Addictions fill an emptiness of the heart; Powerfull people are some of the most heartless, they do the most damage, it is not right to judge drug addicts and not the powerfull people.

Date:   10/11/2012 12:37:16 AM ( 12 y ago)

Dr. Gabor Matte is a physician who has worked for many years with the down-and-out, often homeless, drug addicts living in Vancouver's "Downtown East Side" area.

  He has seen it all, and he has many insights into addictions, and not only drug addicts.

  "Addictions fill an emptiness of the heart; Powerfull people are some of the most heartless, they do the most damage - to other people and to the earth -  it is not right to judge drug addicts and not the powerfull people"

This link to a video of a speech he gave at a medical conference on addiction in Rio in 2011
>   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cYcSak6nE


Some highlights:

   To understand addiction, ask not  "whats wrong with addiction, but instead ask "what is right about addiction".

  What does the addiction give them that they do not have? - Drugs give a sense of peace, of calm, of control.

  So why are these qualities missing from their lives? - One way or another, they are painkillers;

  The question then is, Not, "Why the addiction", but "Why the PAIN?'

In his practise, almost exclusively, the HIGHLY ADDICTED patients are women who were abused, sexually abused as children; they are men who were abused, sexually abused, they were neglected, abandoned, emotionally hurt, over and over again"
 

---

  Bhuddist's story of "the hungry ghosts"

"they are these creatures with large empty bellies, strong scrawny necks, tiny little mouths - so they can never get enough to fill that emptiness"

We ALL are hugry ghosts, we all have this emptiness, we are trying to fill that emptiness from the outside..."
 

----

The message child percieves is "the world doesn't want me; if my mother is not happy around me she must not want me"

 "My mother is not happy around me, therefore she must not want me"

So for those people who did not experience love as a child, those who were neglected, their brains did not develop normally, their endorphin circuits did not develop properly.

 When they take opiates, then they feel normal, now they feel pain relief, now they can feel love; First time taking opiates a woman said "it felt like a warm hug"

It is an emptyness that needs to be filled.

   It is not just drug addicts that have this emptyness - successfull people also had bad childhoods; Dr. Matte himself was one - a Jewish child in Budapest in 1942, when the Germans moved in. His mother called the Doctor and said Gabor wont stop crying, and the doctor said "all my Jewish babies are crying".

Because of the stresses and terrors of the mothers, the message that the child percieves is "the world doesn't want me; if my mother is not happy around me she must not want me"

 "My mother is not happy around me, therefore she must not want me"

  At work Gabor found that people need him, it filled the emptyness he developed as a child when it seemed that his mother did not want him. However, since he had to work so hard to fill that emptiness, his own children were neglected, and they effects become generational.

Even very powerfull people had bad childhoods; in fact, he shows that many of these very powerfull people are some of the emptyest in the world. They fill it with their control over others. They have no regard for the earth. They are doing the most damage.

---conclusion:

There are many ways to fill the emptyness, but we look at the drug addicts and we say    
    "How can you do this to yourself? How can you put all this terrible stuff into your body, these poisons that could kill you?"

  But then look at what we do to the earth - terrible things that we do the atmosphere and the ocean, and to the environment, these poisons that are killing us, that are killing the earth, and which of these sins is greater? The addiction to oil, to consumerism - which is doing the greater harm?

  And yet we judge the drug addict - because we actually see that they are just like us, and we don't like that, and so we say "you are different from us, you are worse than the others".

 

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