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Tim FerrissTim Ferriss

Dr. Gabor Maté — Trauma, Addiction, Ayahuasca, and More

Take 10 seconds and sign up for my free "5-Bullet Friday" newsletter: https://tim.blog/friday Each Friday, you’ll get a short email from me with five things I've discovered that week, sending you off to your weekend with fun and useful things to ponder and try. 🙌 Tim Ferriss speaks with Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. He’s well known for studying and treating addiction. I’ve wanted to invite Dr. Maté to this podcast for a while because he is not only an expert in the pathologies of addiction, but he’s experimented with — and used successfully — tools that are perhaps outside the realm of traditional psychiatry. He is also a co-founder, along with Vicky Dulai, of Compassion for Addiction, a group that advocates for a new way to understand and treat addiction. Show Notes: https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/ Connect with Dr. Gabor Maté: Like Dr. Gabor Maté on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drgabormate 00:00 Start 00:00:24 Important books 00:20:26 Gabor the physician 00:27:02 Addiction 00:46:49 Healing addiction 00:53:00 Predisposed vs. predetermined 00:58:17 Compassionate inquiry 01:05:44 How to recover from trauma 01:14:19 Psychedelics — overview 01:32:56 2 human fundamental needs 01:38:54 Psychedelics — deep dive 01:55:18 Tim goes on the hot seat 02:07:12 Hope 02:11:20 Where to find Gabor 02:19:02 Gabor’s wish for you SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/1dSzTkW About Tim Ferriss: Tim Ferriss is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 200 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running. Connect with Tim Ferriss: Visit the Tim Ferriss PODCAST: https://bit.ly/2rYjUBr Visit the Tim Ferriss BLOG: http://bit.ly/17jDHw3 Like Tim Ferriss on FACEBOOK: http://on.fb.me/1avYUxq Follow Tim Ferriss on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/17d94TE Follow Tim Ferriss on INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/2IfH37J Follow Tim Ferriss on INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/2IfH37J

Tim FerrisshostDr. Gabor Matéguest
Mar 7, 20182h 23mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:24

    Start

    1. TF

      Gabor, welcome to the show.

    2. GM

      Tim, it's a great pleasure to be here. Thank you.

    3. TF

      I have been looking forward to this conversation for a really long time, and I wanted to make an attempt at least to do it right. So I wanted to have the video and the audio and everything else because I think the work you're doing is very important, and we're going to cover a lot of ground, which I'm very excited to cover because I think it's a real contribution, and you have tools and frameworks that can really help

  2. 0:24 – 20:26

    Important books

    1. TF

      people. I thought we might start with books, and the reason I thought that could be a fun place to start, my audience loves books, number one, but number two, in Tribe of Mentors, the last book that I wrote, or that my guests wrote [laughs] , you were featured, and I thought that many of the books you mentioned paint a picture of your life experience and also your life's work in many ways. And we can go in any particular order, but I thought maybe it would make sense to start with The Scourge of the Swastika, and that was one that you mentioned had, had an impact on you or that perhaps you recommended on occasion. Why is that?

    2. GM

      Well, so this has to do with my family's history. I grew up-- was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944 in January, two months before the Germans occupied the country. And Hungary at that time was the only country in Eastern Europe where the Jewish population had not been annihilated, and now it was our turn. So I was two months of age. The day after the German army marched into Budapest, my mother phoned the pediatrician to say, "Would you please come and see Gabor? Of course, he's crying all the time." And the pediatrician said, "Of course, I will come, but I should tell you, all my Jewish babies are crying." And of course, that's the infants picking up on their mother's terror and stress, and that's how I spent the first year of my life, which has had a huge impact on my development and my lifelong struggles with depression, ADHD, uh, mm, self-shame, and, and other issues. Jumping ahead now, I knew very little about that history. My parents didn't say much about it as I was growing up. I knew my grandparents had been killed in Auschwitz. I knew my father had been in forced labor, and I never saw him for a year and a half. But beyond that, I knew not much about the details until I was about nine or 10, maybe 11 years old, and there was a book on my parents' shelf in Budapest with the title The Scourge of the Swastika, which was w- written by a British, uh, civil servant and a member of the House of Lords. This man had served at the British Army, and it was the first book published in the '50s that detailed the Nazi crimes. And I climbed up on a chair, took down the book when I was, I think, 10 or 11, began to read it, saw photographs of the horrors of the concentration camps and the extermination, um, details in Eastern Europe, and all of a sudden I swooned because I got what happened to my family. And that question of how can people do such things to other human beings would strike me every day, and, and almost every day this thought occurred to me for years and years and years on. Almost every day, I almost got dizzy with the question. So why people suffer and why people make other people suffer, and what is the origin of all that, has been a motivating question in my life. So that's why that book was so important to me.

    3. TF

      Thank you.

    4. GM

      And, and I have to say that, you know, my life's work h- has been motivated by that question. As a, as a medical doctor, um, I'm always looking at, well, what is it that makes people be the way they are? Why do we become cruel? Why do we become victims? Um, why do we become perpetrators? What drives us? What kind of insanity covers our basic human nature, which I believe to be good and, uh, and, and positive, and what happens to us?

    5. TF

      We're gonna spend a lot of time in that territory for sure.

    6. GM

      Okay.

    7. TF

      So you mentioned sanity or insanity. I'm not sure if that's a good segue to Don Quixote, but I'll let you choose the next one. So there are a few that came up, and you describe them in brief in the pages of, of the book. But for instance, the background that you just gave me was much more in-depth. So we have a few, and these are gonna strike folks as eclectic. Winnie-the-Pooh, the Dhammapada, The Drama of the Gifted Child, and Don Quixote. Which one of those would you like to explain next?

    8. GM

      Let's go with Winnie-the-Pooh.

    9. TF

      Let's go with Winnie-the-Pooh.

    10. GM

      Yeah. So that was one of the seminal books of my childhood, and my parents would have read it to me long before I even knew how to read. The Hungarian title is Micimackó, and, uh, it was translated-

    11. TF

      Micimackó.

    12. GM

      Micimackó. Uh, Mitzi the Bear. And, uh, the translator is a great Hungarian humorist. So if anything, the Hungarian book is even funnier than the original English [laughs] , which is n- not something one usually says about translations. But what struck me about Pooh, of course, was, number one, that there was this bear of little brains who was so- somehow so much wiser than everybody else. So fundamentally, he found the peace inside despite the fact that his intellect is just under-functioning.

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. GM

      Uh, number one. Number two, there was this relationship with the little boy, um, uh, Christopher Robin. And, uh, there's a passage towards the end of the book where Christopher Robin... I don't know if you know the real story. In fact, there's a movie-

    15. TF

      I do not

    16. GM

      ... there's a movie about it right now. But, but Christopher Robin's father, A.A. Milne, was a writer, and he bought these toys for his son to make stories about them. And Christopher Robin actually suffered because he was secondary to his father's career. They did not have a good relationship. So these characters that the father made u- made up kind of dominated and squeezed out Christopher Robin's own life.

    17. TF

      Hmm.

    18. GM

      And he himself became a bookseller later on in his life, and he wrote about his autobiography. [inhales] So there's something about the, the dysfunctionality in father-son relationship. But in the book, Christopher is playing with his toys, and then he starts to grow up, and he has to go to school, and he won't be able to play with his toys anymore. And at the very end of the book, there's a passage where, the book ends with, "But wherever they go in the Enchanted Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing together." And that would just bring tears to my eyes for decades upon decades upon decades, until recently, I had a, an experience, actually a psychedelic experience, when I realized that there's nothing to mourn because I'm both the bear and the little boy, and I always will be playing, that nothing is lost. But when I read that book, there was a sense of loss. When I read that passage, there was, something's being lost, childhood innocence is being lost, playfulness is being lost, which resonated with my own childhood because I did lose innocence and, and then playfulness very early in life. So both for the h- fun and the humor. Then, of course, there's Eeyore, who, for whom everything always goes badly, and there's a part of me that's totally Eeyore, always expecting the worst, and nothing will ever work out for me, and nevermind, leave me alone, I'm okay in my own suffering. You know, that-

    19. TF

      [laughs]

    20. GM

      ... that sort of determined victim attitude.

