker 1: most people, and has limited means of escaping it. The
Speaker 1: rest of us find other ways of suppressing our fear
Speaker 1: of emptiness or of distracting ourselves from it. So what
Speaker 1: what's happening in our culture that you think is breeding
Speaker 1: this dysfunction? Well, if you'll permit me to be self
Speaker 1: referential here, um, I'd like you to make your way
Speaker 1: of another book I wrote, or Core, What got hold
Speaker 1: Onto Your Kids? Why apparents need to matter more than peers?
Speaker 1: So one of the things that we pointed in that book,
Speaker 1: In fact, what we do pointed in that book is
Speaker 1: that children have this primary need to attach to a parent,
Speaker 1: to to to attach to nurturing adults. That's just the
Speaker 1: need of all mammals and birds for that matter. Below
Speaker 1: that the child doesn't survive. So as long as the
Speaker 1: culture provides an environment in which children are related to
Speaker 1: nurturing adults, especially in a village or clan or or
Speaker 1: or community setting, that child is very secure. One of
Speaker 1: the things that our culture has done is it as
Speaker 1: broken up the clan, that tribe, the community, the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And it has also put to mendus stress in the
Speaker 1: nuclear family, so that the parents don't see their kids
Speaker 1: most of the time, most of the day, and very often,
Speaker 1: of course, children come from broken families where it's not
Speaker 1: even two parents. Children have to attach to somebody. They
Speaker 1: cannot handle life without being connected to somebody. And who
Speaker 1: do they attached to? Who do they connect to? They
Speaker 1: connect to the peer group. So now you have this
Speaker 1: phenomenal pere attachment. But children are not getting their modeling
Speaker 1: and their values, and they're mentoring and their emotional nurture
Speaker 1: and such as it is not from adults in their
Speaker 1: life anymore, but from other children. And of course immature
Speaker 1: creatures cannot lead one other to maturity. So this is
Speaker 1: all kinds of negative consequences. So any parent who's bringing
Speaker 1: up kids at lescent or at any age or or below,
Speaker 1: that's just the book that I think it's important to read,
Speaker 1: and it's not my work. Actually, it is the work
Speaker 1: of a psychologist friend of mine, a billiont man called
Speaker 1: Gordon new Fault. I did the writing with him. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens in our culture is
Speaker 1: the bake up of family and community and clan, and
Speaker 1: that leaves children without the proper modeling, mentoring and cultural guidance.
Speaker 1: Talk about a depressed mother, for example, who you know,
Speaker 1: postpartum depression, whatever, you make the point that in in
Speaker 1: the past, when there was more, as you said, clan
Speaker 1: or village or bigger family, there would be other people
Speaker 1: to pick up that slack, so to speak. There would
Speaker 1: be other people to help give the child maybe what
Speaker 1: they weren't able to get in that period with the mother.
Speaker 1: But in what even in the culture we live in,
Speaker 1: sometimes that's the only person. It goes beyond that. First
Speaker 1: of all, we know that postpone depression and the mother
Speaker 1: is associated with an increased risk of behavior problems, a
Speaker 1: d h D and a whole lot of other things
Speaker 1: that predisupposed to addiction in the child. But it goes
Speaker 1: beyond that because in a society, with his private support
Speaker 1: from others, you don't have the risk of postpone depression
Speaker 1: post on depression is not an automatic biological thing that
Speaker 1: happens to women. It happens in a context, and the
Speaker 1: context is lack of emotional support. And I can tell
Speaker 1: you that as a husband whose wife had a postpontum
Speaker 1: depression and at a time when I was a work
Speaker 1: callic doctor who was not available to support her, so
Speaker 1: and and and so, and that an impact on our children.
Speaker 1: And so even the risk of postpartum depression and and
Speaker 1: the rates of which is going higher and higher in
Speaker 1: our culture has to do with cultural factors. And the
Speaker 1: book I'm working on and I don't have a working
Speaker 1: title for it yet, but the general theme is toxic culture.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is that a culture
Speaker 1: is the context in which we live, the social, emotional,
Speaker 1: relational um interactions that we have, the work that we do,
Speaker 1: the entertainment that we pursue, the practices that we engage.
