In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate. Just finished this.

Excellent work about addiction. Speaks largely to environmental factors that can lead to addiction. Explains why the 'War on drugs' will never do anything to reduce addiction.
Lots of new (to me) data around brain development and the impact environment plays in the formation of brain structures and how this contributes to our ability to deal with life landlord develop addictive behaviors. Quite fascinating stuff.

(These are passages that particularly spoke to me, some of them about spirituality. The book isn't mostly about spirituality, though; the OP has described the book pretty well. I recommend this book.)



A brain preset to be easily triggered into a stress response is likely to assign a high value to substances, activities, and situations that provide short-term relief. It will have less interest in long-term consequences, just as people in extremes of thirst will greedily consume water knowing that it may contain toxins. On the other hand, situations or activities that for the average person are likely to bring satisfaction are undervalued because, in the addict’s life, they have not been rewarding—for example, intimate connections with family. This shrinking from normal experience is also an outcome of early trauma and stress… (p. 207)

“For me,” (Byron) Katie writes (in her book LOVING WHAT IS), “the word God means reality. Anything that’s out of my control, your control, and everyone else’s control—I call that God’s business.” (p. 409)

Children do not understand metaphors. When they hear “God, our Father,” they do not know that these words can stand for the love, unity, and creative power innate in the universe. They picture an old man somewhere up above the clouds. To Serena (one of the author’s patients), he may even resemble the grandfather who used to rape her. (p. 411-412)

For any young person, if the deity she hears about is not manifested in the actions of the people who make up her world, the God-word turns into hypocrisy. If she does retain an image of God, it’s likely to be the vindictive moralizer who judges her mercilessly or the impotent sky phantom I rejected as a child. (p. 412)

I believe all of us human beings, whether we know it or not, are seeking our own divine nature. Divine in this context does not mean anything supernatural or necessarily religious, only the truth of our oneness with all that is, an ineffable sense of connectedness to other people and other beings and to each and every shard of matter or spark of energy in the entire universe. When we cease to remember that loving connection and lose touch with our deep yearning for it, we suffer. That is what Jesus meant by poverty. (p. 413)

For many people, the higher power concept need not be concerned with a deity or anything expressly spiritual. It simply means rising above their self-regarding ego and committing to serve something greater than their own immediate desires. I recall what a speaker at the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I attended had said. “As you study the Big Book and you serve people and help the community, your heart softens. That’s the greatest gift, a soft heart. I wouldn’t have believed it.” (p. 415)
It is no coincidence that addictions arise mostly in cultures that subjugate communal goals, time-honored tradition, and individual creativity to mass production and the accumulation of wealth. Addiction is one of the outcomes of the “existential vacuum,” the feeling of emptiness engendered when we place a supreme value on selfish attainments. (p. 416)

Spiritual awakening is no more and no less than a human being claiming his or her own full humanity. People who find themselves have no need to turn to addiction, or to stay with it. Armed with compassion, we recognize that addiction was the answer—the best answer we could find at one time in our lives—to the problem of isolation from our true selves and from the rest of creation. (p. 421)

Mate, Gabor. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2010.