    21. TF

      [laughs]

    22. GM

      That, that, that, uh, that was also very much germane to my inner experience. So that book just spoke to me and made me laugh, and it still does. It's one of the funniest books ever written, and one of the wisest as well.

    23. TF

      I need to... I've only... I, I'm ashamed to say this, but I've only seen the cartoon.

    24. GM

      Oh.

    25. TF

      So I, I know, I know.

    26. GM

      Well, listen, listen. One of the sins that Walt Disney is gonna be burning in hell for the rest of existence is what he did with those, uh, stories-

    27. TF

      [laughs]

    28. GM

      ... because he Disneyfied them.

    29. TF

      Disneyfied them, yeah.

    30. GM

      You, you, you gotta read the original.

  3. 20:26 – 27:02

    Gabor the physician

    1. TF

      Uh, when did medicine enter your life or an interest in medicine, interest in being a doctor, either of those things?

    2. GM

      Well, I've speculated on that, and, um, there's a number of sources. Strangely enough, or not so strangely enough, my grandfather, who was killed in Auschwitz in his fifties, happened to be a writer and a doctor. Grandson ends up as a writer and a doctor. So I think part of it was me trying to fill a hole in my mother's life.

    3. TF

      Hmm.

    4. GM

      That was a devastating blow to her. This is not conscious, but I'm speculating looking back. It's not that she ever said, "You have to become a doctor." It's not that she ever said, "You have to follow in your grandfather's footsteps," but I think unconsciously I stepped into that role, number one. Number two, um, another reason is that as a Jew in Eastern Europe, you had every reason to feel insecure, and my mother never failed to tell me that as a doctor, you carry your profession in your hands.

    5. TF

      Hmm.

    6. GM

      So you don't have to have a business. You don't have to have riches. You just have to have the knowledge, and then you can go anywhere in the world, and you'll be okay.

    7. TF

      Hmm.

    8. GM

      Beyond that, healing and, and, and, and, and making this world a better place and help, help people, help people lead healthy lives was just an ideal of mine. Then there was egotistical reasons. Uh, let's face it, doctors get respect. They have a role. They have a good income. People look up to them, and they have a sense of authority that I think I lacked in my own life. So it was a combination of unconscious reasons and, and, and, and idealistic reasons and, and egotistical reasons. Uh, but, but all, all I know is that all my life I had wanted to be nothing else but a doctor. I, I always grew up knowing I'll be a physician.

    9. TF

      And when you were studying medicine, what did you think your specialty or specialties might be?

    10. GM

      Well, first of all, I should say I didn't end up following the dream because, uh, I, I, in my late teens, I just couldn't concentrate and study hard enough to get through the sciences. I could get through them, but I couldn't get the high marks needed to get to medical school. So I actually taught high school for three years. I taught English and history for three years. And then I would wake up and, and, and there'd be this voice in me, "You gotta be a doctor. You gotta be a doctor." And so then I went back to medical school and did a lot of hard work. Um, already-- having been an older student in medical school and being interested in history and, and literature and the, and the larger picture, I always wanted to put medicine in the context of history, in the context of society, in the context of human experience, not just as an isolated science, but as part of the broader human experience. And I was interested right away from the-- in the beginning between-- in the connections between, um, emotions and illness, between social factors and, and health and so on. So I was always a larger picture person. Uh, and so that is-- that was with me already in medical school.

    11. TF

      So the integration of mind and body as opposed to the sort of Cartesian duality and separation of mind and body.

    12. GM

      Exactly. Not that anything in medical school prepared me for that. I mean, in, in, in medical school, you just don't get that information at all. But, but that was always my interest. And then when I, when I started practicing, if your eyes are at all open, you just can't, you can't help but to see it, that, that, that who gets sick and who doesn't isn't accidental, and who gets cancer, who gets doesn't isn't accidental, and who gets addicted and who doesn't isn't accidental. In other words, there's reasons, and those reasons go beyond the individual, and it has to do with their emotional lives and their relationships and the society and the culture that they live in. So more and more over the decades, my own personal struggles and my medical experience showed me that these connections are important.

    13. TF

      How did you end up in palliative care? And, uh, I, I suppose for those people listening who don't know what palliative care is, perhaps you could give just a brief explanation of what that is. Some people might think of it as hospice care, uh, which, which I'm not-

    14. GM

      Which-

    15. TF

      ... I don't think are necessarily identical, but how, how did you end up, what was the road to palliative care, and what is palliative care?

    16. GM

      So I was a family physician, and, uh, a very driven one, and, um, also have ADD, which means that you wanna move around and have different experiences, you know, 'cause, 'cause you get tired of the same thing. And really, in retrospect, I might say that there's some guidance in all this, but, uh, how it occurred was a series of accidents. So I happened to be walking down the hall of Vancouver's major hospital when the current director of palliative care said, "I'm quitting. How would you like to come and work in palliative care?" And I said, "Sure."

    17. TF

      [laughs]

    18. GM

      You know, I didn't take... It took me a m- not a moment to think about it, you know? Palliative care-

    19. TF

      He was just look- looking for someone to grab [laughs]

    20. GM

      ... Yeah, yeah. "Palliative care? Sure. Thank you. What is that?"

    21. TF

      [laughs]

    22. GM

      And, uh, deeply meaningful work, uh, because when people are facing death, they also come up a- come up against the truth of their lives. And, and, and, uh, um, if you can face death, you can face life.

    23. TF

      And palliative care meaning you're helping people with the transition with terminal illness from life to death.

    24. GM

      These are people who are terminally ill for whom nothing curative or, or, or, or healing is gonna happen in the sense of physical healing, so they need to be helped with their symptoms, whether pain or debility or weakness or nausea. But also, you have to help, help them go through the, the psychological process of adjusting to a very short future. And, uh, the people that get drawn to palliative care work, the nurses, um, and, and then the doctors tend to be a special breed. It's not... Because many doctors are not comfortable with death. They're not comfortable with not being able to do something to save somebody. So you have to develop a lot of patience and a lot of acceptance. You have to let go of your power to change things. So it's deeply meaningful and deeply transformative work. And, uh, you also have to work with a lot of people with multiple different attitudes towards life and death, religious, non-religious, spiritual, non-spiritual, in denial, in acceptance, and all the stages in between. So it was beautiful, beautiful work, and I, I... One of the highlights of my, my medical career. All, all the same time, I was still doing my family practice.

  4. 27:02 – 46:49

    Addiction

    1. TF

      And when did, uh, when did a focus on addiction or an, uh, an acute interest in addiction start to steer your medical practice?

    2. GM

      So as a family physician, I've always had substance a- addicts in my, uh, practice. Just, just a few. And, uh, again, it was an accident. I got fired from my palliative care job, and my, my argument is that I was fired for gross competence.

    3. TF

      [laughs]

    4. GM

      I was, I was just too damn good at it. Uh, but also for gross arrogance.

    5. TF

      Hmm.

    6. GM

      In other words, with my spontaneous and insightful and rather radical non-traditional style, I could have great results, and often did in palliative care.

    7. TF

      Well, if I may interrupt for one second, what would, what would be or might be an example of your approach that others thought was radical, or something you would say or something you would do with a patient that's, that, that got great results but that would seem very radical to others?

    8. GM

      Well, I would engage them in deep conversations. Stuff would come up that would be painful, but it would be transformative. Physically, I would just use methods that had not been proven but occurred ri- right to me, and they seemed to be helpful in helping people out of pain or, or deal with issues and so on.