Speaker 1: And that's, broadly speaking, is what means to have a culture.
Speaker 1: There's another meaning for the world culture, which is simply
Speaker 1: a laboratory broth in which you imach you rear or
Speaker 1: or or your nurture micro organisms. And what would you
Speaker 1: call a laboratory culture in which many you know, the
Speaker 1: mike organisms were sick. You would call it a toxic culture.
Speaker 1: I'm suggesting that our culture, if you look at the
Speaker 1: rates of disease takes of American adults, are some kind
Speaker 1: of at least on one medication or another. This isn't
Speaker 1: the richest and almost medically advanced society and is to
Speaker 1: the world what's going on. What's going on is that
Speaker 1: the culture that we live in and in a whole
Speaker 1: lot of ways, some of which we've talked about, others
Speaker 1: of which I'm writing about, actually undermines people's health. And
Speaker 1: so that when we look at individual disease, individual addiction,
Speaker 1: whether we're looking at mental health issues chilter desonal issues
Speaker 1: like a d h D or so called opposition and
Speaker 1: defined disorder or depression, anxiety, whether we're looking at cancer,
Speaker 1: autoimmune disease, we're actually looking at the impact of the
Speaker 1: culture on the individual. Because you cannot separate the individuals
Speaker 1: from the environment, and you cannot separate the mind from
Speaker 1: the body. And so when people are living in a
Speaker 1: stressed culture, they have stressed minds, and stressed minds result
Speaker 1: in stressed bodies. In the book that you're working on
Speaker 1: and in the research that you do, do you have
Speaker 1: recommendations for those of us who live within that culture
Speaker 1: today of how we can be more immune to it
Speaker 1: or how we can avoid some of the more toxic
Speaker 1: parts of the culture. The first point, of course, is
Speaker 1: to recognize the culture that we're living in, to see it,
Speaker 1: not to absorb it uncritically, but to see in what
Speaker 1: way is it actually undermines human needs? As much as
Speaker 1: it has provided and is creative and as economically dynamic
Speaker 1: and scientifically advanced this culture has been, at the same time,
Speaker 1: in some ways it significantly ignores and even insults some
Speaker 1: deep human needs, and so we have to understand that
Speaker 1: and not buy into it. Now, the various books that
Speaker 1: have written, whether it's an A d h D or
Speaker 1: stress and physical health like cancer or immune disease and
Speaker 1: so on, there's recommendations. Are my prediction book that you've
Speaker 1: been mentioning, there's recommendations in each of them, um, and
Speaker 1: the new book will be more focused on, yes, what
Speaker 1: we can actually do because we can't, you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: just because I publish a book, where anybody publishes a book,
Speaker 1: that's not going to change the culture. So We're gonna
Speaker 1: have to live with this for a long time, surely
Speaker 1: in my lifetime. But the more awhere we are, the
Speaker 1: more we set up conscious practices that in our lives
Speaker 1: that do not feed the bad wolf and move back
Speaker 1: to your analogen in a positive sense. The more mindful
Speaker 1: of you where we are, the more we recognize that
Speaker 1: our value and our ritish human beings is not depending
Speaker 1: on what other people think of us. It's not depending
Speaker 1: on how good we look. It doesn't depend on how
Speaker 1: much we own or what we can do. The more
Speaker 1: we can actually respect and on our own value, the
Speaker 1: more immune we are to the blandishments of our culture
Speaker 1: that for the most part, would have us believe that
Speaker 1: our value depends on externals. And of course, what is
Speaker 1: addiction but a desperate way to fill in from the
Speaker 1: outside that emptiness that you mentioned that we experience from within. So, um,
Speaker 1: what I'm saying all so has, of course social and
Speaker 1: cultural implications, positical implications. I will talk about that in
Speaker 1: my new book, but probably that's a discussion I would
