all addictions — whether to drugs or to non-drug behaviors — share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical level the purpose … - Gabor Maté

An event is traumatizing, or retraumatizing, only if it renders one diminished, which is to say psychically (or physically) more limited than before in a way that persists. (p37)

When I am sharply judgmental of any other person, it's because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don't want to acknowledge.

The average physician, when they do their prenatal visit, they don’t ask about the woman’s emotional state or the stress in their lives... In British Columbia, the Caesarean section rate is almost 40 per cent now, which is incredibly high... that degree of intervention actually interferes with the natural bonding between mother and infant. So right from the beginning, we just don’t get it... At the University of British Columbia, where I was trained 40 years ago, the average medical student still doesn’t get a single, coherent lecture on the impact of emotional trauma on physical health, even though we know... that people with stress and trauma in their lives have an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, depression, psychosis, ADHD, and so on. So, the first thing has to be at least the training of physicians in the unshakable unity of mind and body, of educators as well, because many of the troubled kids that educators are helpless to know what to do with are actually traumatized kids. And politicians, if their policies are trauma informed, are going to have a totally different legal system, we’d have a totally different approach to addiction and so on.