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New World Notes - How 'The System' Causes Addiction
This week on New World Notes: radio program #211, March 20, from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m., host Kenneth Dowst samples Dr. Gabor Maté's insights into addiction.
Maté (mah-TAY) shows that addiction is caused not by chemical substances but by the complex interaction of brain, experience, the environment (including society and the economy), and chemical substances. He argues that our stressful, exploitative economic system is a major factor causing addiction. Not just promoting addiction but causing it at the basic, biochemical level.
And since The System's "War on Drugs" has done little good and much harm for several decades, could its real goals be more sinister than its professed goals?
Maté's insights come from both scientific research and his own clinical experience treating addicts in Vancouver's version of Skid Row.
Gabor Maté's most recent book is In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.
This program replays parts of an interview with Mate (January 2010) by Mike McCormick, on Mind Over Matters, and parts of a speech Mate gave in Berkeley in November 2011 (courtesy of the National Radio Project and Making Contact). Many thanks to both sources. For the original programs, please see the following: Mind Over Matters; Making Contact.