Article XVIII — The Real Question Is Not Why the Addiction, But Why the Pain? — Dr. Gabor Mate
As a medical doctor, I worked with some very addicted people—people who use heroin, cocaine, alcohol, crystal meth, and every drug known to man. These people suffer. They lose their health, their beauty, their teeth, their wealth, their human relationships, and in the end, they often lose their lives.
And yet, nothing can force them to get off their addiction. Their addiction is powerful, and the question is: why?
If you want to understand addiction, you can’t look at what’s wrong with the addiction; you have to look at what’s right about it. In other words, what is the person gaining from the addiction that they otherwise don’t have?
What addicts get is relief from pain—a sense of peace, a sense of control, a sense of calmness—very, very temporarily. And that’s why the real question in addiction is not, “Why the addiction?” but, “Why the pain?”
If you want to ask the question of why people are in pain, you can’t look only at their genetics; you have to look at their lives. In the case of my highly addicted patients, it’s very clear why they are in pain: because they’ve been abused all their lives.
They began life as abused children—physically abused, neglected, sexually abused, abandoned over and over again. This actually shapes the development of the brain.
The Buddhists have this idea of the “hungry ghosts.” The hungry ghosts are creatures with large, empty bellies, small scrawny necks, and tiny little mouths, so they can never get enough. They can never fill the emptiness on the inside. Addiction is all about trying to fill that emptiness from the outside.
From that perspective, you can understand that there are many, many addictions. Yes, there is addiction to drugs, but there is also addiction to consumerism, addiction to sex, to the internet, and to food.
For each person, there is a different way of filling the emptiness, but the emptiness always goes back to what we didn’t get when we were very small.
Many of my patients are actually First Nations people, and they are heavily addicted because their lands were taken away from them and because they were killed and abused for generations and generations and generations.
If you can understand the suffering of these native people and how their suffering makes them seek relief from pain through addiction, what about the people who are perpetrating it? What are they addicted to?
Well, they are addicted to power. They are addicted to wealth. They are addicted to acquisition. They want to make themselves bigger. The addiction to power is always about trying to fill an emptiness from the outside.
If you look at the stories of Jesus and Buddha, both of them were tempted by the devil, and one of the things the devil offered them was power. They both said no, because they had the power inside themselves. They didn’t need it from the outside. They didn’t want to control people; they wanted to teach people by example, not through force. So they refused power.
Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within,” meaning that true power is not outside of yourself, but inside.
And the Buddha said, “Don’t worship me. Find a lamp inside yourself. Be a lamp unto yourselves. Find a light within.”
And so, when we look at this difficult world, let’s not look to people in power to change things, because the people in power are very often some of the emptiest people in the world.
We have to find that light within ourselves. We have to find the light within our communities, in our own wisdom, and in our own creativity.
If you find that light within, if you find your own nature, then you will be kinder to yourself, and you will also be kinder to nature.
We are social beings. When we feel disconnected or alienated, we experience pain.
Addiction, depression, anger, and violence are different ways of reacting to pain.
To heal ourselves and our world, we must heal the emotional wounds at the root of our pain.