
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Close Encounters with Addiction
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Narrated by:
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Daniel Maté
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By:
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Gabor Maté MD
In this timely and profoundly original book, best-selling 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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Critic reviews
2009, BC Book Prize's Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize: Winner
"A harrowingly honest, compassionate, sometimes angry look at addiction and the people whose lives have been disordered by it." —Ottawa Citizen
"An insightful, multilayered discussion of the nature of addiction generally, and our society's epidemic of addictions in particular." —The Globe and Mail
"Enormously compelling . . . and Maté, as noted, is admirably, sometimes inexplicably, empathetic to all who cross his path." —Toronto Star
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I would love Gabor to narrate any future audio books.
Gabor should have been the narrator
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Fantastic
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Okay
Very mind opening
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Brilliantly narrated human stories!
Practical insights
Thank you Gabor!
Excellent helpful humane
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Enlightening
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Such an incredible book
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must read for all humans
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Incredible combination of story telling and science
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Being a physician myself, having lived through the terrifying experience of childhood traumatic events, then a slave of substance addiction, not for pleasure just to feel a little less guilt and pain -almost ravaged in all aspects of my being-, now in recovery aided by combined treatment (psychotherapy and pharmacological); i think reading this title is to be found an interesting and enriching instance of learning, whether the reader is versed in neuroscience or medical knowledge, being oneself afflicted by an addiction, or having to deal with the saddening proximity. of a loved person’s blind path of self-destruction.
Deep yet simple
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increíble! absolutamente necesario de leer
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