    9. TF

      Hmm.

    10. GM

      Um, uh, I was very open in, in multiple approaches. I wasn't f- just follow, following things by the book.

    11. TF

      Hmm.

    12. GM

      So that was my competence. The arrogance was that I had a very busy life. I was still delivering babies, running my family practice, so I would, I would get into palliative care, and then, then the nurses said working with me was like working in the eye of a tornado. And other physicians who didn't have my attitude or my particular, uh, mindset would legitimately question what I was doing. But I would regard all such questioning as an attack rather than as an inquiry, and I would react like a bulldog who's being threatened, and that's the arrogance.

    13. TF

      Hmm.

    14. GM

      And that's what ended up leading me to be fired. And, and it was a great firing because as always, I learned a lot about myself. Took me a while, but it took... A- and then three weeks after I was fired, I get this phone call from, from a clinic in Vancouver's downtown east side. Now, the downtown east side of Vancouver is North America's most concentrated area of drug use. We have more injection users in this few square block radius than anywhere in North America. So I get this call saying, "How would you like to come and work down here?" And this is three weeks after I'm fired from palliative care. Had I not been fired, I couldn't have taken that other job, which then led me to the high point for my career, which is working 12 years with addicted population and eventually leaving family practice and doing that full time. So who orc- orchestrated all this? I have no idea, but it was a beautiful progression.

    15. TF

      S- something that's come up quite a bit in interviews on this podcast is some variation of sometimes you need life to save you from what you want to give you what you need.

    16. GM

      Exactly.

    17. TF

      And, uh, I think about that a lot. At the very least, it's a, it's a pain-relieving lens through which to view events that unfold. How, how do you define addiction? Or maybe a better question is what is addiction? And, and along with that, if you wanna tackle it, you know, what are ... poor definitions of addiction or misconceptions.

    18. GM

      Fair enough. So an addiction is a complex psychological, physiological process, but which manifests in any behavior, any behavior that a person's enjoys, that a person enjoys, finds relief in, and therefore craves in the short term, but suffers negative consequences in the long term and doesn't give up despite the negative consequences. So craving pleasure, relief in the short term, negative consequences in the long term, inability to give it up. Now, notice I has said nothing about substances. I said any behavior. So it could be related to cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, fentanyl, marijuana, nicotine, alcohol, whatever. Could also be sex, gambling, internet, relationships, shopping-

    19. TF

      Work

    20. GM

      ... eating, work, extreme sports, working out, um, pornography, any number of, uh, human activities. So I said any behavior. Now, the official definition of addiction according to American, um, Society for Addiction Medicine is that this is primary a bla- uh, it's a primary brain disorder. It arises in the brain r- largely due to genetic reasons. This is how they see it, and I say that's just not true. Uh, the other popular idea about addiction is that it's a choice that somebody makes, that people choose to be addicted, which is what the legal system is based on. Because if people are not choosing, what are we punishing them for? And, and, uh, so I, although I think the medical definition is closer to the truth, I don't see it as genetic, it's a genetic disorder, and I don't see it as a primary brain disorder. So let me perhaps show you why, if that's okay. So I give you this definition of addiction. Again, craving relief, pleasure short term, negative consequence long term, inability to give it up. Would you be willing to tell me if you've ever had an addiction in your life? I don't care what, to what. I'm not asking what.

    21. TF

      Oh, yeah. Oh, I c- I can, I can say yes, and I can tell you exactly what it was.

    22. GM

      Okay.

    23. TF

      So I, in high school, uh, so I su- I suffered for, from what I suppose most people would consider depressive periods beginning at latest age 10.

    24. GM

      Right.

    25. TF

      And never found relief from that until I was competing in wrestling very seriously in high school.

    26. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    27. TF

      All throughout high school. And an older teammate introduced me to ephedrine. So ephedrine-

    28. GM

      Mm-hmm. A stimulant

    29. TF

      ... ephedrine hydrochloride, which, uh, for those people who are curious, uh, is... Well, at least at one point, ephedrine was found, uh, or, or at the very least pseudoephedrine in something called Primatene Mist used for asthma.

    30. GM

      Mm-hmm. Right.

  5. 46:49 – 53:00

    Healing addiction

    1. TF

      how do you work with patients?

    2. GM

      Well, [clears throat] let's go back to what I said, what you quoted me saying, not why the addiction, but why the pain. So if we understand that addiction in every case is rooted in some painful, uh, internal experience, and that in-- when you ask people, "What does the addiction do for you?" They'll say, "It numbs me. It soothes the pain. It makes me feel connected with other people. It gives me a sense of control. It, uh, gives me inner peace." Well, the lack of inner peace, the lack of control, the lack of connection, they're all f- forms of emotional pain. If I ask the question, not why the addiction, but why the pain, then that leads to an examination of that person's life rather than looking just at the brain chemistry. So I'm quoting from an article that appeared in the Journal of Pediatrics, which is the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It's about as prestigious as you can get. 2012. The article comes from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, uh, again, a prestigious child development research institution at Harvard University. This article did not present new information so much as it elegantly summarized decades of research. And notice what they say. They say, "Growing scientific evidence demonstrates that social and physical environments that threaten human development because of scarcity, stress, or instability can lead to short-term physiologic and psychological adjustments that are necessary for immediate survival and adaptation, but which may come at a significant cost to long-term outcomes in learning, behavior, health, and longevity." That's what I was saying before, that those early adaptations, like pushing down your feelings when the push, uh, feelings are too painful, will help you as an infant, as young, young child, but then they cause problems later on. The tuning out that you do To, to, to protect you from the stress in your environment. If you're very sensitive, it doesn't take a lot of stress, uh, helps you endure, but in the long term becomes the problem. That's exactly what they're saying. Now, I'll jump a few pages ahead to what they say about brain development, and this is so crucial, and it's so crucial because they still don't teach this in medical schools, even though scientifically it's not even vaguely controversial. The human brain develops in interaction with the environment. It's not genetically programmed purely. Here's what they say: "The architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth, continues into adulthood, and establishes either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all the health learning and behavior that follow." Not some of the health learning, all the health learning. Now notice what they say. First of all, the architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth, which already means what happens in the womb already has an impact on you. So if your mother is stressed and she's got high levels of stress hormone, that's already affecting your brain development. I mean, you think of all the stressed pregnant women out there, no wonder we're seeing so many kids in trouble. And we know from American studies, international studies, that when mothers are stressed, uh, their placenta will naturally have more cortisol and adrenaline, the stress hormone. Those kids will be more likely to have stress issues later on, abnormal stress hormone levels even at one year of age, behavior problems, learning problems, and so on, which tells us a lot as to why adaptive kids, adoptive kids have so many more problems. That's another issue. But the next paragraph is key. "The interactions of genes and experiences literally shapes the circuitry of the developing brain and is criticlin, critically influenced by," in other words, the circuitry, the chemistry of the brain, and which centers and which circuits and which systems develop and which neurochemicals will be present in what quantities depends on the early environment, "and is critically influenced by the mutual responsiveness of adult-child relationships, particularly in the early childhood years." In other words, the most important influence shaping the physiological development of the brain is the quality of parent-child relationships. Now, when parents are stressed or distracted or workaholics like I was a, uh, a young parent, uh, if there's instability, economic troubles, relationship troubles, unresolved trauma on the part of the parent, loving parents who are just stressed, that'll interfere with the child's brain development. That's why we're seeing so much more ADHD now, so much more autism, and so much more other problems, because of stress in the f- in, in society that affects the parenting environment. In other words, yes, there's physiological problems with the brain, but it's not a genetic issue. It's related to early experience. So when you look at brain scans of adults that are troubled brain scans, as you do in addicts, you're not just looking at the impact of addiction, you're also looking at the impact of childhood trauma a- a- and childhood stress, and this has been shown over and over and over and over again. So there's no separation between the physiology and the psychology. So if you come to me as an addict and you say, "I got such and such," and I ask you, "What does it do for you?" And you say, "It numbs the pain," then my question is, "Where did you develop the pain? What happened?" And then we have an inquiry, and now it no longer becomes a shameful thing that you chose this, nor does it mean that you're stuck with it 'cause you got this genetic problem. We get it as an adaptive response to something that happened, and we can heal that. The reason why addiction treatment is failing is because physicians don't understand this. They keep dealing with the effects, which is the addiction, and the behaviors, which are the effects of the addiction, but not the cause, which is the childhood distress. And the impact of childhood distress that carry into adulthood, in other words, how you stay prisoners of childhood. And so present methods of treatment in psychiatry, in addiction medicine, in childhood psychiatry deal with effects rather than causes, and this is why we're so ineffective at it.

  6. 53:00 – 58:17

    Predisposed vs. predetermined

    1. TF

      I've, I've many questions.

    2. GM

      Yeah.

    3. TF

      Uh, so the, you know, the first is just to, to underscore something which is, you know, the, our software, you know, the genetics play a role, but-

    4. GM

      They do

    5. TF

      ... but it's, it's not a comprehensive explanation for what we're discussing. It-

    6. GM

      Well, genes can predispose, but they don't predetermine.

    7. TF

      Right. Exactly.

    8. GM

      No, there are very few genetic diseases. There's one, one's in my family, muscular dystrophy. If you got the gene, you'll have the disease. My pa- my mother had it.

    9. TF

      Right.

    10. GM

      My aunt had it.

    11. TF

      So that would be predetermined.

    12. GM

      That's just predetermined.

    13. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. GM

      Very rare, those diseases. Let me tell you an interesting study from either Australia or New Zealand. They looked at a group of, uh, people for aggression. They found that the most aggressive people had a certain gene variant. Do you think they found the gene for aggression? No, they didn't, because the least aggressive people in the group had the same gene. So the most aggressive and the least aggressive shared the same gene as compared to the average. The gene could not have been for aggression. Now, if you actually looked at the life histories of those people, the most aggressive people had been, uh, brought up in troubled, sometimes abusive, but always very stressed homes.

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. GM

      The least aggressive were brought up in very nurturing homes. What was the gene for?

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. GM

      Sensitivity.

    19. TF

      Yeah.

    20. GM

      The more sensitive you are, the more you're gonna be affected. When you're brought up in a peaceful home, you're gonna be that much more peaceful. When you're brought up in a, in, in a stormy home, you're gonna be that much more aggressive. So there are these predispositions, but they're not for specific illnesses. They are for temperament-

    21. TF

      Right

    22. GM

      ... which means that you're gonna be more or less affected by the environment. And so, yeah, there are some predisposing genes, but we know both from animal studies, in monkey studies, and human studies that even you find a gene that for similar reasons predisposes somebody to addiction. If that animal or if that human being is brought up in, uh, good nurturing circumstances, their risk of addiction is no greater than creatures without that gene. So it's just not a genetic disease.

    23. TF

      Yeah.

    24. GM

      And the fact that it runs in families doesn't prove anything because, uh, you know, as I always point out, I'm a medical doctor, and if two of my kids become medical doctors, of which is no danger whatsoever, but if they did, that wouldn't prove that the practice of medicine is a genetic disease.

    25. TF

      Right. Right. It's, it's, it's not a, uh, it's not a catch-all explanation. Also, you have, I mean, because of a few of the books I've written, I hear a lot of stories, both successful and unsuccessful, about people attempting to lose weight.

    26. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    27. TF

      And, uh, they'll often say, "Well, it runs in my family. Like, my parents are fat-"

    28. GM

      Mm-hmm

    29. TF

      ... my grandparents are fat."

    30. GM

      Mm-hmm.

  7. 58:17 – 1:05:44

    Compassionate inquiry

    1. TF

      So, so let me return to another point, uh, or one thing you said in, in passing, which I'd love to dig into a little bit, and that was how at the time, say the example I think we were discussing... Well, actually, before that, let me mention one thing. So I've had my entire g- my full genome sequenced.

    2. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. TF

      A predisposi- predisposition to alcoholism is very prevalent in my family from a genetic standpoint, just from a, a software basis. However, I mentioned earlier, I never had issues with-

    4. GM

      Yeah

    5. TF

      ... alcohol or with stimulants. So, uh, just, just as, just as a, uh, a footnote, but what I was going to, what I'd love to ask you, and then I'd really love to hear what you do with patients once you start looking at their pain and the tools you use or the approaches you use, but the, one of the ep- epiphanies for me in the last very recent, uh, year or two-

    6. GM

      Mm-hmm

    7. TF

      ... has been looking at my coping mechanisms very differently. And what I mean by that is-

    8. GM

      Mm-hmm

    9. TF

      ... for a very long time, I had certain behaviors, certain defaults that, uh, I hated-

    10. GM

      Mm-hmm

    11. TF

      ... which of course means I'm hating a part of myself.

    12. GM

      That's right.

    13. TF

      And that included anger, rage responses-

    14. GM

      Yeah

    15. TF

      ... uh, use of stimulants, you name it.

    16. GM

      Right.

    17. TF

      Uh, a, a close friend of mine who i- who is a therapist, but I've never, I've never engaged him as a therapist, and, uh, there are certainly plenty of bad therapists out there, which I think is a separate topic. Nonetheless, he was helping, and I'm sure we'll get back to this, but in preparation for a very controlled, supervised psychedelic experience, he was helping a- another friend of ours-

    18. GM

      Mm-hmm

    19. TF

      ... prepare.

    20. GM

      Is this with MDMA?

    21. TF

      This is with Ayahuasca.

    22. GM

      With Ayahuasca, okay.

    23. TF

      And, uh, this, this person had, uh, a number of addictions.

    24. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    25. TF

      And she hated these addictions.

    26. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    27. TF

      And she said, "I hate these. I realize they're, they're terrible. They've, they've ruined my life. They're ruining my life." And it was all a negative relationship to these behaviors.

    28. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    29. TF

      And he said, "Did these ever serve you?"

    30. GM

      Mm-hmm.

  8. 1:05:44 – 1:14:19

    How to recover from trauma

    1. TF

      For people who are listening and want to reconnect with themselves, with their bodies, for instance-

    2. GM

      Mm-hmm

    3. TF

      ... what recommendations might you have, whether that's things they can do or resources they can, uh, can look to, uh, or both or something else? What, what recommendations? 'Cause I'm sure I could... Actually, I am 100% sure, because I've had people come on and for the very first time on this podcast talk about sexual abuse that they endured-

    4. GM

      Mm. Mm-hmm

    5. TF

      ... as, as children and, and-

    6. GM

      Mm-hmm

    7. TF

      ... what they did to-

    8. GM

      Mm-hmm

    9. TF

      ... help, uh, recover-

    10. GM

      Mm-hmm

    11. TF

      ... from that. Uh, many people listening, I am sure, have addictions, both traumatic past experiences and trauma. What, what recommendations c- could you make for them?

    12. GM

      [lips smack] Sure. So I wanna say, first of all, that for trauma, you don't need terribly traumatic events. So the, there's two ways to look at trauma. One is that bad things happen that shouldn't have. We've, we've talked about those. But the other way to get traumatized is when good things happen that should have happened. So if, uh, the good sh- good things didn't happen that should have happened, sorry. So when you look, look at that ro-

    13. TF

      The trauma of omission, not-

    14. GM

      Trauma of omission, where the parents, not that they didn't love you, not that they didn't do their best, but they were too stressed, traumatized, distracted themselves, then you get, didn't get the kind of attention and the kind of acceptance and the kind of attuned being with that you needed. That itself can make you disconnect from yourself. The child needs that acceptance, that connection, that attunement. Our brain development requires it, our emotional development demands it. And when we don't get it, not 'cause the parents don't love us, but simply because of their own issues, we can also suffer that disconnection. So that's what I call developmental trauma. Um, and now how do we connect? Well, there are many, many forms of therapy. Um, it's very difficult for anybody to do this on their own. Some people do it. I certainly couldn't do it on my own. I've needed a lot of help in terms of therapy, uh, that helps me understand what happened to me. And so that there's, there's a reason for it, uh, so that not as if there's a reason for it, then it's no longer me. I- I'm not somebody to be ashamed of. I'm just somebody who developed along certain lines for some very good reasons. But it- it's not in my deepest character, and it's not who I am, and I don't have to be that way. That's a relief to know. It's also not that I'm genetically programmed, so I'm doomed to stay that way, you know? Number one. Number two, you have to reconnect with the body. There are various body therapies. Uh, my friend Peter Levine, uh, and his somatic experiencing-

    15. TF

      Is that Walking the Tiger? Is that one of his books?

    16. GM

      Uh, Waking the Tiger.

    17. TF

      Waking the Tiger.

    18. GM

      Waking the Tiger was his first book, and he's written many wonderful books since then. Um, uh, so, so-

    19. TF

      That's the somatic-

    20. GM

      Somatic experiencing, his method is called, which he developed. It's brilliant. Uh, there is EMDR, um, eye movement desensitization, uh, reprogramming, uh, which is a way of bypassing the conscious mind and getting to the emotional brain and quicker than talk therapy by itself can do. So it's combined with talk therapy, but it takes you past just a conscious defensive egoic mind. Um, there is emotional freedom tapping that people do. There's various variations on that. Um, there is, um, there's motor sensory, uh, integration techniques. Um, there is... Then there is the traditional therapies like yoga. Now, yoga was not simply a physical modality when it first developed. Yoga actually means unity. So the very essence of yoga is, is to regain that unity, not just with ourselves, but also with the larger creation. And so yoga, when it's practiced in its intended way, not just the hot yoga where you, you get a good workout, that's great, I'm not against it, but I'm talking about intentional yoga with a meditative aspect to it, which is taught by a number of disciplines. Uh, body work of all kinds.

    21. TF

      I'm just gonna hit pause for one second. Do you practice yoga? And if so, what type do you practice?

    22. GM

      So I have always said that with my ADHD, I'm not a yoga person. I can't do it. Until a year and a half ago, I met actually a yogi. Uh, his name is Sadhguru, and, uh, he's an Indian yogi with a big following. I was very skeptical, but I met the guy. I now have a 50-minute daily yoga practice, which I did this morning before coming to the interview, and it's made an enormous difference in my life. With my ADHD mind, I really have trouble just sitting there. When I sit on the meditation cushion, my mind is like all over the place. But with the yoga, which is more body-based-

    23. TF

      Mm

    24. GM

      ... uh, I can stay much more present.

    25. TF

      Mm.

    26. GM

      There is a meditational component to it. Uh, and so the answer is yes. If you had asked me 18 months ago, I would have said, no, I support it, but I don't do it. But now I'm actually a very committed practitioner, and, and it really has made a difference.

    27. TF

      Is there a particular... I- is it a particular type of yoga that people could Google or learn more about?

    28. GM

      Well, so I'm not a yoga expert, and there's many forms of yoga that other people more knowledgeable than I am could recommend. But the one I learned is called Inner Engineering, it, and it's taught by f- either Sadhguru or his followers, and you can look up Inner Engineering online.

    29. TF

      Inner, Inner Engineering.

    30. GM

      When I recommend it to friends and others, everybody has been only been grateful, so I can highly recommend it.

  9. 1:14:19 – 1:32:56

    Psychedelics — overview

    1. TF

      in many capacities. Now, you mentioned a series of events, and I, I, I will come back to the psychedelics and ask you which you've chosen and why-

    2. GM

      Sure

    3. TF

      ... to work with. But if, if you can mention any of them, what were the series of events that led you-

    4. GM

      Sure

    5. TF

      ... to ps- to psychedelics?

    6. GM

      In 2008, uh, my book on addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, was published in Canada, and very quickly it became a number one national bestseller, subsequently published in the States as well. And I was on a book tour, and, uh, people kept asking me, "What do you know about addictions and ayahuasca as a treatment?" Ayahuasca being a Peruvian, uh, Amazonian vine that's made into a brew that has psychedelic properties. I knew nothing. The next speech or the next event, somebody else would ask, "What do you know about ayahuasca and addiction?" I finally started getting annoyed with it, like, "Leave me alone."

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. GM

      "I've just written a book. I've spent years researching it. My life experience and all kinds of, uh, scientific, uh, uh, exploration went into it. Ask me about something I know about."

    9. TF

      [laughs]

    10. GM

      And then I realized that maybe [knocking] the universe was knocking on my door. And somebody said, "Did you know you could experience it here in Vancouver?" There was a Peruvian shaman leading some ceremonies up in Vancouver. So who am I to say no? And I jumped right in, and I sat in this tent with 50 other people.

    11. TF

      50?

    12. GM

      Yeah, it was... That's how they set it up.

    13. TF

      Wow.

    14. GM

      It's not what, it's not what I recommend, but that's how they set it up. They played beautiful music, and there was a little baby in the room. Uh, mother and dad were there for the experience. The baby was in the room, and the baby was cooing away, and tears started flowing down my face, and these were not tears of sorrow. They were tears of joy. And I got in touch with such profound love that I had never consciously experienced before. And it w- they were tears of love, and it wasn't love for anybody, uh, in particular. It was just love. And then I saw in all the ways that I had closed my heart against love in my life and how I had betrayed love in my personal relationship with my spouse and, uh, and, and, and, and, and my children and in other ways. So I just got this experience of love as something profound and, and, and, and universal and, and, uh, life-defining, but something from which I've been cut off in so many ways. And I got it because I closed my heart against love precisely because when I was vulnerable and small, I'd been so hurt owing to my mother's states of mind. She couldn't respond to me the way I needed to be responded to. Not her fault, but she couldn't. And then when I was eight years old, she gave me to a stranger to save my life, and I didn't see her for a month, which is a huge-

    15. TF

      Can you ex- explain that for a second?

    16. GM

      So again, it's Budapest, Hungary, Second World War, January. The Russians have circled Budapest and, and are fighting the Germans. The government in power is a right-wing, fascist, anti-Semitic, um, military force. And even though the deportations of Jews had stopped, the Germans had annihilated half a million Hungarian Jews in three or four months. But now the Hungarian fascists were killing Jews in Budapest, and including in the house where my mother and I were living. So my mother gave me to a stranger in the street, a Christian woman, 'cause she didn't know if she'd be dead or alive next day.

    17. TF

      Wow.

    18. GM

      Or that I would be, and I was quite sick. So I didn't see her for a month, which I experienced as a deep abandonment. How else could I experience it? So my heart closes against love, and, uh, I got all this. And so I got that if this plant, this plant that, as you say, manifests the mind, can show me both the ways in which I've closed o- off from myself and that I don't need to because the love is still there, what healing potential it has. Now, I wish I could say that after that experience, I became a loving husband and a loving human being. I didn't. Uh, it's not that simple [laughs] you know?

    19. TF

      [laughs]

    20. GM

      As my wife could tell you.

    21. TF

      [laughs]

    22. GM

      Uh, nevertheless, it opened a door for me.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. GM

      And I got right away. Now, however, the thought that I had was that I had no induction. I had had no introduction. I had no processing afterwards. Ayahuasca is a medicinal plant that has been used in the Amazon basin for hundreds of years, maybe longer, in its cultural context, in a tribe, in a village where people know each other, where they know the shaman, where they share the same assumptions and the same history. That's not the same as a bunch of Westerners, strangers to each other, coming together for one night and drinking the stuff and then going their separate ways.

