In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction Audiobook

In this timely and profoundly original new book, bestselling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours.

For over seven years Gabor Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. His patients are challenged by life-threatening drug addictions, mental illness, Hepatitis C or HIV and, in many cases, all four. But if Dr. Maté’s patients are at the far end of the spectrum, there are many others among us who are also struggling with addictions. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, work, food, sex, gambling and excessive inappropriate spending: what is amiss with our lives that we seek such self-destructive ways to comfort ourselves? And why is it so difficult to stop these habits, even as they threaten our health, jeopardize our relationships and corrode our lives?

Beginning with a dramatically close view of his drug addicted patients, Dr. Maté looks at his own history of compulsive behaviour. He weaves the stories of real people who have struggled with addiction with the latest research on addiction and the brain. Providing a bold synthesis of clinical experience, insight and cutting edge scientific findings, Dr. Maté sheds light on this most puzzling of human frailties. He proposes a compassionate approach to helping drug addicts and, for the many behaviour addicts among us, to addressing the void addiction is meant to fill.

I believe there is one addiction process, whether it manifests in the lethal substance dependencies of my Downtown Eastside patients, the frantic self-soothing of overeaters or shopaholics, the obsessions of gamblers, sexaholics and compulsive internet users, or in the socially acceptable and even admired behaviours of the workaholic. Drug addicts are often dismissed and discounted as unworthy of empathy and respect. In telling their stories my intent is to help their voices to be heard and to shed light on the origins and nature of their ill-fated struggle to overcome suffering through substance use. Both in their flaws and their virtues they share much in common with the society that ostracizes them. If they have chosen a path to nowhere, they still have much to teach the rest of us. In the dark mirror of their lives we can trace outlines of our own.

—from In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

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"Outstanding book about addiction. The author is a doctor who has worked with addicts in Vancouver. I didn't want to read it- reminded me too much of work- but I'm addicted to audiobooks ( no lie) and it was the only one I had. I'm very glad I did. Very insightful. He integrates brain science, personal experience, and adds some Buddhism and other religious philosophy. (note for listeners rather than readers: Do some of those those Jesus sayings seem unfamiliar? Thats because they are from the non canonical Gospel of Thomas, a compelling gospel discovered with other banned texts in the late 1940s sealed in a jar in the desert. There is a lot of overlap between the sayings in Thomas and other gospels that rely on Q But I digress. the author must be serious about religions to read texts like that. But I digress terribly...) I agree with his political views, but I did find that part, while informative and important, a bit of a slog. At first I thought his description of his classical music CD addiction was a bit of a stretch. But when he describes how much he spends, how he left a patient in the middle of labor so the baby was born without his help, so he could look for CDs, how he resolves to stop but cannot, it becomes clear that it is an addiction. Addiction a fascinating subject and this is the best treatment of it out there."

— Carolyn.frimpter (5 out of 5 stars)