WEBVTT

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I've come to talk to you about addiction,
the power of addiction,

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but also addiction to power.

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As a medical doctor,
I work in Vancouver, Canada,

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and I have worked with some very,
very addicted people.

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People who use heroin,
they inject cocaine,

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they drink alcohol, crystal meth
and every drug known to man.

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And these people suffer.

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If the success of a doctor is to be
measured by how long his patients live,

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then I am a failure

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because my patients die very young,
relatively speaking.

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They die of HIV, they die of hepatitis C,

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they die of infections
of their heart valves,

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they die of infections of their brains,
of their spines,

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of their hearts,
of their bloodstream.

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They die of suicide, of overdose,
of violence, of accidental deaths.

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And if you look at them, you call to mind

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the words of the great Egyptian novelist,
Naguib Mahvouz, who wrote:

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"Nothing records the effects of a sad life
as graphically as the human body."

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Because these people lose everything.

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They lose their health,
they lose their beauty,

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they lose their teeth,
they lose their wealth,

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they lose human relationships

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and, in the end,
they often lose their lives.

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And yet, nothing shakes them
from their addiction.

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Nothing can force them
to give up their addiction.

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The addictions are powerful
and the question is: why?

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And as one of my patients said to me:

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"I'm not afraid of dying," he said,
"I'm more afraid of living."

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And the question we have to ask is:
Why are people afraid of life?

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And, if you want to understand addiction,

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you can't look at
what's wrong with the addiction;

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you have to look at
what's right about it.

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In other words, what's the person getting
from the addiction?

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What are they getting
that otherwise they don't have?

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What addicts get is relief from pain,

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what they get is a sense of peace,
a sense of control,

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a sense of calmness,
very, very temporarily.

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And the question is why are
these qualities missing from their lives,

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what happened to them?

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If you look at drugs like heroin,
like morphine, like codeine,

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if you look at cocaine,
if you look at alcohol,

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these are all painkillers.

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In one way or another,
they all soothe pain.

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And that's why
the real question in addiction

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is not, "Why the addiction?,"
but, "Why the pain?"

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Now, I just finished reading
the biography of Keith Richards,

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the guitarist for the Rolling Stones

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and, as you probably know,
everybody is still surprised

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that Richards is still alive today,

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because he was a heavy-duty
heroine addict for a long time.

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And in his biography,
he writes that the addiction

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was all about looking for oblivion,
looking for forgetting.

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He said, "The contortions
that we go through

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just not to be ourselves for a few hours."

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And I understand that very well myself,

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because I know that discomfort with myself,

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I know that discomfort
being in my own skin,

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I know that desire
to escape from my own mind.

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The great British psychiatrist
R.D. Laing said

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that there are three things
that people are afraid of.

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They are afraid of death,
of other people and of their own minds.

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For a long time in my life, I wanted
to distract myself from my own mind,

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because I was afraid to be alone with it.

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And how would I distract myself?

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Well, I've never used drugs,
but I've distracted myself through work,

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and throwing myself into activities.

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And I've distracted myself
through shopping;

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in my case, for classical compact music,
classical compact discs.

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But I've been a real addict that way.

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One week, I spent 8,000 dollars
on classical compact discs,

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not because I wanted to,

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but because I couldn't help
going back to the store.

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And as a medical doctor,
I used to deliver a lot of babies.

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And once I left a woman
in labor in hospital

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to get a classical piece of music.

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I still could have made it back
to the hospital on time,

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but once in the store you can't leave,

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because there are these evil
classical music dealers in the aisles:

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"Hey buddy, have you listened to
the latest Mozart symphony cycle?"

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"You haven't? Well..."

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So I missed the delivery of that baby,

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and I came home and I lied
to my wife about it.

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Like any addict, I would lie about it
and I would ignore my own children

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because of my obsession
with work and with music.

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So I know what that
escape from the self is like.

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My definition of addiction

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is any behavior that gives you
temporary relief, temporary pleasure,

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but in the long term causes harm,
has some negative consequences

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and you can't give it up,
despite those negative consequences.

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And from that perspective,
you can understand

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that there are many, many addictions.

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Yes, there is the addiction to drugs,

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but there is also
the addiction to consumerism,

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there is the addiction to sex,
to the internet,

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to shopping, to food.

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The Buddhists have this idea
of the hungry ghosts.

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The hungry ghosts are creatures
with large empty bellies

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and small, scrawny necks
and tiny little mouths,

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so they can never get enough,

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they can never fill
this emptiness on the inside.

