Gabor Maté: On Addiction
& So Much More . . .

 

Gabor Maté at 35:24 in the video below:  The Buddha was a great psychologist.

All the great spiritual teachers are wonderful psychologists, by the way, they see into the human soul. Buddha said that once you know the source of your suffering you’re already in the way towards healing.

Here Gabor explains “Forgive them Father for they know what they do,” what Jesus says:

Jesus knows these people persecuting him don’t know what they’re doing. That’s his greatness.

He’s in touch with deep Love and he sees the frailty of the very people that are killing him and he understands so he says, “Forgive them father for they don’t know what they do . . .”

That doesn’t mean you put up with it . . . somebody’s in an abusive relationship, understanding the person does not take away from you the necessity of, perhaps, leaving that relationship.

You still have to take care of yourself.

As a matter of fact in an abusive relationship, I’m not even saying that you should understand your partner’s behavior, I say you should understand your own.

You should understand why you’re still there.

What is it that’s compelling you to put up with this and to subject yourself to it?

What sense of shame keeps you believing that you deserve this?

So, I think in an abusive relationship, I don’t talk about forgiveness much.

I talk about self-awareness . . .

September 19, 2025

0:00 – What Love Really Means
1:36 – Defining Addiction
5:02 – Why the Pain?
8:40 – Hurt, Pain, and Trauma
11:30 – The Hidden Study on Childhood
13:38 – Inherited Wounds
15:00 – Love That Doesn’t Reach
17:43 – Before Birth
20:01 – Can Anyone Escape?
22:27 – My Own Addictions
25:47 – The Dopamine Trap
27:40 – Shame
30:07 – The Courage to Ask for Help
32:01 – Sexual Trauma and Silence
34:42 – Breaking the Cycle
36:12 – Repairing What Was Broken
39:28 – Rupture and Repair
42:32 – Forgiveness or Understanding?
46:00 – God, Rage, and Belief
48:21 – A Childhood in 1944
53:41 – Society as a Toxic Culture
59:23 – Addiction as Protection
1:02:25 – Becoming Someone Else
1:05:28 – Connection and Morality
1:07:06 – Losing Ourselves
1:10:02 – Regrets of the Dying
1:11:53 – Who Can Be Reached?
1:13:45 – Trauma in Power
1:16:49 – The Myth of Normal
1:20:03 – ADHD and Addiction
1:23:17 – The Mind–Body Unity
1:27:04 – Medicine’s Blind Spot
1:31:04 – A Culture of Disconnection
1:35:00 – The Body Remembers
1:38:42 – When Pain Becomes Identity
1:40:00 – Killing the Self or the Pain
1:41:44 – New Drugs, Old Cravings
1:43:27 – Love and Fear
1:45:55 – Living With Pain
1:46:35 – What the World Must Learn