Levine Peter A. - In the realm of hungry ghosts: close encounters with addiction

I recommend this wonderful book for anyone struggling with the heartache of addiction personally or professionally. Dr. Mat makes the thought-provoking and powerful arguments that human connections heal; and that the poverty of relationships in the modern world contributes to our vulnerability to unhealthy addictions of all manner. His uniquely humane perspectiveall too absent from much of the modern approach to addictionsshould be a part of the training of all therapists, social workers, and physicians.

Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, Senior Fellow, Child Trauma Academy, Houston, and coauthor of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts looks at addictions, how they work, who experiences them, and what can be done. The book is a survey of scientific evidence on addiction, but it is haunted by Mats patients who are wrestling with poverty, violence, mental illness, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, the authorities, their pasts. We read about the depths of addiction, but also the persistence of humanity under the worst of conditions. That the well-off and the destitute are considered together in this book reminds us that addiction transcends class.

The Gazette (Montreal)

Dr. Mats latest book is a moving, debate-provoking, and multilayered look at how addiction arises, the people afflicted with it, and why he supports decriminalization of all drugs, including crystal meth. {In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts} reads not only as a lively textbook analysis of the physiological and psychological causes of drug addiction, but also as an investigation into his heart and mind.

The Globe and Mail

Its time to give Mat the Order of Canada for this erudite and sensitive book about the lives of Downtown Eastside intravenous-drug users, the neurobiology of addiction, and the folly of the war on drugs. Its compulsively readable and packed with new scientific discoveries about addiction. If you know the parents or siblings of an addictor the prime minister, for that matterplease give them this book.

The Georgia Straight

Gabor Mats connectionsbetween the intensely personal and the global, the spiritual and the medical, the psychological and the politicalare bold, wise, and deeply moral. He is a healer to be cherished, and this exciting book arrives at just the right time.

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine

With unparalleled sympathy for the human condition, Gabor Mat depicts the suffocation of the spirit by addictive urges and holds up a dark mirror to our society. This is a powerful narrative of the realm of human nature where confused and conflicted emotions underlie our pretensions to rational thought.

Dr. Jaak Panksepp, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychobiology, Bowling Green University, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Medical College of Ohio, and author of Affective Neuroscience

With superb descriptive talents, Gabor Mat takes us into the lives of the emotionally destitute and drug-addicted human beings who are his patients. In this highly readable and penetrating book, he gives us the disturbing truths about the nature of addiction and its roots in peoples early yearstruths that are usually concealed by time and protected by shame, secrecy, and social taboo.

Vincent Felitti, MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, and Co-Principal Investigator, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study

Dr. Gabor Mat distills the suffering of injection-drug users into moving case histories and reveals how clearly he himself, as music collector and workaholic physician, fits his own definition of addiction. Informed by the new research on brain chemistry, he proposes sensible drug laws to replace the War on Drugs. Inspired by the evolving spirituality that underlies his life and work, he outlines practical ways of overcoming addiction. This is not a fix-it book to hurry through, but a deep analysis to reflect upon.

Dr. Bruce Alexander, Professor Emeritus (Psychology), Simon Fraser University, and author of The Globalization of Addiction

A harrowingly honest, compassionate, sometimes angry look at addiction and the people whose lives have been disordered by it.

Ottawa Citizen

Gabor Mats latest book is a sprawling but fascinating look at addiction that is part science, part diatribe, part character study, and part confessional. The writing is powerful. The book leaves the reader with a profound sense of empathy and understanding for some of societys most marginalized victims.

Quill & Quire

Excellent. One of the books strengths is Mats detailed and compassionate characterization of the afflicted addicts he treats a calm, unjudging, compassionate attentiveness to what is happening within.

The Walrus

Mats subjects are the living, breathing embodiment of the nations grimmest statistics for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, homelessness, crime, abuse, neglect, overdose, and death. More than merely poor and disenfranchised, they are truly the lowest of the low, reviled by society and demonized by law enforcement. {In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts} is enormously compelling, and Mat is admirably, sometimes inexplicably, empathetic to all who cross his path.

Toronto Star

I highly recommend Hungry Ghosts to everyone seeking insight into addiction. Gabor Mats masterful and impassioned treatment of the topic is a welcome relief from the tired old thinking that has kept us from dealing effectively with it for the last 100 years.

Gerald Thomas, Centre for Addictions Research, for the Vancouver Sun

It seems odd to use the word beautiful to describe a book that focuses, frequently in graphic, unrelenting detail, on the lives of some of the most hopeless outcasts of our society: the hard-core street addicts with whom Dr. Gabor Mat works. Yet thats the word that came repeatedly to mind as I read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Its not only the grace of Mats writing, though thats certainly a great part of it. Its the sense of compassion that infuses the entire book, the authors continued faith in and affection for the men and women with whom he works, even when he is the victim of their drug-fueled abuse, racial epithets, and thefts. Mat offers no easy fixes (pun intended), but does offer hope and understanding.

Hal Goodman, The Record (Kitchener, Cambridge, and Waterloo) (This review also appeared in The Guelph Mercury.)