Table of Contents

Author’s Note
Hungry Ghosts: The Realm of Addiction

PART I: HELLBOUND TRAIN
1.The Only Home He’s Ever Had
2.The Lethal Hold of Drugs
3.The Keys of Paradise
4.You Wouldn’t Believe My Life Story
5.Angela’s Grandfather
6.Pregnancy Journal
7.Beethoven’s Birth Room
8.There’s Got to Be Some Light

PART II: PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF
9.Takes One to Know One
10.Twelve-Step Journal

PART III: A DIFFERENT STATE: THE ADDICTED BRAIN
11.What Is Addiction?
12.From Vietnam to “Rat Park”
13.A Different State of the Brain
14.Through a Needle, a Warm Soft Hug
15.Cocaine, Dopamine and Candy Bars
16.Like a Child Not Released

PART IV: HOW THE ADDICTED BRAIN DEVELOPS
17.Their Brains Never Had a Chance
18.Trauma, Stress and the Biology of Addiction
19.It’s Not in the Genes

PART V: THE ADDICTION PROCESS AND THE ADDICTIVE PERSONALITY
20.“A Void I’ll Do Anything to Avoid”
21.Too Much Time on External Things
22.Poor Substitutes For Love

PART VI: IMAGINING A HUMANE REALITY: BEYOND THE WAR ON DRUGS
23.Dislocation and the Social Roots of Addiction
24.Know Thine Enemy
25.A Failed War
26.Freedom of Choice and the Choice of Freedom
27.Imagining an Enlightened Social Policy on Drugs
28.A Necessary Small Step: Harm Reduction

PART VII: THE ECOLOGY OF HEALING
29.The Power of Compassionate Curiosity
30.The Internal Climate
31.The Four Steps, Plus One
32.Sobriety and the External Milieu
33.A Word to Families, Friends and Caregivers
34.There Is Nothing Lost

Memories and Miracles: An Epilogue
Postscript

Appendices

i:Adoption and Twin Study Fallacies
ii:A Close Link: Attention Deficit Disorder and Addictions
iii:The Prevention of Addiction
iv:The Twelve Steps

Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Permissions
Index

About the Author

Gabor Maté, M.D. is the author of the bestselling books Scattered Minds and When the Body Says No–published in ten languages on five continents–and co-author, with Gordon Neufeld, of Hold On To Your Kids. Former medical columnist for the Globe and Mail, where his byline continues to be seen on issues of health and parenting, Dr. Maté has had a family practice, worked as a palliative care physician and, most recently, with the addicted men and women in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

Reviews

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

“Powerful. . . . Maté wades through the vast learning behind the root causes of addiction, applying a clinical and psychological view to the physical manifestation and unearthing some surprising (to the layman anyway) answers for why people do such frightening and destructive things to themselves. . . . In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts is enormously compelling and Maté, as noted, is admirably, sometimes inexplicably, empathetic to all who cross his path.” —Toronto Star

“A nuanced and complex meditation on what opium-eater Thomas de Quincy called the ‘abiding darkness’. . . . A powerful and compassionate work.” —NOW

“Excellent. . . . 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. . . . A calm, unjudging, compassionate attentiveness to what is happening within.” —The Walrus

“Drug-addled, yes—but Maté’s patients are often perceptive, sensitive and struggling to keep whatever dignity society has left them. . . . That the well-off and the destitute are considered together in this book reminds us that addiction transcends class. . . . Maté is obviously an effective communicator on medical issues.” —The Gazette

“Maté presents a well-reasoned critique of the so-called war on drugs and offers suggestions for how we might respond more effectively to chronic addiction.” —The Vancouver Sun

“[A] moving, debate-provoking and multi-layered look at how addiction arises, the people afflicted with it and why he supports decriminalization of all drugs, including crystal meth. . . . In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts reads not only as a lively textbook analysis of the physiological and psychological causes of drug addiction, but also as an investigation into [Maté’s] heart and mind.” —The Globe and Mail

“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 of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine

“It seems odd to use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe a book that focuses frequently, in graphic, unrelenting detail, on the lives of some of the most hopeless outcasts of our society: the hard-core street addicts with whom Dr. Gabor Maté works. Yet that’s the word that came repeatedly to mind as I read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. It’s not only the grace of Maté’s writing, though that’s certainly a great part of it. It’s the sense of compassion that infuses the entire book.” —The Record

“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., Co-Principal Investigator, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study

“Gabor Maté is one of the most important, wise and compassionate voices on addiction in the world. Everyone should read this profound book.” —Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus and Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs