Canadian physician, Garbor Mate, has recently released a book that argues that addiction is more likely to come about due to childhood trauma rather than genetics. NPR’s Amy Goodman asked Dr. Mate to explain how trauma is a possible link to addiction.
The physician, who works in a facility in one of the most dense drug addicted neighborhoods in Vancouver, starts his explanation by telling Goodman that every single female addict in his house was sexually abused as a child. He goes onto explain that whether the addiction is drugs, shopping, eating or working, a stressful childhood cause the human brain to change in a way that seeks to ease the trauma of a bad situation.
As a WWII survivor of the Jewish ghetto in Budapest, Dr. Mate uses his own infancy as an example of trauma being linked to addiction. He tells Goodman that his father had been sent to a labor camp, his grandparents had been killed in a concentration camp, and his mother was constantly living under stress and in fear. Her infant son cried all of the time, and when she called the doctor to come see the child, the doctor agreed to do so. The doctor also let her know that all of his infant Jewish patients cried all of the time. Dr. Gabor claims to be ADD and a shopaholic due to this early childhood trauma. Although he couldn’t intellectualize the situation, he sensed the stress in his mother.
With that example, the doctor believes it is possible to re-wire the human brain by providing love and understanding to the addict because our current system simply punishes people who lived through punishing childhoods. He assures Goodman that it is possible for the brain to heal itself through the right support, reinforcement and stress management for addicts.
