Article: Trauma is the root cause of addiction, according to Dr. Gabor Mate
The human brain runs on dopamine, which is what most drug users are seeking from substances such as meth, cocaine, and a plethora of others. When a brain is under stress, its availability of dopamine is diminished beyond what is required to properly handle the workload presented to it, and that leads to physical discomfort, lethargy, sometimes agitation, and a lot more negative effects. This can, in turn lead to a person seeking substances which increase their dopamine to levels which simply enable them to feel normal, like the common person - though the person with dopamine deficiency interprets that state as much better than normal, because, to them, it is, and they don't realize their normal is actually much worse than what is normal to other people, and other "normal" people also don't recognize this. But when they are without enough dopamine availability, everything about their body will function less, they will have less mental acuity, less energy to think and act with, etc.
This is also a big part of why people who have experienced trauma, which is a whole lot of work for a brain to get through, often end up using drugs. Also, conversely, why people with substance use problems so often have experienced trauma.
Trauma is simply an extreme amount of considering work that is presented to a brain, which requires a ton of dopamine to handle and overcome the non-considered state of. And when it is fully considered, the person is no longer affected by the trauma, and the workload is resolved. The consideration that made for the trauma has been digested, and its considerations are accounted for in their positive placements within the new state of that person's mind.
I have previously said that PTSD can be permanently cured in a person who has it by taking cocaine (and tending to all the other considerations I've mentioned), and this is true.
When a person seeks drugs to make them feel better, while in a long-term depression or other troubles, they are on the right path - because sufficient dopamine availability will be required for them to consider the difference between the state they're in, and their fully healed state. But so often, a person who does pursue their health in this manner then takes on additional feelings of guilt, worries about money, and social ostracization because of their simply tending to their brain's healthy need, and all these worrying considerations passively create more work for their brain, which then puts a drag on their dopamine availability, hindering their healing potential, and often keeping them completely locked out of making the progress within their mind that will eventually, when all things are considered, lead them to becoming fully healed
If not for the negative and worrying messaging cultivated by anti-drug interests, people would not become locked into harmful drug habits, and wouldn't experience the adverse psychological reactions that are often associated with drug usage, but the origins of which are not drugs at all, but the imposed negative conditioning by those who have ideologically opposed a person's right to choose concerning their own body.
Also, often, people around a person who uses drugs due to dopamine deficiency interprets the dopamine deficient state of that person as them not caring, and they use this assessment to write that person off, or to act in ways towards them that worsens that person's dopamine availability, and so makes that person need to increase their dopamine even more to feel OK and to be able to function properly. But what a lot of people might presume is not caring, judging from an outsider's observation, is merely an insufficient amount of available dopamine within the person's brain form them to be able to piece information together at a normal rate, for them to be able to respond normally, to have decisive thoughts, and to give them energy to act with.
If a person wishes to overcome a drug-use that they either don't want, or are made to not feel happy and accepted about, the very first thing for them to learn is that it's OK for them to use drugs, whichever drug they decide to use, and according to their discretion... and it always was. Unless a person believes that within themselves, their lack of acceptance of this will be locking their need for increasing their dopamine into place, and creating this artificial and disparate branch of considerations that was determined and imposed upon them, called "addiction."
It is clarifying of the truth behind Gabor Mate's perception to say that insufficient dopamine-availability relative to the increased workload that trauma creates for a brain is the cause of people engaging in dopamine-increasing behaviours. And those people seeking to increase their dopamine to deal with stress have been exactly right all along.
Related posts:
The Reality Behind 'Chasing the Dragon'
Where Does A "Drug-Induced" Psychosis Really Come From?
How Belief Affects Mental Stress Treatment, and the Effect that Anti-Drug Propaganda Has on Mental Health
Further Information on "Addiction" and Drug-Associated Health Issues, and the Environment that Produces them
Article: "Percocet Ruins Lives", But It Saved This Woman's
Articles: 'Belief concerning nicotine drives behaviour and dopamine availability' & The Experience of Considering
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