Gabor Maté: How Childhood Trauma Leads to Addiction

Early trauma and addiction are painfully connected. Understanding that connection can help us recover from both. Addiction, says physician and author Gabor Maté, is not fundamentally a brain disorder or a consequence of genetics. Rather, it’s a doomed attempt to escape the pain and suffering rooted in childhood trauma. For anyone with a Loved One struggling with substance use, this connection is vital to understand.

Traumatic Stress and the Body: Healing Together

We are hardwired to respond strongly to trauma—and those responses can linger even when the source of trauma’s gone. In Part One of a marvelous discussion, psychiatrist and author Bessel van der Kolk helps us understand our own involuntary behavior when faced with (or remembering) trauma, and how we can change that behavior for the better.

The Destructive Myth of “Codependency”

The idea of codependency—that Loved Ones of substance users psychologically benefit from and thus enable use—has penetrated popular thinking about SUD across the country. The concept has no clear basis in fact — but that hasn’t prevented it from causing widespread harm.