Speaker 1: defer for some other time. Sure, you talk about how
Speaker 1: important conscious awareness is, and that's sort of what you
Speaker 1: were just saying. They're being aware of what the culture is,
Speaker 1: being aware of our decisions. You say that when not
Speaker 1: governed by conscious awareness, our mind tends to run on
Speaker 1: automatic pilot. It is scarcely more free than a computer
Speaker 1: that pref that performs pre programmed tasks in response to
Speaker 1: a button being pushed. Exactly, So that question of freedom
Speaker 1: as to the levels of consciousness, people who are not
Speaker 1: conscious simply have no freedom. They may believe they do,
Speaker 1: but they don't make decisions. The decisions are made for
Speaker 1: them by automatic emotional reactions that are the result of
Speaker 1: early experiences. So there's a I think Austrian Swiss or
Speaker 1: German Swiss writer and psychologists called Alice Miller, who was
Speaker 1: one of the first ones who wrote about the impact
Speaker 1: of child trauma an adult dysfunction, and her most famous
Speaker 1: book is called The Drama of the Gifted Child, but
Speaker 1: the original title of the German title that book was
Speaker 1: actually much better. It was called The Prisoners of Childhood.
Speaker 1: And what she was implying is that until we are
Speaker 1: aware and create some gap between our emotional reactions and
Speaker 1: our behavior, were actually held prisoner by what happened to
Speaker 1: us in childhood. And I find myself at age seventy two,
Speaker 1: still very often reacting like I was a two year
Speaker 1: old child unless I create that gap of consciousness in
Speaker 1: which I have a moment to reflect upon and make
Speaker 1: a conscious decision. And in our society which makes this
Speaker 1: unconsciousness so many ways, that's constant work. That's for most
Speaker 1: of us, I would say that significant work. And that's
Speaker 1: why I think so many people are increasingly drawn to
Speaker 1: practices that support mindful awareness because they don't want to
Speaker 1: be free that are only automatons. And and and even
Speaker 1: for me, you know, as a you know, a middle class,
Speaker 1: successful person, I cannot claim freedom as long as my
Speaker 1: reactions and behaviors and preferences are governed by unconscious factors
Speaker 1: that come out of a childhood sense of insufficiency that
Speaker 1: goes back to my first year of life. So freedom
Speaker 1: does demand consciousness. And Eckart tole it was a great
Speaker 1: spiritual teacher. He probably knew of his work, and he
Speaker 1: lives here in Vancouver as well. You know, he says
Speaker 1: as much. He says, you can't talk about freedom without consciousness.
Speaker 1: He says, no, there's no freedom without consciousness. So again
Speaker 1: that feeding the good wolf takes a lot of consciousness yep.
Speaker 1: And I think for me that's what the parable mostly
Speaker 1: speaks to. I mean, I I there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: reasons why it's a it's a story and not a
Speaker 1: not a truth. But I think for me the story
Speaker 1: is about is about having that awareness what am I doing?
Speaker 1: You know, like, moment to moment, day to day? What
Speaker 1: am I doing? What am I thinking? What am I acting?
Speaker 1: What am I Because I love your description of um
Speaker 1: being on autopilot. That's such a great description of of
Speaker 1: the way I get. I just sort of I just go.
Speaker 1: I do what's in front of me and not necessarily
Speaker 1: thinking about what's important to me or who I want
Speaker 1: to be or all those things that consciousness implies, Yes,
Speaker 1: what am I doing? And also who am I being? Like? Who? Right?
Speaker 1: I'm going to give a talk in Vancouver in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks called who do I Think? Who do
Speaker 1: you think you are? Or who do I think I am?
Speaker 1: Who do we think we are? So let me a
Speaker 1: cook example. Are at home from a speaking true from
Speaker 1: Baltimore to Vancouver four months ago. I gave a great talk,
Speaker 1: well received. I think I'm just I think I'm just great.
