![]() ![]() ![]() Maté’s portraits of his clients are wrenching, despite the frequent glimpses of humanity that lurk beneath the lies, manipulations, and criminal behaviour. At the Portland, says Maté, “there is no chimera of redemption nor any expectation of socially acceptable outcomes, only an unsentimental recognition of the real needs of real human beings in the dingy present, based on a uniformly tragic past.”įor a generation reared on the feelgood platitudes of daytime TV talk shows, it’s a decidedly unglamorous reality. ![]() In fact, the formidable 400-plus pages here do not offer even one recovery story. The facility houses North America’s first supervised injection site, focusing on harm reduction rather than the nebulous aim of “fighting” addiction. Maté, a physician at the Portland Clinic in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, treats the hardest of hardcore substance abusers. Gabor Maté’s latest book is a sprawling but fascinating look at addiction that is part science, part diatribe, part character study, and part confessional. ![]()
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