Compassionate curiosity about the self does not mean liking everything we find out about ourselves, only that we look at ourselves with the same nonj… - Gabor Maté

Trauma and stress are so normal in society that we take them to be almost natural occurrences... We think this is normal. But actually, from the point of view of human needs and human evolution, the current way of living that we pursue is actually abnormal and is the cause of a lot of ailments of body and mind... a lot can be done as long as we recognize the problem. The issue is that my own profession, the medical profession, despite all the science that links the mind and body, emotions and physiology, doesn’t link them... physicians are not trained in understanding the whole human being and the unshakeable oneness of our existence.

We may not be responsible for another’s addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff.

The wondrous power of a drug is to offer the addict protection from pain while at the same time enabling her to engage the world with excitement and meaning. “It’s not that my senses are dulled — no, they open, expanded,” explained a young woman whose substances of choice are cocaine and marijuana. “But the anxiety is removed, and the nagging guilt and — yeah!” The drug restores to the addict the childhood vivacity she suppressed long ago.