    25. TF

      So agreed. [coughs]

    26. GM

      So immediately the question that came up for me was, how can we create a setting that at least resembles as best we can, um, fashion the original setting? So we came up with the idea of a retreat where a small number of people get together with properly trained shamans who have integrity and experience, deep experience, and with me facilitating people's, uh, preparation and their post-ceremony integration. And so I've been doing that now for 10 years. And, um, lot of learning involved. We made mistakes, uh, but it evolved. And the essence of it is that people don't come into it cold. They come into it with preparation in a safe setting, where pretty soon a group becomes a family to each other, which means that not only do they love each other and support each other, but they also trigger each other.

    27. TF

      [laughs]

    28. GM

      I mean, I mean, basically I, I tell people, "Guess what? You're back in your family of origin, and everything you hated about your family of origin is gonna show up here."

    29. TF

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      But in the context where it's safe for that to happen.

  10. 1:32:56 – 1:38:54

    2 human fundamental needs

    1. GM

      the best response. And let me address first why we shut down our gut feelings, if I may.

    2. TF

      Please.

    3. GM

      So a human being has two fundamental needs apart from the physical needs in infancy, in childhood. One is for attachment. [clears throat] Now, attachment is the closeness and proximity with another human being for the sake of being looked after or for the sake of looking after the other. [coughs] Now, human beings, as mammals, and even birds, are creatures of attachment. We have to connect and attach because otherwise we don't survive. If there's nobody that's motivated to take care of us, to attach to us that way, and we're not motivated to attach to others, we just can't survive. One of the interesting things is that the endorphins, which, um, are the in- body's internal opiate ma- uh, chemicals, which heroin and all the other opiates resemble, they help to facilitate attachment. So if you take infant mice and you knock out their endorphin receptors so they don't have endorphin opioid activity in their brain, they won't cry for help when separated from their mothers.

    4. TF

      Hmm.

    5. GM

      Which would mean that they would die in the wild. And which goes back to what happens in early in childhood when there's stress and trauma, these, uh, these endorphin systems don't develop. And then when people do heroin, it feels like a warm, soft hug to them. They feel love and connection for the first time. That's why it's so powerful. But so we have this need for attachment without which obviously the human infant, who is the most helpless, the most dependent, the least mature of any creature in the universe at birth, uh, cannot survive without the attachment. And that attachment relationship, given that we have the longest period of development of any creature, you know, well into adolescence and, and beyond, attachment is not a negotiable need. But we have another need, which is authenticity. Now, authenticity, auto the self, means being connected to ourselves, just knowing what we feel and being able to act on it. So that means our gut feelings. So let's look at how human beings evolved. For hundreds of thousands of years, and for a hund- thousand years or so of this species existing on Earth, how did we live? We didn't live in cities and houses and so on. We lived r- out there in the wild until very recently in human, um, existence. Now, just how long do you survive in the wild if you're not c- connected to your gut feelings?

    6. TF

      Not very long.

    7. GM

      Not very long. If you start using your intellect instead of your gut feelings, you just don't survive.

    8. TF

      Yeah.

    9. GM

      So that's a powerful survival need as well. So attachment is a survival need. Authenticity is a survival need. But what happens if your authenticity threatens your attachment relationships? For example, as a two-year-old, you get angry because you didn't get that cookie before dinner. But your parents can't handle anger because they grew up in homes when there was rageaholism, and they're terrified at the very expression of anger, so they give you the message that good little kids don't get angry. The message you receive is not that good little kids don't get angry, but that angry little kids don't get loved, because your parents are now sullen. They won't look at you. They talk to you in a harsh way. You're not getting loved, not experiencing love at that moment. Now, but you got to stay attached. Guess what you're gonna suppress? The authenticity every time. And this is how we lose connection to ourselves and to our gut feelings. So that strangely enough, that very dynamic, which is essential for human survival in a natural setting, now becomes a threat to our survival in this, in this more modern setting, where to stay authentic is to threaten attachment. And so we give up our authenticity, and then we wonder who the hell we are and whose life is this, and who's experiencing all this, and this life doesn't f- you know, and who am I really? And so that's where the reconnection has to happen. That's where the healing happens, is with that reconnection. But it's because of that conflict, that tragic conflict in childhood between authenticity and attachment that most of us face, that we lose ourselves and lose connection to our gut feelings.

    10. TF

      There's so many directions we can go with this. Uh, and I'm really glad you shared that because that had a, an enormous... That observation has had an enormous impact on, on some of my close friends, and, uh, something I was only exposed to really today because, uh, our mutual friend Vicky recommended that I ask you to expand on it. What I'd love to return to, if we can-

    11. GM

      Can I say something?

    12. TF

      Of course.

    13. GM

      Sorry. Uh, in this building, there's a picture of Elvis Presley.

    14. TF

      Yes.

    15. GM

      So there's a song of his that I play at my retreats or, uh, and my events all the time.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    17. GM

      It's called Anyway You Love Me Remember how it goes?

    18. TF

      I don't.

    19. GM

      I could actually play it for you, but it, it goes, "Any way you love me, that's the way I'll be. Uh, in your hands my heart is clay. I'll be strong as a mountain or weak as a willow tree."

    20. TF

      Hmm.

    21. GM

      "I'll be powerful, I'll be like a little baby. Any way you want me, that's how I will be." Now, that's considered a love song. It isn't. It's a lack of love song.

    22. TF

      Hmm.

    23. GM

      It's a song that says, "Just attach to me. I'll give up anything about myself. Just accept me the way you want me to be." It's a v- it's a saddest song.

    24. TF

      Yeah.

    25. GM

      And when you hear him sing it, there's deep sadness in it.

    26. TF

      Hmm.

    27. GM

      And some of the power of Presley actually came from his own suffering. He wasn't just singing a song. He was actually infusing it with all the emotions of loss. So even though it's presented like a love song-

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm

    29. GM

      ... it's actually a song about the loss of love, and that's the s- situation of the infant who says, "Just love me. I'll be anything you want me to be."

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm.

  11. 1:38:54 – 1:55:18

    Psychedelics — deep dive

    1. GM

      Yeah.

    2. TF

      S- so this ties into exactly where I was going.

    3. GM

      Yeah.

    4. TF

      Uh, which is related to your pre- and post-work with psychedelics.

    5. GM

      Yeah.

    6. TF

      And for people who are watching this or listening to it, I'm returning to this not because I wanna hammer home psychedelics. They're not for everyone. And in my experience, the vast majority... Or I should say, in my observation, the vast majority of psychedelic use is very irresponsible. Uh-

    7. GM

      Mm-hmm

    8. TF

      ... and, and I would not recommend, uh, because you ... It can, it, it can certainly cause a good amount of harm if not done in a supervised, safe fashion. But the pre- and post-work could apply to many modalities. I mean, it, it, it does in this case.

    9. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    10. TF

      This example that we're about to talk about apply to psychedelics, but it could... And correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like it could very easily apply to going into any intense or unusual modality.

    11. GM

      Oh, like Vipassana meditation.

    12. TF

      Like, like Vipassana.

    13. GM

      Yeah.

