I will discuss just a few that especially helped me to better understand the affliction of alcoholism and addiction. There are many solid reasons to read, and recommend, this book. It runs to some 450 pages and is broken down into seven parts. The book is a massive and ambitious undertaking. At the time of writing the book, he was the staff physician for the Portland Hotel Society, which provides housing and medical care to addicts in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. “This is the domain of addiction,” he writes, “where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb an insatiable yearning for relief or fulfilment. Gabor Maté derives the title of his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction from the Buddhist mandala, the Wheel of Life, which revolves through six realms, one of which is that of hungry ghosts. Nothing sways them from their habit, not illness, not the sacrifice of all earthly goods, not the crushing of their dignity, not the fear of dying, the drive is that relentless.
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