Maté changed how a lot of people think about addiction. His famous question isn't 'why the addiction?' It's 'why the pain that the addiction is trying to dull?'
He worked for years in Vancouver's hardest neighbourhood, treating people deep in heroin and crack addiction. What he saw, over and over, wasn't moral weakness. It was trauma — almost always childhood — being medicated.
He extends that idea outward. The 'small' addictions most of us run on — work, food, scrolling, shopping, validation — are the same mechanism, less stigmatized. Whatever takes the edge off whatever's underneath.
His more recent book, The Myth of Normal, goes harder: maybe a society that produces this much anxiety, addiction, and chronic illness isn't a 'normal' society at all. Maybe what looks like personal failure is, often, a sane response to an insane environment.
If you've ever quietly wondered why you can't stop doing the thing that makes you feel worse, Maté's answer is gentle and devastating: there's something underneath you haven't sat with yet. The habit isn't the problem. It's the painkiller.