Feeling pain in recovery? It shows your healing and moving forward. Feel it, not numb it.

‘We have social conditions that breed trauma in every level’. Gabor nailed it, as usual!

Thanks for the hope! I really need to stop drinking alcohol, it's ruining my life. To hear that addictions can be a great teacher gives me a lot of hope for the future.

People are not looking inwards, lot find it painful. So they just carry on, with the addiction. They think it's the easier way. I've been clean for thirty years. I've been in extreme pain and suffered depression. I would rather feel, it than numb it.

Dr. Maté is a true gentleman and healer. Protect this man at all costs!

Healthy anger (not rage/agressive) / Agency (we’re in charge of our life, i take the advices but I’m making the decisions) / authenticity / awareness (mindful awareness, what arises in our mind) / curiosity towards oneself (let go of ideas that don’t serve us anymore) …

Sometimes, some trama is hidden in the subconscious. It's to dangerous to feel. Therapy cost a bomb to. But I'm clean, and feeling my spirit.

I just quit alcohol within the past 6 months. I realize what triggers my will to drink. I don't go to meetings, but set my goal is to adapt a secure attachment style. I went to a couple of meetings and didn't stand up to identify with 'being an alcoholic'. Forever? No way.

I am healing! Bit by bit!! My family decided to stay with me throughout my recovery!

Identifying as helpless and an addict is wrong. Thanks for helping us Al. All types of additions.

Awesome video Doug and Dr. Gabor! Recovery from addiction is a complex process and what works best can vary from person to person. These strategies can help you: 1. Acknowledge the problem, recognize and accept that you have an addiction. 2. Build a support system by surrounding yourself with a strong support network of family, friends, or support groups. 3. Modify your environment avoiding certain people, places, or situations associated with substance use. 4. Seek professional help.👋❤

Awesome! Thank you gentlemen.

Totally agree with you Dr. Mate

I totally agree that step one is terrifying defeating. I love all the other steps and AA traditions etc.

Wow this is the greatest piece of information I have ever come across in my entire life,this doctor HAS IT FIGURED OUT

I'm a woman in sustained recovery from pharmacuticals. SMART recovery is helpful and talk therapy is essential for my maintenance.

connection. but not just people, the nature of the contact is everythin

Dear beautiful souls, Sending love and light from my heart to yours 💖🙌🫂☯️🪽♾️🦋

Another thing that is really sad is in this new world, doctors Overlook the root cause of a lot of people's issues. For instance adhd, and adults especially, can cause suicidal depression and a lot of other issues that make them not able to function properly. So they are refused to treatment especially if they are recovering addicts from another substance such as opiates. And panic attacks, a lot of if not almost all recovering addicts, like myself had panic disorder since I was nine. I'm 32 and started using opiates at like 26, been clean for a while now but the point is, I can't get the right help for those issues that the underlying reasons that I would use. But they had no problem prescribing them to children in school to get straight a's, as an adult it's not good because what are you going to do suffer from ADHD and panic attacks without being treated properly? Antidepressants and therapy can work to an extent but sometimes some people's brains are wired to an extent that there really is no logical reasoning or therapist that can just talk the ADHD out of you or the panic attacks. Genetic and it happens but you cannot live every day with panic attacks you can damage your heart you can do a lot of damage to yourself and cause more trauma. Like benzodiazepines yes there are people that abused them and yes they may need a long taper, but if they have them, then at least they know is a safety blanket there's something there to stop the panic attacks which might actually make them not want to take them as much. But there are so many humans on Earth you cannot say that every person is the same and will abused all the medications given to them. Sometimes those medications are not their drug of choice that they were addicted to but stop the triggers that made them use in the first place. It's very complex and because of all of the abusers of certain medications, it makes it hard for people like even myself to get treated properly. I mean I'm 32 years old and I can't even leave the house but yet I'm clean it's the craziest thing I don't crave opiates or anything anymore, but my ADHD is literally killing me and my panic attacks happen for no logical reasoning. Like I literally told my doctor I have no logical reasoning as to why these things happen they just happen it's like my heart just starts racing and never stops. I'll have to take something like an Ativan or something just to calm down but of course I get them from somebody that's prescribed them, I don't abuse them but if I didn't take them or have them for one of those moments or I could have a moment where I Collapse and hurt myself which has happened before. I've even fainted lying down from a panic attack

It's no wonder recovery is so difficult. If someone is going down the path of recovery with the ostensible goal of recovering themselves, but the reason they've taken substances is because they don't like themselves, then the journey to recovering a person that they don't like or don't consider worthy of recovering seems to be an exercise in futility at best, or even a poor choice, a morally wrong choice at worst from the perspective of the people in recovery. The underlying issue in any self-neglect/self-harm paradigm seems to be "I am not worthy of better." So how do you convince someone that they have greater worth than they believe they do when they so ardently defend their position of unworthiness and, quite frankly, have significant evidence to support that belief that's been consistently reinforced throughout their life? It seems to me that attempting to win that battle against people who likely believe they are experts in their own respective lives, battling against the Dunning-Kruger effect, and people's inherent resistance to changing their minds once made up should be a central focus in their recovery.

