I recently stumbled upon this episode of Rich Roll’s podcast and it’s ruminated with me since. Like many people, my family tree is full of anxiety and addiction and I have spent my life pondering how and why this manifests to such varying degrees and behaviours in different people.

Dr. Gabor Maté has spent a lifetime on this topic and offers thought-provoking observations.

In a nutshell, Dr. Maté notes that being alive is to exist in a state of constant uncertainty, risk and vulnerability to pain.This causes anxiety and suffering in all of us, to varying degrees, whether we admit it or not.The extent to which we can admit this and discuss our suffering and feelings with a compassionate witness can make a difference between constructive or destructive behaviours in our life.

You can advance the play bar to 8:09 to skip the opening commercials.

At 34:26 the discussion around Rich’s own life offers some context for those who had a relatively fortunate childhood, and yet, suffer all the same.

Here is a direct audio link, advance the playbar to 8:09 to skip the intro commercials.

As an author, Dr. Maté has written extensively on the subjects of addiction, early childhood development & trauma, attention deficit disorder, and the relationship between stress and disease. His most recent award-winning book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction* (a #1 bestseller in Canada) mixes personal stories with science to present a radical re-envisioning of 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 at large; 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.