Speaker 1: I've in Vancouver. I get a text from my wife
Speaker 1: who had says she picked me up, that she hasn't
Speaker 1: left home yet. I immediately feel hurt, rejected, and I
Speaker 1: go into her rage. Why what's the problem. I was
Speaker 1: seventy one years old at the time. I can't take
Speaker 1: a taxi home? What's the big deal here? Right? Or
Speaker 1: can't I understand that my wife maybe got caught up
Speaker 1: in her paint She's an artists, so she got caught
Speaker 1: up in her painting. You know which artists do that,
Speaker 1: They get caught up in their painting or there or
Speaker 1: this decreative work and the time to schools? You know
Speaker 1: what am I so upset about? Who do I think
Speaker 1: I am at that moment? Well, the upset part of
Speaker 1: me and you might call that the bad wolf because
Speaker 1: it's full of rage at that moment, But who it
Speaker 1: actually is? He thinks he's a one year old child
Speaker 1: who's who's being abandoned by mommy. So this constant question
Speaker 1: of who do I think I am? It needs to
Speaker 1: come up at every moment, almost right Where am I
Speaker 1: coming from at this particular moment? And just because I
Speaker 1: answered the question appropriately one time, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: five minutes later, the same question does not arise again
Speaker 1: in a different way. So that awareness and ultimately, I
Speaker 1: think whatever people have to do to overcome their addiction,
Speaker 1: I would say, first of all, get in touch with
Speaker 1: your pain. Don't run away from your pain. Your al
Speaker 1: addiction is an attempt to run away from pain, and
Speaker 1: it just creates more pain. So don't be afraid of it.
Speaker 1: And if you're one of these people that you think
Speaker 1: you had a really happy childhood, let me tell you.
Speaker 1: If you're addicted, that tells me you didn't, which doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that happy things didn't happen. It just means that
Speaker 1: you've repressed. You've you haven't dealt with you haven't allowed
Speaker 1: yourself to experience the child's feelings that you distance yourself
Speaker 1: from as a way of surviving it. Uh So, so
Speaker 1: be aware of your pain and and and help get
Speaker 1: some help with it. And we have compassion for yourself.
Speaker 1: Don't judge yourself. Don't metaphorically. It's fine to talk about
Speaker 1: the bad wolf, but don't reject the bad wolf part
Speaker 1: of you. Have compassion for it. Understand that it came
Speaker 1: along really to meet needs that otherwise we're not being met.
Speaker 1: And then create that gap of awareness, that mindfulness that
Speaker 1: you and I have been talking about, in which you
Speaker 1: can make free choices to feed that good wolf. So
Speaker 1: last question. We're nearly out of time, and this is
Speaker 1: the last and hardest question. But I'm just I don't
Speaker 1: think there's an answer, but I'm interested in your thoughts
Speaker 1: on it. And as someone who is recovering, I've been
Speaker 1: around recovery for a long time now, most of my
Speaker 1: adult life, and I see a lot of people who
Speaker 1: get sober, and I see a lot of people who
Speaker 1: never do, and I see people that die, and and
Speaker 1: I can't help but have that why And I know
Speaker 1: there's not a simple answer for that, But do you
Speaker 1: have any thoughts on on Is it simply level of
Speaker 1: trauma some people are so damaged that the recovery processes
Speaker 1: is too much? Do you have I guess what do
Speaker 1: you think? Well, yeah, you're right, it's a very difficult question. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody is so trauma does that they
Speaker 1: beyond redemption. Um. We've seen examples of people who have
Speaker 1: endured traumas that we can't even comprehend, and yet they
Speaker 1: they find redemption in one way or another. So there's
Speaker 1: nobody beyond redemption. At the same time, the greater degree
Speaker 1: of trauma and the greater the defenses that you've erected
Speaker 1: against the trauma, the more you've had to escape from
Speaker 1: that hell round, the more difficult will be for you
Speaker 1: to to recovery. That. That's totally true, I believe. Ultimately
Speaker 1: the question is compassion. And I everybody I know and
Speaker 1: I I'm gonna make a guess here that at some
Speaker 1: point or another in your recovery process, you either encountered
Speaker 1: people that treated you with compassion despite all the steff
Speaker 1: bothing you might have had, or somehow you find you
Speaker 1: find a way to develop compassion for yourself, or maybe both.