Thanks for a great talk! I want to add about AA that you’re not obliged to say that you’re an addict even it’s accustom. The only requirement is to want to stop drinking. The purpose is what Gabor first described. To step out of the denial. And I’d dare to claim that after u get some recovery u don’t really identify with it, it’s more like destigmatize it for the newcomers.

Tried AA. But having to listen to the endless and morbid drunkalogues and announce myself as an alcoholic, giving my life over to a higher power… no wonder AA has a 5-8% “success” rate. 90 meetings in 90 days? How the hell does help anyone? But most baffling is why AA is the default? Went to my doctor years ago and told him I was concerned with my increasing drinking problem. His immediate response was that I go to AA. People that get into legal problems due to alcohol the courts sentence them to AA attendance. I hope i will get to witness the demise and final end of AA before i depart this mortal coil. There are so many alternative roads to addiction recovery based on psychology, science and nutrition. Hmm, there you go: the “higher power” trifecta.

I went to email and ask for advice. Replayed yesterday. Just saying the team was looking over. No RESPONSE! Needing 1:1 holistic common sense therapist. For loved one. Searching. Our system is such a failure and am looking for common sense holistic approach. If anyone can advise?

The 12th step program in AA is all about shedding that fall self. If it’s done correctly because there is a wrong way of doing it. You will connect infinitely, which brings you back to your true self. You surrender. It’s not to say that you are fixed. But if you work those steps in all your affairs, moment to moment in your life, you will continue to create a momentum with those steps and ultimately you will maintain that infinite connection. Step 11 even suggest meditating regularly to maintain conscious contact with God. You are one with that energy source. How you get there is very unique to each individual. so it’s not just a 12 step program that can take you there but that is one way. AA is that. If you’re just nesting there and you are not doing the work then yes you will only identify with the idea that you are an addict. You will not get to truly know who you are. The idea is to learn the steps, create a momentum and keep that conscious contact with God. Ultimately, knowing truly who you are. And walking with that.

I always enjoy Gabor Mate. That said, the AA comments sounds like a misunderstanding of AA. Maybe he's just talking about *meetings* and not the actual AA 12 Steps and the Big Book of AA. Meetings are *not* the program. The core literature specifically says that the liquor was but a symptom of underlying causes and conditions. Those causes and conditions would be the psychological and emotional twists caused by our past traumas, dysfunctional behavior, etc.

Recovery is the healthy development of the counter intuition that we xome to fullness by exploring pain, not by acoiding it. That is emotional sobriety and takes time and work.

I started using heroin when i was 20 or so. And i thought this is the best thing in my life. When my mother was talking all days what a failure i am and all the worst, on heroin i just didn't care no more .. it almost didn't hurt me. I just feel a little sorry, that i didn't figured out, that i am working and i could leave and find my own place. I rather listened to humiliations all the time, than leave. .

But who is my true self?

AA has millions of recovered people and a much greater success rate of 5 percent The gentleman who bashed it has only shown his own ignorance and closed mindedness I don’t profess to say AA is the only avenue to recovery but after 38 wonderful years of sobriety it healed me and saved my life

Suffering can be a teacher, not only that thing we want to get rid of

I hate being sober.. trying to keep going

DR.MATE is very Compassionate + his book "hungry ghosts" is thorough proof of it! He has Rational View on a.a. because of his intelligence. But most of the people in a.a. drowning in alcohol have used it as a Life raft+ There's Nothing Wrong with that! Same thing with Religion. They Both bring heated debates for +Against. Why would something that Works for Someone get Another SO Upset? CANNABIS ADDICT for 46 yrs. It's Brought me Down Getting High, quite the Contradiction

What if you don't have anything to reconnect with, besides the reason you became an addict in the first place? Accept your physical health may improve and you can develop something from there.

And also most people who are addicts don’t want to work with the trauma they only want pills unfortunately! I work with addictions and a lot of the people are like that!

"Our culture is getting incredibly stressful..." Too many stressors. In the US, we are manifesting addiction and mental health conditions for many because so many cannot see a path toward a fulfilling future. Trades have been removed from most public education systems and replaced with endless testing. Public education has become a marketplace for meaningless training, software, textbooks, testing, and more. We have communities that can't drink their own water, food deserts, heat deserts, and toxic air. The US has the most expensive healthcare system and the least healthy population in the industrialized world.

Clout and self importance are very addictive.

12 steps is the most destructive, hypocritical and amazingly ridiculous recovery model

Wow???? Still don’t understand AA AT ALL?!! one said he didn’t go to AA one said he went to a few..? Aa is full of people who are heavy drinkers and heavy users… going to AA meetings is not a treatment to recover?!! It’s a place to learn how to recover-( by the completing and practicing the 12 steps by recovering,( past tense), and helping alcoholics after you recover?!! Alcoholism starts when the bottle and the bag end…. They got that part right- but you can recover from addiction and alcoholism- I’m shocked that Yo Gabba Gabba doesn’t know this or speak on this…? Most people don’t in the medical community- there is a way out- these guys mean well but are speaking to the heavy drinker or situational or emotional User… not the real alcoholic or addict for which the medical model has never been able to truly help- stop saying AA does not work- please 🙏

It says GM has 20 yrs experience working with addicted and mentally ill people, but NO MENTION ANYWHERE he has a medical specialty. So my question is: can anybody claim to be a specialist without schooling?

Why the Dr. Himself look high?! Smh