Gabor Maté
Physician and author on addiction, stress and childhood development. Wrote In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and The Myth of Normal, and developed the Compassionate Inquiry approach taught to therapists.
Gabor Maté did not write this page. What is this?
It collects the places they publish and what they have said there, each linked to the source. They have no account here. Is this you? Claim it, correct it, or ask us to remove it from ppll.
Where they publish
drgabormate.comSite His own site: the books, the Compassionate Inquiry training, and his articles.
The articles are where the argument is stated in his own words rather than an interviewer's — addiction as a response to pain, trauma as anything that overwhelms a child, and why treating the addiction without the pain treats an effect.
Link verified 3 Sept 2026.
Beliefs
What they believeKorrents 4 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Addiction is neither a choice nor an inherited disease, but a response to pain: the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.
It is time to realize, then, addiction is neither a choice nor an inherited disease, but a psychological and physiological response to painful life experiences.
BEYOND DRUGS: The Universal Experience of Addiction Said 5 Apr 2017
Childhood trauma is the template for every addiction, including the socially rewarded ones.
Childhood trauma is the template for addiction-any addiction. All addictions are attempts to escape the deep pain of the hurt child, attempts temporarily soothing but ultimately futile.
BEYOND DRUGS: The Universal Experience of Addiction Said 5 Apr 2017
Trauma is not confined to terrible events: a child whose parents were too stressed or distracted to see them has been traumatized too.
But trauma is not restricted to horrific experiences. It refers to any set of events that, over time, impose more pain on the child than his or her sensitive organism can process and discharge.
BEYOND DRUGS: The Universal Experience of Addiction Said 5 Apr 2017
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Treating an addiction without treating the pain underneath it is treating an effect rather than a cause.
to treat the addiction, which is a symptom, without treating the pain that underlies it is to deal in effects rather than in causes, and therefore dooms many to ongoing cycles of suffering
BEYOND DRUGS: The Universal Experience of Addiction Said 5 Apr 2017
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.