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And we are all hungry ghosts
in this society,

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we all have this emptiness,

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and so many of us are trying to fill
that emptiness from the outside

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and the addiction is all about trying
to fill that emptiness from the outside.

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Now, if you want to ask the question
of why people are in pain,

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you can't look at their genetics.

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You have to look at their lives.

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And in the case of my patients,
my highly addicted patients,

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it's very clear why they are in pain.

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Because they have been abused
all of their lives,

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they began life as abused children.

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All of the women I have worked with
over a 12-year period, hundreds of them,

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they had all been
sexually abused as children.

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And the men had been traumatized as well.

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The men had been
sexually abused, neglected,

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physically abused, abandoned

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and emotionally hurt over and over again.

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And that's why the pain.

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And there is something else here too:
the human brain.

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The human brains itself,
as you've heard already,

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develops an interaction
with the environment.

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It's not just genetically programed.

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So the kind of environment
that a child has

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will actually shape
the development of the brain.

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Now, I can tell you about
two experiments with mice.

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You take a little mouse
and you put food in its mouth

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and he'll eat it and enjoy it
and swallow it,

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but if you put the food down
a few inches away from his nose,

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he will not move to eat it;

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he will actually starve to death
rather than eat.

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Why?

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Because, genetically, they knocked out
the receptors for a chemical in the brain

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called dopamine.

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Dopamine is the incentive
and motivation chemical.

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Dopamine flows
whenever we are motivated,

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excited, vital, vibrant,
curious about something,

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when we are seeking food
or a sexual partner.

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Without the dopamine,
we have no motivation.

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Now what do you think the addict gets?

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When the addict shoots cocaine,

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when the addict shoots crystal meth
or almost any drug,

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they get a hit of dopamine in their brain.

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And the question is,

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what happened to their brains
in the first place?

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Because it's a myth
that drugs are addictive.

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Drugs are not by themselves addictive,

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because most people who try most drugs
never become addicted.

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So the question is,

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why are some people vulnerable
to being addicted?

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Just like food is not addictive,
but to some people it is;

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shopping is not addictive,
but to some people it is;

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television is not addictive,
but to some people it is.

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So the question is, 
why this susceptibility?

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There's another
little experiment with mice

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where infant mice,

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if they are separated from their mothers
will not cry for their mothers.

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Now what would that mean in the wild?

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It means that they would die,

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because only the mother protects
the child's life and nurtures the child.

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And why?

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Because genetically
they knocked out the receptors,

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the chemical binding sites in the brain,
for endorphins

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and endorphins are indigenous
morphine-like substances;

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endorphins are our own
natural painkillers.

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What morphine or endorphins also do is
they make possible the experience of love;

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they make possible the experience
of attachment to the parent

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and the parents' attachment to the child.

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So these little mice without
endorphin receptors in their brains

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will naturally not call for their mothers.

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In other words,

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the addiction to these drugs and
of course the heroine and the morphine,

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what they do is they act
on the endorphin system;

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that's why they work.

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And so, the question is,

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what happens to people that they need
these chemicals from the outside?

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Well, what happens to them is,
when they are abused as children,

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those circuits don't develop.

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When you don't have love
and connection in your life,

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when you are very, very young,

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then those important brain circuits
just don't develop properly.

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And under conditions of abuse,
things just don't develop properly

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and their brains then
are susceptible when they do the drugs.

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Now they feel normal,
now they feel pain relief,

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now they feel love.

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And as one patient said to me:
"When I first did heroine," she said,

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"it felt like a warm soft hug,
just like a mother hugging her baby."

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Now, I've had that same emptiness,
not to the same degree as my patients.

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What happened to me is that
I was born in Budapest, Hungary,

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in 1944, to Jewish parents,

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just before the Germans occupied Hungary.

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And you know what happened
to the Jewish people in Eastern Europe.

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And I was 2 months old
when the German army moved into Budapest.

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And the day after they did,
my mother phoned the pediatrician

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and she said,

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"Would you please come and see Gabor
because he is crying all the time."

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And the pediatrician said,
"Of course, I will come to see him,

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but I should tell you,
all of my Jewish babies are crying."

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Now why?

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What do babies know about Hitler
or genocide or war?

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Nothing.

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What we were picking up on
is the stresses and the terrors

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and the depression of our mothers

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and that actually shapes
the child's brain.

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And of course,
what happens then

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is I get the message
that the world doesn't want me,

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because if my mother is
not happy around me,

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she must not want me.

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Why do I become a workaholic later?

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Because if they don't want me,
at least they are going to need me.

