"It is time to realize, then, addiction is neither a choice nor an inherited disease, but a psychological and physiological response to painful life experiences. It can take many forms, but whatever form it takes: • it employs the same neurological pathways and emotional patterns; • the damage it does extends well beyond the suffering imposed by drug use specifically; • to ostracize the drug addict as somehow different from the rest of us is arrogant and arbitrary; • to criminalize certain substances, say heroin, while allowing the profitable distribution of more deadly products such as cigarettes is irrational and harmful—yes, though it may be a startling assertion it is medically a simple fact: heroin use, short of overdose, is far less lethal than cigarette smoke; •to treat the addiction, which is a symptom, without treating the pain that underlies it is to deal in effects rather than in causes, and therefore dooms many to ongoing cycles of suffering."
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Beyond Drugs: The Universal Experience of Addiction | Gabor Maté, MD, MAD in America (August 26, 2022)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gabor_Mat%C3%A9
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Gabor Maté
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