    14. TF

      Like-

    15. GM

      Oh, yeah

    16. TF

      ... this Date With Destiny Tony Robbins I, I mentioned-

    17. GM

      Yeah

    18. TF

      ... which is certainly intense and very, very different-

    19. GM

      Yeah

    20. TF

      ... and very powerful. That's why I'm coming back to this. Uh, but we can discuss it as it applies specifically to psychedelics, and even specifically to ayahuasca-

    21. GM

      Yeah

    22. TF

      ... if that is the, the primary, uh, that's the primary compound we're talking about. Uh, which is really, just for people who are wondering, it's, uh... One of the reasons ayahuasca is really tricky is that it is unlike, say, I'm gonna get off topic for a second, but it's still on topic. It's not quite like, uh, mushrooms and what people consider the primary psychoactive molecule of psilocybin. It's a bit different. It's more of an old-fashioned. Like, if you go to a bar and you order vodka and soda, pretty much everywhere you go, vodka and soda.

    23. GM

      Yeah.

    24. TF

      Very similar.

    25. GM

      Yeah.

    26. TF

      Assuming the pour is the same.

    27. GM

      Yeah.

    28. TF

      Ayahuasca is more like an old-fashioned. There are a few ingredients that are almost always there. So if you go to, let's say, I wanna say Pucallpa or other parts of Peru, it's going to be mostly the ayahuasca vine plus a plant called chacruna-

    29. GM

      Yeah

    30. TF

      ... or Psychotria viridis, which is, uh, a DMT, I think, I suppose it must be an N, N-DMT contain, uh, containing plant, which is made orally active through the MAO inhibitors, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, in the vine.

  12. 1:55:18 – 2:07:12

    Tim goes on the hot seat

    1. TF

      I, I have always in the past shied away from large groups. That's why I was-

    2. GM

      Mm-hmm

    3. TF

      ... taken aback with mentioning 50 people.

    4. GM

      Yeah.

    5. TF

      Uh, but, uh, it is, it seems very common in any group, especially larger groups, and this is true in psychedelics or at V- Vipassana retreats. They actually, the nickname for it that was given at the, the 10-day silent retreat I did at Spirit Rock was the Vipassana Vendetta, where you decide that someone who's sitting-

    6. GM

      Mm-hmm

    7. TF

      ... close to you is coughing too loudly-

    8. GM

      Mm-hmm

    9. TF

      ... or clears their throat too often or whatever-

    10. GM

      Mm-hmm

    11. TF

      ... and it starts to-

    12. GM

      Mm-hmm

    13. TF

      ... you start to perseverate and think about it incessantly and maybe get angry about it. [sniffs] And-

    14. GM

      Instead of watching your own reactions.

    15. TF

      Instead of watching your reaction.

    16. GM

      Yeah.

    17. TF

      And, you know, th- the, the example that was given to me by this, this, this particular, uh, l- l... I'm just gonna say ayahuasquero-

    18. GM

      Yeah

    19. TF

      ... to simplify things. Ayahuasquero, someone who works with ayahuasca.

    20. GM

      Mm-hmm

    21. TF

      ... was, uh, he told me about this, this, this Westerner came down. I guess, I guess they're kind of Westerners too. They're just south of the border. So northern American who came down and was furious that someone in the group wouldn't shut up with their screaming.

    22. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. TF

      He was just furious about this.

    24. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    25. TF

      And there are a number of ways an organizer can handle that, but he, he took the guy outside and he said, "That person is your work tonight."

    26. GM

      Absolutely.

    27. TF

      And if you think about that reframe and how to view something that perhaps historically you would respond to as a problem or an annoyance or offensive, to view that... And, and there's certain times when you have to fight and stand up for yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't.

    28. GM

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    29. TF

      But I think that in my case and in the cases of many folks, we fight too often. We wear ourselves out. We get upset too often. How can you view that as a gift? How can you view that as your work?

    30. GM

      Well, can I again give you a quote?

  13. 2:07:12 – 2:11:20

    Hope

    1. GM

      th-

    2. TF

      Yeah

    3. GM

      ... this is a recording studio sometime, was it?

    4. TF

      This? The ... Yeah, they do recordings and music and-

    5. GM

      Well, did they, did they record in the past or just ... I just ... Did, did Johnny Cash ever record here by any chance?

    6. TF

      Uh, you know, I don't know if Johnny Cash was ever here. It's po- I would say it's possible because-

    7. GM

      The reason I ask-

    8. TF

      ... this place has been around for a long time

    9. GM

      ... the reason I ask is 'cause he's got a song that I play at all my events. It's gonna ... I, I, in your mind, it's called. He says, "It all goes down in your mind." It's on the soundtrack of Dead Man Walking, and I think he wrote it himself. "It all goes down in your mind, and it goes one foot in the fire. One, one foot on Jacob's Ladder, another in the fire. It all goes down in your mind. So whether you're going to hell or th- you're on the way to heaven, it all happens up here."

    10. TF

      Yeah.

    11. GM

      Which is such a powerful teaching 'cause this is what we can work on.

    12. TF

      Yeah.

    13. GM

      You know, if we're, if we're victims of the world, uh, Ramana Maharshi, who's a great Indian, uh, guru, um, he said something like, "If your foot hurts when you walk outside, you can do two things. One is to wrap the whole world in burlap, or you can get a pair of shoes."

    14. TF

      [laughs]

    15. GM

      So in other words, you can see yourself as the victim of the world and trying to change the world so that y- they won't hurt you anymore, or you can actually empower yourself.

    16. TF

      Yeah.

    17. GM

      And that's what the healing is all about.

    18. TF

      Well, I will say the reason I wanted to have you on now is because I've been so focused on trying to navigate these things myself over the last several years, but most intensely over the last several months.

    19. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    20. TF

      And I wanted to be ready to have this conversation with you.

    21. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    22. TF

      And I-

    23. GM

      And how, and how are you doing so far?

    24. TF

      I'm great.

    25. GM

      [laughs]

    26. TF

      I'm great. I'm great. Uh, I'm doing very well. I, I think I'm the, the sanest and, uh, arguably in the, in the best place I've been maybe ever, so I feel-

    27. GM

      That's fabulous

    28. TF

      ... feel very good.

    29. GM

      That's very good.

    30. TF

      And-

  14. 2:11:20 – 2:19:02

    Where to find Gabor

    1. TF

      Gabor, I really want to encourage people to learn more about you and your work. And there's, there's certainly a number of places they could start. Uh, where would you suggest people dig more deeply? Uh, is there a particular book of your books you would suggest they start with? Is there a particular social media handle where they can pay attention and learn various announcements and, uh, see what you share of your work and others?

