Highly Recommended — Gabor Maté, Richard Schwartz & Marc Lewis: Rethinking Addiction

The Truth About Addiction

This is such an excellent interview with these three amazing human beings and, I believe, definitely worth posting again. There is a paradigm shift occurring in how addiction is viewed and treated — addictions of all kinds, both substance and non-substance alike. And, to one degree or another, it is my belief that we are all impacted by addiction. No exception.

Here it is illuminated what was missing in the many early years that I had sought help for my own multiple addictions and trauma. And it is clear why, and despite my very best efforts, the legacy burdens that I had inherited — from both the generations before me and our culture — continued to unknowingly and tragically be passed on to my own beloved children.

Gratefully, as the understanding of trauma deepens and evolves, so too is the understanding of the need to dismantle the longstanding and ultimately harmful narrative of addiction as disease.

Pathology, genetics, judgment and shame are now increasingly being replaced with the wisdom of how it is that pain underlies all addictions. Pain is at the root of addictions to alcohol and other drugs — not character defects. It is at the root of all of our other addictions and compulsions — to gambling, shopping, the internet, sex, religion, caretaking, cleaning, food, exercise, work, etc. Pain is also at the root of the epidemics that we see all around us and within us — of depression and anxiety, autoimmune diseases and other illnesses, suicides and other deaths of despair, loneliness and isolation, ruptured relationships and violence, and on and on.

The essential need then is to identify, heal, and transform the pain and trauma of the legacy burdens that we’ve been blindly handed by our ancestors and by the culture at large.

This is the journey of gradually diminishing and shedding the trauma triggers and reactivity, the limiting beliefs and identities, the shame and fears and judgments, the mistrust and isolation, the lack of honesty and vulnerability and intimacy, the depression and anxiety and physical symptoms, and the addictive and compulsive patterns that — while they may have once served us — now keep us painfully stuck in trauma.

As our old ineffective and often harmful ways of coping are increasingly recognized and embraced and understood, we are transformed. Deeply. And we come to discover and experience a growing freedom from the pain we’ve long carried — the same pain that our ancestors had experienced before us going back through time. And as we are unburdened, everything changes. Now what arises in the place of shame and separation and old trauma and loss is an experience of awareness, peace, gratitude, compassion, and love that had for so long been unimaginable. We come home to our Self.

And as the long estrangement from the wholeness and peace and beauty of who we truly are dies away, we ultimately become empowered with knowing, experiencing, and being Love. The deep disconnects which kept us triggered in our unattended and unhealed trauma come to give way and be transformed into an enduring and ever expanding experience of connection within ourselves, with our fellow human and nonhuman sisters and brothers, and with the sacredness of all of life.

Such a profound gift! At least this has certainly been my experience. And, I believe, the birthright of each and every one of us. 🙏 Molly

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Here are the video interviews and also links to excellent related resources:

Gabor Maté, Richard Schwartz & Marc Lewis

— Rethinking Addiction

In this meeting of the minds discussion, we’re joined by three of the world’s leading experts on addiction: Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Richard Schwartz, and Professor Marc Lewis. Although their backgrounds vary widely, with Gabor initially training as a medical doctor, Richard as a family therapist, and Marc as a developmental psychologist and neuroscientist, all three of them have reached similar conclusions in their understanding of, and approach to treating addiction. In a lively and wide-ranging discussion, we explore: — Why do we need to approach problems with addiction not by asking: "what's wrong with it?", but instead by asking, “what's right with it?" — Why both the ‘self-indulgent’ and ‘disease’ models of addiction are both fundamentally flawed and harmful (from a scientific point of view) — The root causes — How the internal family systems (IFS) model can improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying addiction — How Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry approach can help heal addictions by simply asking the right questions from a place of compassion and genuine curiosity — Why IFS therapy may be one of the most effective approaches out there for working with addictions. And more.. You can learn more about each speaker’s work via the selected links from this episode. --- Dr Gabor Maté is a retired physician and worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience. The bestselling author of four books published in over twenty-five languages, including the award-winning titled "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction". Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship between stress and illness. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing, he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. To learn more, join his e-news list at www.drgabormate.com. Dr Richard Schwartz, PhD., began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the client would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts. A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has published many books and over fifty articles about IFS. Learn more at: https://ifs-institute.com/ Dr Marc Lewis is a neuroscientist, professor, bestselling author, and one of the world’s leading experts on the neuroscience of addiction. In his academic work, he has authored or co-authored more than fifty journal articles, and for many years was a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Toronto before retiring. In recent years, he has focused on making his work more accessible to a wider audience through public talks and interviews. He is the author of two bestselling books on addiction: “Memoirs of an Addicted Brain” and “The Biology of Desire”, a book which Dr Gabor Mate argues “effectively refutes the disease model of addiction.” You can learn more about Marc’s work on his website: https://memoirsofanaddictedbrain.com. Links: — Marc’s website: https://memoirsofanaddictedbrain.com — Marc’s blog post series on using IFS to treat addiction: https://www.memoirsofanaddictedbrain.... — Memoirs of an Addicted Brain - Prof Marc Lewis: https://amzn.to/2ZGBjy5 — The Biology of Desire - Prof Marc Lewis: https://amzn.to/3aBhVsB — Gabor’s Compassionate Inquiry Training: https://compassionateinquiry.com/onli... — In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts - Dr. Gabor Maté: https://amzn.to/3ajx3JV — The Wisdom of Trauma Documentary: https://wisdomoftrauma.com/ — Gabor’s website: www.drgabormate.com — IFS Institute Website: https://ifs-institute.com/ — IFS Institute Online Circle: https://bit.ly/ifs-online-circle — IFS Annual Conference: https://ifs-institute.com/annual-conf... — Greater than the Sum of Our Parts - Dr. Richard Schwartz: https://amzn.to/3lnJNFJ — The Body Keeps the Score - Bessel van der Kolk: https://amzn.to/3oGf20Z