Book Review: Hooked On The Story of Getting Hooked

" .. portrait of addiction offered by the Canadian author and physician Gabor Maté in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
.. Addiction is dangerous in any form. "There is no such thing as a good addiction. Everything a person can do is better done if there is no addictive attachment that pollutes it. For every addiction – no matter how benign or even laudable it seems from the outside – someone pays a price."
All addiction, whether accounted for by neurological, social, moral, emotional or spiritual factors, is based on the desire to escape one void and plunge into another. Addiction, which Maté cogently defines as "any repeated behaviour, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the lives of others" – is what happens when the only reasonable alternative to living with an incomplete self is oblivion

.. Dr. Maté's book is especially compelling for its expansive account of addiction as consisting of all these factors in infinitely variable degrees – addiction is a condition based on a fundamental misperception: that inside us there's a darkness, and that darkness can only be evaded by something outside of ourselves .. "

Click here to read in full