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And I'll be an important doctor
and they are going to need me

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and that way I can make up

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for the feeling of not being
wanted in the first place.

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And what does that mean?

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It means that I am working all the time,

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and when I am not working,
I'm consumed by buying music.

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What message do my kids get?

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My kids get the same message
that they are not wanted.

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And this is how we pass it on,
we pass on the trauma,

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and we pass on the suffering,
unconsciously,

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from one generation to the next.

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So obviously, there are many,
many ways to fill this emptiness,

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and for each person, there is a different
way of filling the emptiness,

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but the emptiness always goes back

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to what we didn't get
when we were very small.

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And then we look at the drug addict
and we say to the drug addict,

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"How can you possibly do this to yourself?

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How can you possibly inject
this terrible substance into your body

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that may kill you?"

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But look at what
we are doing to the earth.

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We are injecting all kinds of things
into the atmosphere

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and the oceans and the environment

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that is killing us,
that's killing the earth.

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Now which addiction is greater?

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The addiction to oil? Or to consumerism?

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Which causes the greater harm?

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And yet we judge the drug addict

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because we actually see
that they are just like us

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and we don't like that.

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So we say, "You are different from us,
you are worse than we are."

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(Applause)

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On the plane to São Paulo
and Rio de Janeiro,

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I was reading the New York Times,
on June 9th,

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and there was an article about Brazil

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and the article was about a man
called Nísio Gomes,

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a leader of the Guarani people
in the Amazon,

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who was killed last November
and you probably heard about him.

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And he was killed because
he was protecting his people

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from the big farmers and the companies

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that are taking over the rainforest
and destroying the rainforest

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and that are destroying the habitat of
the native Indian people here in Brazil.

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And I can tell you that coming from Canada
the same thing has happened over there.

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And many of my patients are actually
First Nation's Indian people,

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native Indian people in Canada,
and they are heavily addicted.

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They make up a small percentage
of the population,

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but they make up a large percentage
of the people in jail,

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the people who are addicted,

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the people who are mentally ill,

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the people who commit suicide. Why?

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Because their lands were
taken away from them,

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and because they were killed and abused
for generations and generations.

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But the question I ask is,

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if you can understand the suffering
of these native people

00:14:07.216 --> 00:14:11.768
and how that suffering makes them
seek relief from pain in their addictions,

00:14:11.768 --> 00:14:14.017
what about the people
who are perpetrating it?

00:14:14.017 --> 00:14:15.516
What are they addicted to?

00:14:15.516 --> 00:14:17.511
Well, they are addicted to power,

00:14:17.511 --> 00:14:19.421
they are addicted to wealth,

00:14:19.421 --> 00:14:21.201
they are addicted to acquisition.

00:14:21.201 --> 00:14:23.493
They want to make themselves bigger.

00:14:23.493 --> 00:14:26.310
And when I was trying to understand
the addiction to power,

00:14:26.310 --> 00:14:28.977
I looked at some of the most
powerful people in history.

00:14:28.977 --> 00:14:33.569
I looked at Alexander the Great,
I looked at Napoleon, I looked at Hitler,

00:14:33.569 --> 00:14:35.862
I looked at Genghis Kahn,
I looked at Stalin.

00:14:35.862 --> 00:14:38.705
It's very interesting
when you look at these people.

00:14:38.705 --> 00:14:41.898
First of all, why did they need
power so much?

00:14:41.898 --> 00:14:43.686
Interestingly enough,

00:14:43.686 --> 00:14:46.431
physically they were all 
very small people,


00:14:46.431 --> 00:14:52.216
my size or smaller; actually smaller.

00:14:52.216 --> 00:14:56.483
They came from outsiders,

00:14:56.483 --> 00:14:59.242
they were not part
of the major population.

00:14:59.242 --> 00:15:04.153
Stalin was a Georgian, not a Russian;
Napoleon was a Corsican, not a Frenchman;

00:15:06.043 --> 00:15:13.103
Alexander was a Macedonian, not a Greek;
and Hitler was an Austrian, not a German.

00:15:13.683 --> 00:15:16.394
So a real sense of insecurity
and inferiority.

00:15:16.394 --> 00:15:19.704
And they needed power
to feel okay in themselves,

00:15:19.704 --> 00:15:21.304
to make themselves bigger,

00:15:21.304 --> 00:15:24.606
and in order to get that power,
they were quite willing to fight wars

00:15:24.606 --> 00:15:28.414
and to kill a lot of people,
just to maintain that power.

