In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts : Close Encounters with Addiction

What causes addiction ? And how can we truly heal from it ? In his profound and compassionate book, leading voice in trauma and addiction recovery, Dr Gabor Maté, explores the psychology of addiction and the path to self-understanding and healing.

In his groundbreaking work, now updated with a new chapter on the Opioid crisis, Maté takes a holistic and compassionate approach to addiction, whether to alcohol, drugs, sex, money or anything self-destructive. He presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to a weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs through (and even underpins) our society ; not as a medical ‘condition’, but rather the result of a complex interplay of personal history, emotional development, and brain chemistry. Distilling cutting-edge research from around the world, Maté avoids glib self-help remedies, instead promoting self-understanding as the first key to healing and wellness.