A "thought-provoking and powerful" study that reframes everything you've been taught about addiction and recovery--from the New York Times -bestselling author of The Myth of Normal (Bruce Perry, author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog ). A world-renowned trauma expert combines real-life stories with cutting-edge research to offer a holistic approach to understanding addiction--its origins, its place in society, and the importance of self-compassion in recovery. Based on Gabor Mat�'s two decades of experience ...
Read More
A "thought-provoking and powerful" study that reframes everything you've been taught about addiction and recovery--from the New York Times -bestselling author of The Myth of Normal (Bruce Perry, author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog ). A world-renowned trauma expert combines real-life stories with cutting-edge research to offer a holistic approach to understanding addiction--its origins, its place in society, and the importance of self-compassion in recovery. Based on Gabor Mat�'s two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with people with addiction on Vancouver's skid row, this #1 international bestseller radically re-envisions a much misunderstood condition by taking a compassionate approach to substance abuse and addiction recovery. In the same vein as Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score , In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts traces the root causes of addiction to childhood trauma and examines the pervasiveness of addiction in society. Dr. Mat� presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout--and perhaps underpins--our society. It is not a medical "condition" distinct from the lives it affects but rather the result of a complex interplay among personal history, emotional and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs and behaviors of addiction. Simplifying a wide array of brain and addiction research findings from around the globe, the book avoids glib self-help remedies, instead promoting a thorough and compassionate self-understanding as the first key to healing and wellness. Dr. Mat� argues persuasively against contemporary health, social, and criminal justice policies toward addiction and how they perpetuate the War on Drugs. The mix of personal stories--including the author's candid discussion of his own "high-status" addictive tendencies--and science with positive solutions makes the book equally useful for lay readers and professionals.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 536 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 536 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Condition: GOOD-Used with some wear from use. May include stickers on cover, missing or wear to dustcover, inside cover, spine, slight curled corners, stains, and wear to the fore edge. All orders ship via UPS Mail Innovations-can take up to 14 business days from first scan to be delivered.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Corners are bent. Stains on outside cover/inside the book. Cover/Case has some rubbing and edgewear. Access codes, CD's, slipcovers and other accessories may not be included.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fair. Connecting readers with great books since 1972. Used textbooks may not include companion materials such as access codes, etc. May have condition issues including wear and notes/highlighting. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
All humans seek to eliminate physical and emotional pain, and no one suggests that seeking pharmaceutical relief for migraine headaches or deteriorated spinal disks evidences moral laxity; no one suggests that had we been morally stronger we would have endured our pain. Yet that is what society tells the drug and alcohol addicted.
We deny addicts access to their "illegal" drugs on the rationale that they choose to take them, thereby bringing about their own dismal physical, social and legal circumstances. Mate asks why it is that society doesn't apply that same rationale (and policy) to people whose lifestyle choices bring about medical conditions such as broken legs, home and job related depression and anxiety, chronic bronchitis, coronary artery disease. He astutely observes, "No cardiologist, respiratory specialist, orthopedic surgeon, or psychiatrist would refuse treatment on the ground that the problem was self-inflicted."
Mate cites the 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences study by Felitti et al. that two-thirds of adult addiction risk is attributable to severe childhood abuse or trauma. The greater the number of trauma exposure types (the study addressed seven), the greater the relationship to later addiction as well as other diseases/morbidities: smoking, obesity, depression, suicide, sexual behavior, STDs, ischemic heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. With addicts he treats in the Vancouver clinic, Mate comes to know their almost unbelievable stories of abuse and betrayal in early childhood; he shares some of this horror with the reader. That young children are at the mercy (or lack thereof) of adults and circumstances beyond their control is undeniable. A 5-year-old child bears no responsibility for the sexual predation of her uncle or the substance abuse of parents, violence against her mother, or parent suicides, etc. Young children have few coping mechanism for dealing with emotional pain, except to bury it from conscious awareness and sense that they are somehow deficient - possibly unworthy of love and protection.
Society currently present drug addicts with only two choices: abstinence or prosecution. (If you think abstinence is a realistic option, be sure to watch the YouTube video, "Opiates and Tranquilizers," especially about forty minutes in when the brain's dopamine receptors are discussed.) Mate observes that we still do not have a systemic, evidence-based approach to achieving lasting abstinence (or cure, if you will). He characterizes society's approach:
So long as society ostracizes the addict and the legal system does everything it can to heighten the drug problem, the welfare and medical systems can aim only to mitigate some of its effects.
What then is the policy alternative? Harm Reduction: adopting a "public heath" rather than "criminal" approach. To reduce harm "means making the lives of afflicted human beings more bearable, more worth living." Mate cites society's harm reduction approach to rheumatoid arthritis where we aim to reduce joint inflammation, prevent bone destruction, and reduce pain. Or take the case of incurable cancers where we seek to prolong life, control symptoms (including reducing pain) and maintain quality of life as much as possible.
The reality Mate asks us to accept is that some drug users ". . . are too deeply enmeshed in substance dependence for any realistic 'cure' under present circumstances. For now there is too much pain and too few internal and external resources available. If we accept scientific findings about the physiological basis of an existing drug addiction and jettison our moralistic posturings about free choice, we can adopt a Harm Reduction model for addiction.
What are the elements of a harm reduction approach to drug addiction? Mate identifies those used in Vancouver's innovative program:
? Diagnose and treat other medical syndromes that often co-occur with addiction: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Bi-Polar disease.
? Establish clean needle exchanges to prevent the spread of Hepatitis C and HIV.
? Provide basic medical care of addiction-related disease: abscesses, infections, etc.
? Provide therapy for the childhood trauma underlying drug use.
? Establish drug substitution including methadone and prescribed heroin.
? Provide a medically staffed detox facility with follow-up temporary housing that temporarily separates the person from his drug environment.
? Establish counseling that seeks to reunite the former addict with his/her family.
Good intentions you might say, but too expensive! Turns out that our current punitive "war on drugs" (which has not reduced drug use or cured addiction) is costing U.S. tax payers a minimum of 100 billion dollars each and every year.
Especially now with a heroin epidemic sweeping the nation, we must confront the foundational question: the relationship society creates between itself and its drug-addicted citizens. "The fundamental question is whether or not we recognize these people as human beings who are legitimately part of the social fabric and who deserve compassion and respect." If you want to take a moral stance on addiction, take the compassionate Harm Reduction approach just as we do with rheumatoid arthritis, cancer or coronary artery disease.
Diantha H
Oct 13, 2011
Compassionate, informative
This book helped further my knowledge about addiction, and I admire the courage and honesty of the author and his subjects.
