In The Realms Of Hungry Ghost Analysis

While learning about conditions of modernity and the role of culture with pharmaceutical intervention and addiction and social abandonment in this class, it reminded me of another anthropology class I took, ANTH126 Culture and Medicine, that discussed about drugs, both pharmaceutical and illegal, and addiction. One of the readings I did was In the Realms of Hungry Ghost by Gabor Mate along with his TedxTalk of “Power of Addiction and Addiction to Power” going more in detail about drugs and addiction and how drugs don’t actually cause addiction. For the definition of addiction Mate provides two definition where one involves only substance and the other is both substance and nonsubstance related. He states there are other kinds of addiction

Dopamine plays a huge part in addiction since it’s a chemical that makes a person feel good. These circuits are responsible for love, connection, pain relief, and motivation, but because the abuse, the circuits are not developed (198). Since they are not well developed, the person are prone to the drugs and being addicted. Because they never got the chemicals naturally when they were young, they have this emptiness and look for an outside source that can give them the chemicals. He compared that emptiness to the Buddhist mandala with one of the realm of the hungry ghost which looks like a creature with a big, bloated, empty stomach. When they take the drugs, they feel normal. All addictions share the same brain circuit and chemicals (137). Not only the circuits of the brain are not developed, but the gray and white matter are reduced. Because of this, they lose learning capacity which “diminish ability to make new choices, acquire new information, and adapt to new circumstances” (150). That is just for white matter; for the reduction of gray matter density, it can’t regulate emotion impulse or make rational decisions. What cause addiction is that the more drugs used, more of the dopamine receptors are loss. Because of that, the patient has to take more to get the same affect and make up for the receptors that were loss (152).