Table of Contents

Author’s Note
Hungry Ghosts: The Realm of Addiction

PART I: HELLBOUND TRAIN
1.The Only Home He’s Ever Had
2.The Lethal Hold of Drugs
3.The Keys of Paradise
4.You Wouldn’t Believe My Life Story
5.Angela’s Grandfather
6.Pregnancy Journal
7.Beethoven’s Birth Room
8.There’s Got to Be Some Light

PART II: PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF
9.Takes One to Know One
10.Twelve-Step Journal

PART III: A DIFFERENT STATE: THE ADDICTED BRAIN
11.What Is Addiction?
12.From Vietnam to “Rat Park”
13.A Different State of the Brain
14.Through a Needle, a Warm Soft Hug
15.Cocaine, Dopamine and Candy Bars
16.Like a Child Not Released

PART IV: HOW THE ADDICTED BRAIN DEVELOPS
17.Their Brains Never Had a Chance
18.Trauma, Stress and the Biology of Addiction
19.It’s Not in the Genes

PART V: THE ADDICTION PROCESS AND THE ADDICTIVE PERSONALITY
20.“A Void I’ll Do Anything to Avoid”
21.Too Much Time on External Things
22.Poor Substitutes For Love

PART VI: IMAGINING A HUMANE REALITY: BEYOND THE WAR ON DRUGS
23.Dislocation and the Social Roots of Addiction
24.Know Thine Enemy
25.A Failed War
26.Freedom of Choice and the Choice of Freedom
27.Imagining an Enlightened Social Policy on Drugs
28.A Necessary Small Step: Harm Reduction

PART VII: THE ECOLOGY OF HEALING
29.The Power of Compassionate Curiosity
30.The Internal Climate
31.The Four Steps, Plus One
32.Sobriety and the External Milieu
33.A Word to Families, Friends and Caregivers
34.There Is Nothing Lost

Memories and Miracles: An Epilogue
Postscript

Appendices

i:Adoption and Twin Study Fallacies
ii:A Close Link: Attention Deficit Disorder and Addictions
iii:The Prevention of Addiction
iv:The Twelve Steps

Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Permissions
Index

About the Author

A renowned speaker, and bestselling author, DR. GABOR MATÉ is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development. Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, and Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, and co-authored Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers. His works have been published internationally in nearly thirty languages.

Reviews

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Winner of the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

"Enormously compelling . . . and Maté, as noted, is admirably, sometimes inexplicably, empathetic to all who cross his path." —Toronto Star

"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   

“A nuanced and complex meditation on what opium-eaterThomasde Quincy called the ‘abiding darkness’. . . . A powerful and compassionatework.” —NOW

"Maté does a great service by forcing us to confront the us-and-them mentality that drives the get-tough responses to addiction. . . . I highly recommend Hungry Ghosts to everyone seeking insight into addiction." —The Vancouver Sun

"Excellent.... One of the book's strengths is Maté's detailed and compassionate characterization of the afflicted addicts he treats, but this is not just a memoir. Rather, using his own experience as well as the most advanced recent research, he attempts to delineate the closely interrelated psychological, social, and neurological dimensions of addiction. . . . A calm, unjudging, compassionate attentiveness to what is happening within." —The Walrus

"It's compulsively readable and packed with new scientific discoveries about addiction." —The Georgia Straight