Is addiction a choice? | Big Questions with Gabor Maté

not that I'm claiming to be a fully cooked meal but I'm certainly much more ripe than I used to be a lot of us are normal and unhealthy at the same time can people change who they are they need to become who they are hello my name is Gabor mate and I'm here at penguin in England to answer some big questions [Music] so the Assumption in legal circles and throughout the whole What's rightly called the criminal justice system because it is a criminal system the criminal justice system in his criminality makes the utterly unscientific unfounded

and false assumption that people choose to be addicted now first of all I worked with severely drug addicted people in vancouverton East Side the Western was the most notorious area of drug use by the way it was in Vancouver's downtown east side in my 12 years of work there I met not a single female patient who had not been sexually abused as a child the who the heck chooses to be sexually abused as a child all the men had been severely traumatized in multiple ways who the heck chooses to be traumatized in childhood the addiction

then is an attempt to soothe the pain that's imposed by childhood trauma nobody wakes up in the morning says my ambition is to become a drug addict and break the law I mean think about it it's a response to pain not only that those traumatic experiences shape the brain itself the physiology of essential brain circuits in a way that will bias that brain towards addictive behaviors including with substances I won't go into the neurophysiology of it now but it's simply brain science that's not even vaguely controversial but of course even Physicians don't learn about it

let alone judges lawyers or prosecutors another point is that if we actually understand what an addiction is we realize that it drugs are only a small part of the addictive Spectrum I Define addiction as manifested in any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves but suffers negative consequences in the long term as a result of but does not give up despite negative consequences so craving pleasure relief in a short term harm inability to give it up that's what an addiction is now we notice in that definition I said nothing

about drugs yes they could involve substances some illegal like heroin some even more toxic than heroin but legal like alcohol the definition also includes people are addicted to gambling to shopping to eating to work to the internet to pornography to sex to power to a whole lot of other human behaviors why are we ostracizing a particular segment of the addicted population where virtually all of us in this particular stressful culture have some addictive patterns in our lives or have had so it's a criminal and this whole belief that addiction is a choice is so in

scientific as it would be laughable if it's consequences weren't so tragic so the method normal uh what does it actually mean well knowing first of all is is a statistic but it doesn't say anything about healthy or not healthy just as it's in a certain range now in medicine there's legitimate use of the word normal where where the norm is actually identifiable with natural and healthy but for example to give you an egregious the fanciful scenario if everybody in London tortured their pets than not torturing your pet would be abnormal that's just a statistical statement

it's got nothing to do with health or well-being or naturalness now in New Society a lot of behaviors practices policies cultural enormous are not just the norm in the statistical sense in that most people engage in them but they're also confused with healthy and natural riches I've been seeing in this conversation they're not so that's what I mean first of all by the death of normal does this admit that what we've got here is normal it's not not when it comes to understanding human needs and human health in a holistic sense the other sense in

which I talk about the myth of normal is that there's this belief that there's those of us that are quote unquote healthy and then there's the rest of them who are abnormal I'm saying no first of all Health whether physical or mental is a spectrum it's not that you can sort of deal in it the healthy from the unhealthy these are normal these are not normal that's a very dangerous game number one number two the illnesses of body and mind are actually normal responses to an abnormal cultural Amelia reflectable human beings is that we're not

solitary isolated creatures either physiologically or psychologically emotionally or spiritually so our physiology is bound up in fact it's a unit with our emotional and psychological spiritual existence that's the reality of human beings the second reality is that none of that can be separated from a social an emotional environment so that how we feel about ourselves has a huge impact on our physiology and how we feel about ourselves is very much determined by our relationships neutral onwards from our existence in the womb you're being affected by the emotional states of our mothers that's been demonstrated in

multiple studies it's not even in doubt but the emotional states of our mothers depend on so much else other than just how they feel as individuals on their social class on their relationship with their Partners if any on their own childhood experiences including traumas on the work they have to do and many other social factors and I'm only talking about in the womb so already children or infants of mothers who are straight stressed during pregnancy have biological markers of that stress in their bodies already at Birth these influences act on us throughout our childhood and

of course throughout our adult existence because what we are is at what has been called bio psychosocial creatures our biology is not separable from our psychological emotional experiences in a social context so therefore the nature of the world that we live in has much to do with our physiological health and with our mental health is the society making us sick let's look at the statistics anxiety is rising internationally childhood diagnosis of ADHD and other mental health conditions is rising internationally the rate of autoimmune disease is rising so in a sense what I'm saying is that

there's qualities of this particular society that actually make people sick some of those qualities are physical such as the food that we eat and the pollutants in the environment many others are emotional and psychological such as the ruthless competition it isolates people from each other in in Britain they had to appoint a minister of loneliness the rates of obesity are rising throughout the world dramatically children are not developing metabolic diseases that only adults used to have in the United States seventy percent of the population of the adult population is at least on one medication 50

Center on two medications so yes I'm saying in this book that's my whole point is that this particular culture this particles Society promotes illness so that illness is not an aberrant event it's not an abnormality it's a normal response to what is basically a very unhealthy culture and by culture I don't just mean the physical aspects of it but also the emotional political and social aspects people change who they are they need to become who they are my whole point in this book and what have I ever learned as a physician and as a therapist

and a teacher and just as a human beings who myself had my own struggles to become myself it's not a question of changing who we are it's a question of becoming who we are and my whole critique of this culture is it takes us away from Who We Are and it's a struggle to get back to that no but can people achieve that yes I can tell you personally the answer is yes not that I'm claiming to be a fully cooked meal but I'm certainly much more ripe than I used to be in a very

positive sense I've seen all kinds of transformations in people I've seen people with significant illnesses finding that disease some teaching that led them back to themselves which actually promoted their healing can people change to become themselves the answer is very much yes in fact it's a need of human beings and a woman would alienated from who we are disconnected from we are we suffer we suffer and we suffer mentally or spiritually and very often physically as well because God exists there's one of those questions where one would have to really understand what the questioner means

by God I grew up as a militant atheist now as a child I mean no I grew up in communist Hungary leaving Hungary when I was 13 after the Hungarian Revolution there was a joke in Eastern Europe you could be honest and intelligent or a member of the kindness party in fact you could be any two of those three things but not all three at the same time if you're honest and intelligent you couldn't belong to the party if you if you're honest and belong to the party you couldn't be very intelligent and so on

and I had the same relationship to God God could be omniscient all good and all-powerful in fact two of those three things but not three at the same time if God was all-powerful and all good then it doesn't know very much otherwise why did he let my parents my grandparents died in a die in Auschwitz and why did I almost as an infant end up in an oven myself so it could be all good and all powerful but he can't know much or he can be all-powerful and all-knowing but they can't be very good and

so on so the God that I was faced with this image of the all-knowing all prayerful all good entity that had some kind of a physical existence in some other realm that ruled this Earth was nonsense to me from the time that I knew my mind that there's something greater and deeper in that concept that had to do with the Oneness of all and the connection and the power and intelligence of the universe and the goodness that's around us I had no concept of that I'm not a worshiper but I'm no longer uncomfortable with the

word of God when I think of the word I do mean it in that all-encompassing phase for which the word itself is really quite inadequate and it's inadequate mostly because how it's been used but that there's such an experience of Holiness and godness I fully accept that not that I've fully have had it but I also know that it's real it's not a question of belief and nobody can or should ever be talked into any particular way of understanding God it's more an experiential reality than uh certainly is a concept or just as a rigid

belief so yes in that sense yes in most other senses that the word is used no thank you for watching you can get my book The Myth of normal in hardcover audio or ebook by clicking the link below in the description and thanks again