Gabor Maté - In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts - Close Encounters with Addiction

The last speaker is Elaine, alcoholic. “Hi, Elaine.”

“In the eyes of the newcomers,” she begins, “I see sadness, hunger, desperation. ‘How will I ever have a life again? How will I get money, how will I build a relationship?’” Not my problems, I think. Still I wonder, What would she see in my eyes?

“Nothing’s going to happen overnight for most of you. It took me a long time of coming to these meetings before I could hear anything, and that didn’t sit well with me. Two things alcoholics hate is work and time. There has to be no effort involved, and you want the results right now.” Chuckles and applause.

That’s me. I resist emotional work and I do want immediate results. “A sense of urgency typifies attention deficit disorder,” I wrote in Scattered Minds , “a desperation to have immediately whatever it is that one may desire at the moment, be it an object, an activity or a relationship.” If it doesn’t happen quickly for me, I feel like bailing, and unless I’m extraordinarily motivated, I often do.

“I used to be a militant party girl,” Elaine continues in her Lauren Bacall voice, auburn-dyed bangs falling over her forehead above large, heavily painted eyes. “I wasn’t going to take anything seriously except having a good time—and that meant being stone drunk.

“Three things that didn’t help me were love, education and punishment. I didn’t learn no matter how hard people tried to love me, no matter what facts I knew and no matter how many times life taught me harsh lessons. I didn’t learn until I began to listen.

“The first time I listened was at an AA meeting in Toronto. A Native man in his sixties was speaking. ‘I’ve been sober for two years now,’ he said, ‘and six months ago, I got my first job. If I had known how good it felt to work, I would have been done with drinking long ago. Five months ago I got my own place. Had I known how good that was, I would have gone sober long ago. Three months ago I got myself a girlfriend. Boy, if I’d known how great that was, I might never have drank in the first place.’” Merriment, chortles, the clapping of appreciative hands.

“‘Now I’m sixty-four,’ the man said, ‘and I’ve just been told I have cancer. I have six months to live.’” Elaine pauses to look around the room as we take in this information. Silently, we wait for her conclusion. “I thought he’s going to announce, ‘I’m off on the biggest six-month drunk you can imagine. So the hell with you all and goodbye.’ That’s what I would have done with a death sentence hanging over me. But not this Native man. ‘I’m just so grateful,’ he said, ‘so thankful that I’m sober, that I’ve had two years of sobriety and that I can look forward to the rest of my life in sobriety.’

“That’s when I got that sobriety is more than just the absence of alcohol. It’s a way of being. It’s living life in its fullness.”

Do I have to become an alcoholic, lose everything, puke my guts out and then get religion before I can experience the fullness of life, whatever the hell that means? I’m resentful. No, I’m anxious, fearful that it will never happen for me. That’s what Elaine would have seen in my eyes. Or saw. Perhaps I was the newcomer she was talking about.

Elaine is about to leave the lectern amidst nods of approval, but she steps behind the microphone once more. “I don’t mean,” she says, “that my life is perfect. Sometimes it feels like things are completely falling apart, like this week. But I no longer confuse stuff that happens with my life. This moment is okay, even when things are coming apart at the seams. Right here, right now, at this moment, things are okay.”

“Forget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life,” writes the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. “Your life situation exists in time—your life is now.” I have read his book over and over, have underlined that phrase and understand it intellectually. This woman, Elaine, doesn’t only understand it. She gets it. It’s a truth she’s discovered for herself.

“Surrender is the key,” says Elaine. “Even now, whenever I try too hard, I mess it all up. Don’t try. Just listen to God’s directions.”

Fuck. That God thing again. What God? Ever since I was a child, I’ve been shaking my fist at Heaven.

From the moment I had a mind of my own, I knew there was no all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God. In Eastern Europe under the Stalinist regimes there used to be a saying: “You can be honest or intelligent or be a member of the Communist Party. In fact, you can be any two of the three, but not all three at the same time.” In the same way, I understood that God could be all-knowing and all-powerful, but not all-loving. How else to explain the murder of my grandparents in the gas chambers of Auschwitz or my own near-death as an infant in the Budapest ghetto? Or God can be all-loving and all-knowing, but not omnipotent. A milksop. A weakling. So what is this God whose directions I’m supposed to obey?

My moment of rebellion over, I know better and remember Peter’s words: “My goal is only that each day I should become closer to the God that I understand.” The God I understand? Not the wilful old man in the sky I’ve resented all my life. Truth. Essence. The inner voice I keep running away from. That’s the God I’ve been resisting. If, Jonah-like, I’d rather hide in the stinking belly of a whale than face the truth I know so well, it’s not because of intelligence but because of the refusal to surrender. To surrender, you have to give something up. I’ve been unwilling to do that. And YHWH said to Moshe: “I see this people—and here, it is a stiff-necked people!”

A few logistical details dealt with, chairs stacked, the meeting is over. I’m surprised by how quickly many people head for the exit. When I step outside, I see why—they’re all in the parking lot, drawing puffs on their cigarettes and holding animated conversations in pairs or small groups. Smoke, bluish in the light thrown by the church windows, hangs in the air and dissipates slowly above them. I seek Peter, the burly former drinker and drug dealer. I feel drawn to him and believe he may have something to teach me. He’s conversing with two or three other men, their faces intermittently lit by cigarette glow. I’m too shy to approach.

As I stand there hesitating, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head. A woman is smiling at me. “Dr. Gabor Maté! I thought that was you! My name is Sophie. You delivered my baby nineteen years ago. You probably don’t remember.”

“I don’t, but nice to see you.” Sophie, she reminds me, was twenty-one years old when I attended the delivery of her child. As it turns out, far from feeling embarrassed at encountering a former patient at an AA event, I’m glad to be greeted by a friendly face.

“Tell me something. Do I belong here?” I give the one-minute version of my history.

“You do belong.” Sophie explains that the meeting is open to everyone. “If you have addictive behaviours, this is the right place for you. Unless it’s marked with a C for ‘Closed’ in the AA schedule, anyone with a problem is welcome. The C meetings are for alcoholics only.”

I will come back, I decide. What I’ve witnessed here are humility, gratitude, commitment, acceptance, support and authenticity. I so desperately want those qualities for myself.

“Nowhere do I see such power and grace as at my AA meetings,” a writer friend has told me. A manic-depressive with a long history of alcoholism, she’s been attending for fifteen years, and she’s been urging me to do so. I finally get what she means.

As I walk to my car, I see Sophie approach a group of her friends. “You wouldn’t believe who I just ran into,” I hear her say.