    2. GM

      Well, thanks for asking. The, uh, simplest thing is my website, www.drgabormate.com, D-R-G-A-B-O-R-M-A-T-E.com, where my speaking events, and I travel, I'll be in North America and five countries abroad, uh, this year. Uh, my speaking events are listed, uh, chapters of my books are available, write-ups about my books, articles I've written. I've multiple talks on YouTube that people have filmed and, and posted, seen by hundreds of thousands of people. Um, I have a Facebook video that somebody did about my work that's been seen 12 million times now. Uh, so there's all kinds of ways to discover me on Facebook, on YouTube, at my website. And I would also really hope that people check out my books, um, of which I've written four. Uh, the first one, the American title is Scattered, and it's about ADHD, and I wrote it after my own diagnosis. And pretty much what I've said earlier, that I don't see it as an inherited disease. I do see it as a response to family, multi-generational, and social stress in sensitive children. People say you're blaming the parents. I'm not blaming the parents. Uh, I don't blame myself, but I know how stressed my family was when I was a workaholic doctor. Um, and so that's my first book. And, um, when you say, "Well, why are we looking at the percentage of kids with ADHD going up so fast?" It's not because of any genetic problem. Genes don't change in a population over 5 or 10 years. It's a social problem. There's much more stress in the culture now. There's much less connection in the culture now. The less connected people are and the more stress there is, the more pressure there is on sensitive kids. So that's Scattered. Another parenting book of mine is the work of a brilliant psychologist friend of mine, Gordon Neufeld, Dr. Neufeld, who is the world's leading developmental psychologist as far as I'm personally concerned, and I say this a- advisedly. And the book is called Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. That's been published in over 20 languages now, and it's about the fact that since kids needs attachment, the attachment need is the primary drive that we have, and we've talked about that. It's like a duckling. When the duckling hatches from the egg, the duckling would prefer to attach an imprint on the mother duck. But what will he do if the mother duck is not around? He'll imprint on a toy or a dog or a horse. Our kids, because the parents are too str- distracted and stressed in our society and are not around so much anymore physically as during human evolution, now find themselves in the company of other kids. Guess what they imprint on? Their peer group, and now you have immature creatures influencing each other immoderately And this happens through the social media, it happens in personal contact. And as that happens, the parents get pushed into the background, they get more and more frustrated. Now they get more authoritarian, or they just give up, and kids therefore don't grow up, they don't mature, and they develop all kinds of problems, not because the parents don't love them, but bec- simply because in this culture, the connection between the kids and, and the parents have been really disturbed. And how to restore that connection is the subject of Hold On to Your Kids. So three of my books that I wrote on my own, this one I wrote with Gabor. Uh, my next book, which is on the mind-body unity and health and illness, and that's a conversation you and I could have another time, but again, where I show that cancer, autoimmune disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, colitis, Crohn's disease, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia are not accidental and separate physical events. They have to do with the scientifically proven fact that mind and body can't be separated, and when things happen emotionally, they will also happen physiologically. In fact, it can't be any other way. And that the emotional system in our brains and our bodies are part and parcel of the same system that also governs the immunity, neurologi- neurological response, and hormonal response. And therefore, when our lifelong patterns of emotional repression, when people have to suppress themselves in order to maintain their attachments, that will have a negative impact on their immune system and on their hormonal apparatus and their nervous systems as well. And that book is called When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection. And that's been published by over, in over 20 countries internationally as well, including in the US. My final, and to my mind, my favorite book, uh, is the most recent, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, which explores addiction not from the point of view of a disease model or a choice model, but how it is a response to childhood loss, stress, and trauma, and how to address that, and also how to deal with... Like, if you look at the United States right now, you know what the facts are? The most common cause of death under the age of 50 is now ov- overdose. And in the US, every three weeks, you have the equivalent of a 9/11. In term- every three weeks, a 9/11, in terms of the number of people dying. Now, where's the public outcry? Where's the resources? Where's the political will? Where's the mobilization of the media and, and all the public health energies compared to what happened after 9/11? And we're having this every three weeks. And why? Because the treatment profession, the medical profession, and politicians, and the legal profession does not understand trauma and its relationship to addiction. The average medical student doesn't even hear the word trauma in four years of education. Doesn't even hear the word, let alone get a lecture on it, let alone get a course about it. The stuff I told you about brain development is still not taught in most medical schools, so we have this response to addiction, which is just dealing with the effects, the behaviors, controlling the, the manifestations, and not dealing with the causative factors. That's why people don't get better. And if you look at why right now, it's 'cause social stress has increased, economic insecurity has increased. You know, look at where do the op- overdose happens more, it's where areas where there's despondency and despair.

    3. TF

      Totally.

    4. GM

      And so that's the book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Other than that, lots of my talks are on YouTube, but I think the best hub to check all this stuff out is my website. And I hope to generate a podcast, a regular podcast fairly soon if the people around me can twist my arm strong enough and, and organize me well enough to do it. There'll be a podcast, and, um, I hope that'll be up soon. But knowing myself, I don't want to make any promises, but that'll certainly be listed at my website if it happens soon.

    5. TF

      And, and could you give your website URL one more time?

    6. GM

      Okay. Dr. Gabor Maté.

    7. TF

      And drgabormate.com. And, uh, to everybody listening and watching... Oh, there's the camera. [laughs] Uh, I will also put that in the show notes. So for everyone, m- everything we've discussed, the books, the resources, organizations, everything, including your website, which will be at the very top, will be listed in the show notes, which you can find at tim.blog/podcast, and, um, it'll be right at the top, so all that will be very easy to find. Uh,

  15. 2:19:02 – 2:23:44

    Gabor’s wish for you

    1. TF

      just in closing, and, uh, we may very well end up doing a round two at some point, it wouldn't surprise me. Uh, even if it's off camera, certainly.

    2. GM

      Yeah.

    3. TF

      Would love to spend more time together. Uh, do you have any final closing words or a request or suggestion to the audience? Anything for people listening that you would like them to consider after they finish this interview?

    4. GM

      Yeah. Well, okay. Um, I hope people will listen to this interview in a very personal sense, not just as a, an interesting experience, but as possibly pertaining to themselves, and that the discussion with you will help people look at themselves in maybe a new way, um, with what I call compassionate inquiry. So rather than self-judgment about stuff that went wrong or they did to themselves or others, they get curious. "What made me do that?" They get curious compassionately, because we are all born innocent, and we're all born, um, just wanting to be loving and loved, and then something happens, and then it's, it's a hard road back. But I hope that this conversation helps people reconnect with that path or, or con- or, or encourage them to continue on it. And then secondly, not to see it as an individual issue. It's a social issue. We live in a society that really does disconnect people. And so it's not just an individual problem or, or an individual family problem. It's multigenerational. We never even talked about the multigene- multigenerational nature of trauma, but it is. Uh, we pass this on From one generation to the next, not because we intend to, but because we can't help it. So it needs to be looked at in deep over the generations and broadly as the function of a whole society. Now let me give you one quick example, if I may.

    5. TF

      Sure.

    6. GM

      A study last year showed that American Black women, the more ex- experience of racism they have, the greater the risk of asthma.

    7. TF

      Hmm.

    8. GM

      And what does that tell us? What do give pe- what do we give people to ch- to, to, to control their asthma? We give them inhalers that contain a copy of adrenaline and a copy of cortisol. That's stress hormones. In other words, asthma has everything to do with stress. I'm not going into the scientific details now. I could, but I won't. But it shows this question: Is the asthma of an A- American Black woman an individual disease, or is it a dysfunction of entire society? And obviously it's the latter. So that the Buddha said that without the many, there cannot be the one. Without the one, there cannot be the many. And he talked about the interconnected co-arising of phenomena. So we are social creatures. Our brains are wired together. Dr. Dan Siegel talks about interpersonal neurobiology. We're not isolated creatures. So whatever you're dealing with, you have to look at not just the individual internal environment, but also the broader social and cultural environment of which you're one particular manifestation. And as our mutual friend Drew Polish so firmly wants, we need to change the conversation around these issues, particularly, for example, around addiction, from a blaming and shaming and ostracizing and just medical model perspective to one that takes into account trauma and social issues and which brings compassion into it, and that must be the same for all mental health issues as well. And whatever we look at, we have to look at both the individual and the broader context.

    9. TF

      Thank you for that. And you mentioned how we all begin loving and wanting to be loved or needing love, and then something happens, and it's a hard road back. And what I'd like to add to that is it's a hard road back, but it's a worthwhile road back, and it is possible to find your way back. If you had told me that a year ago, I would have completely dismissed it, but-

    10. GM

      Mm-hmm

    11. TF

      ... I'm in a different place now.

    12. GM

      Yeah.

    13. TF

      And I would just like to thank you for helping people to navigate that. And, uh, it's very meaningful work that you do.

    14. GM

      Thank you.

    15. TF

      And thank you for taking the time today as well.

    16. GM

      Oh, it's a great pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.

    17. TF

      And, uh, to everybody listening and watching, as I mentioned before, uh, definitely also visit the show notes. Revisit this. This is not a one and done, something you listen to, and then you go on as if you never heard it. Please look at the show notes. Look at Gabor's work, and you can find all that at tim.blog/podcast. And, uh, to everybody listening, I would just say, as always, thank you so much for joining us

Episode duration: 2:23:44

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