00:15:29.354 --> 00:15:32.363
I'm not saying that only small people
can be power-hungry

00:15:32.363 --> 00:15:34.923
but it is interesting to look at
these examples,

00:15:34.923 --> 00:15:38.573
because power, the addiction to power,
is always about the emptiness

00:15:38.573 --> 00:15:40.753
that you try and fill from the outside.

00:15:40.753 --> 00:15:45.217
And Napoleon, even in exile
on the island of St. Helena,

00:15:45.217 --> 00:15:49.669
after he lost his power,
he said, "I love power, I love power."

00:15:49.669 --> 00:15:52.906
He couldn't think of himself
without power.

00:15:52.906 --> 00:15:56.953
He had no sense of himself
without being powerful externally.

00:15:56.953 --> 00:16:01.049
And that's very interesting
when you compare it to people

00:16:01.049 --> 00:16:03.465
like the Buddha or Jesus,

00:16:03.465 --> 00:16:05.913
because if you look at the story
about Jesus and Buddha,

00:16:05.913 --> 00:16:08.535
both of them were tempted by the devil

00:16:08.535 --> 00:16:14.307
and one of the things that the devil
offers them is power, earthly power,

00:16:14.307 --> 00:16:16.510
and they both say no.

00:16:16.510 --> 00:16:18.333
Now why do they say no?

00:16:18.333 --> 00:16:23.504
They say no because they have
the power inside of themselves,

00:16:23.504 --> 00:16:25.525
they don't need it from the outside.

00:16:25.525 --> 00:16:28.688
And they both say no
because they don't want to control people,

00:16:28.688 --> 00:16:30.463
they want to teach people.

00:16:30.463 --> 00:16:35.685
They want to teach people by example
and by soft words,

00:16:35.685 --> 00:16:41.477
and by wisdom, not through force;
so they refuse power.

00:16:41.477 --> 00:16:44.392
And it's very interesting
what they say about that.

00:16:46.292 --> 00:16:53.484
Jesus says that the power and the reality
is not outside of yourself but inside.

00:16:53.484 --> 00:16:56.527
He says the Kingdom of God is within.

00:16:57.377 --> 00:17:01.359
And the Buddha, before he dies
and his monks are mourning and crying

00:17:01.359 --> 00:17:02.691
and they are all upset,

00:17:02.691 --> 00:17:06.214
he says, "Don't mourn me,"
he says, "And don't worship me.

00:17:06.214 --> 00:17:12.854
Find a lamp inside yourself, be a lamp
unto yourselves, find a light within."

00:17:12.854 --> 00:17:16.918
And so as we look this difficult world
with the loss of the environment

00:17:16.918 --> 00:17:21.970
and global warming
and the depredations in the oceans,

00:17:21.970 --> 00:17:25.032
let's not look to the people in power
to change things,

00:17:25.032 --> 00:17:28.756
because the people in power,
I'm afraid to say, are very often

00:17:28.756 --> 00:17:31.299
some of the emptiest people in the world

00:17:31.299 --> 00:17:33.392
and they are not going to
change things for us.

00:17:33.392 --> 00:17:35.838
We have to find that light
within ourselves,

00:17:35.838 --> 00:17:38.356
we have to find the light
within communities

00:17:38.356 --> 00:17:41.814
and within our own wisdom
and our own creativity.

00:17:41.814 --> 00:17:45.012
We can't wait for the people in power
to make things better for us,

00:17:45.012 --> 00:17:48.972
because they are never going to,
not unless we make them.

00:17:53.022 --> 00:17:58.494
They say that human nature is competitive,
that human nature is aggressive,

00:17:58.494 --> 00:18:00.489
that human nature is selfish.

00:18:00.489 --> 00:18:03.964
It's just the opposite;
human nature is actually cooperative,

00:18:03.964 --> 00:18:09.499
human nature is actually generous,
human nature is actually community-minded.

00:18:09.499 --> 00:18:13.614
What we see here at this conference
with people sharing information,

00:18:13.614 --> 00:18:17.289
people receiving information,
people committed to the better world,

00:18:17.289 --> 00:18:19.084
that's actually human nature.

00:18:19.084 --> 00:18:20.626
And what I am saying to you is,

00:18:20.626 --> 00:18:23.825
if you find that light within,
if you find your own nature,

00:18:23.825 --> 00:18:25.714
then we will be kinder to ourselves

00:18:25.714 --> 00:18:27.675
and we will also be kinder to nature.

00:18:27.675 --> 00:18:28.957
Thank you.

00:18:28.957 --> 00:18:32.408
(Cheers) (Applause)