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely both. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: the at the heart of twelve step recovery. For me,
Speaker 1: that's that's the heart of it right there. Is that
Speaker 1: is that the community that one alcoholic talking to another,
Speaker 1: that that ability to see like, oh I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not the only person that's like this exactly. And I
Speaker 1: think that is the strength of the twist step groups
Speaker 1: I'm among the specific strengths of They're the twist steps
Speaker 1: and selves, which I think are just steps for a
Speaker 1: healthy life, addiction or not addiction. But but quite apart
Speaker 1: from that, it's that being received and heard and not
Speaker 1: judged that compassion and I think some people just don't
Speaker 1: meet that. And unfortunately it's even two that depending on
Speaker 1: where you go to the TOSS step group, you may
Speaker 1: or may not find that compassion. You you may come
Speaker 1: across a lot of judgment and and and rejection. Not
Speaker 1: that's not the intention, but that's what you're going to receive.
Speaker 1: So to go back to the original question, I think
Speaker 1: the people that have been redeemed and and have recovered,
Speaker 1: I think they're the ones who find some compassion along
Speaker 1: the way which ultimately led them to some self compassion.
Speaker 1: That doesn't fully answer your question, because as you said,
Speaker 1: there is no full answer to your question. But but
Speaker 1: as as a way to move forward, compassion is it
Speaker 1: if imagine if the prison system, if the legal system,
Speaker 1: Never mind the prison system, the legal system, the educational
Speaker 1: system with all these troubled kids, the medical system, the
Speaker 1: addiction treatment industry, what if they had this huge infusion
Speaker 1: of compassion, how many more people could be redeemed? The
Speaker 1: numbers are infinite. Well, I think that is a beautiful
Speaker 1: place to end I agree with you, and you know,
Speaker 1: my hope is that you know part of what certainly
Speaker 1: not everybody listening to this identifies in it is an addict.
Speaker 1: But we all know people who are, and and to
Speaker 1: your point, a lot of us have that in ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I think that idea of um compassion you say
Speaker 1: that the best attitude is one of compassionate curiosity towards ourselves.
Speaker 1: Why did I do that? Why did I? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: instead of instead of judgment, well, you know, and and
Speaker 1: the why did they do that? You can ask you
Speaker 1: in two ways. You can say why did I do that?
Speaker 1: Which is not a question at all. It's a state, right,
Speaker 1: you know, but you can actually say, huh, why did
Speaker 1: I do that? Right? And then that's the way to
Speaker 1: ask it. Incidentally, as to your reference about many people,
Speaker 1: not all of your listeners may have stuff identified addicts.
Speaker 1: I just wonder if they tried on that definition of
Speaker 1: addiction that we proposed the earlier, how many really are
Speaker 1: who've never had those kind of patterns in their life.
Speaker 1: I'll grant you that song, but I don't they'll be
Speaker 1: too many, No, particularly not people who listen to this show,
Speaker 1: any any show. An Yeah, I mean, yeah. The fact
Speaker 1: that they you know, that we relate to these concepts
Speaker 1: and people come back is a is a sign that,
Speaker 1: you know, we're recognizing some degree of of wishing we
Speaker 1: were more conscious and in control of our lives. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I really enjoyed um talking with you.
Speaker 1: I loved your book. I'm looking forward to the new
Speaker 1: one and maybe we'll get a chance to talk more
Speaker 1: than I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Bye bye. M H. You can learn more about Gabor
Speaker 1: Morte and this podcast at one you Feed on Night
Speaker 1: slash Garboard