By Steve Weatherbe

AT first glance, it’s an odd mix: a national conference of Eastern Orthodox clergy and laity; and Gabor Maté, Vancouver’s self-described non-believing Jewish expert on addictions and mental disorders.

Not so strange, said Fr. Kaleeg Hainsworth, the pastor of All Saints of Alaska Church – and the man who invited Dr. Maté to speak to both the public and to delegates attending the conference in Victoria.

Maté spoke about the spiritual component of addictions, using ‘The God-Shaped Hole’ as the title of his two lectures.

Though Maté describes himself as a non-believer in one of his four books, Fr. Hainsworth told BCCN:  “Gabor believes in divine law. But he is struggling with the concept of a divine law giver. He says things like, ‘If you believe the 10 Commandments are random, try breaking one.’ So I think Gabor is in process.”

If addictions are caused by the breaking of any commandments, it would probably be the two listed by Jesus – to love God, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself.

Addicts – in Maté’s experience in recent years practicing medicine in Vancouver’s east side, Canada’s national drug abuse capital – have resorted to addictive substances or addictive behaviours to numb the pain of a loveless childhood.

“If an addict can feel loved, their brain can relax and they can accept the possibility of salvation beyond addiction,” he told his audience.

Not surprisingly, therefore, Maté dismissed as counter-productive society’s criminalization of drug use and imprisonment of users. Nor did he buy genetic explanations for addiction, which, he said, just “let addicts off the hook.”

Recovery from addictions, said Maté, takes hard work – and facing the emotional pain of the past, rather than sedating it. But it also requires spiritual effort, he added, quoting  psychiatrist and author Thomas Hora’s dictum: “All problems are psychological; all solutions are spiritual.”

The premise for Maté’s five-step approach to healing is that adverse childhood experiences have caused the addict’s brain to form faulty beliefs – especially to label wants as needs. But these mistaken beliefs can be changed, he writes in his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, by “a relatively brief period of consistent and disciplined practice.”

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The first four steps, which Maté borrowed from the UCLA self-treatment plan for Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder, are to be followed each time the addictive desire emerges: re-labeling needs the addict’s brain is saying ‘must’ be satisfied; re-attributing these messages to faulty beliefs in the brain caused by unhappy childhood experiences; refocusing the brain on something compelling but not compulsive, as wants; and re-valuing the addiction downward, because the addiction has become the addict’s primary attachment and strongest motivator.

Maté’s own addition to the formula is “re-creation” – the conscious framing of a positive value system, and its active pursuit.

Maté explained that recent research shows that the brain of addicts has been physically altered from the norm, but that it could be realtered to function more healthily.

He cited several spiritual traditions, including Christianity, which urge people to give up their attachment to worldly things. “I’m not religious, but I know what they’re talking about,” he said, noting how Christian scripture equates sin with slavery – which is a good description of addiction.

Hainsworth said he booked Maté for the conference because “he has a fundamentally Orthodox approach to human beings and their passions” –  both in terms of addiction as spiritual enslavement, and in his approach to healing.

Clergy of all faiths face plenty of addicts in their pastoral work, added Hainsworth. “People show up with incredibly dysfunctional understandings of God, church and the pastor’s role.” What’s more, he said, “a lot of clergy are dysfunctional – and so their pastoral care is dysfunctional.”

Christian communities can support the recovery of addicts by giving them the message, both in preaching and in action, that God loves them. Some Christian concepts of God – such as the idea that he is so angry at humankind that only the death of his Son on the cross would appease him – are not particularly helpful.

What is helpful, he said, is the idea of “the co-suffering God,” who so loved humankind that he sent Jesus to suffer with us – and “who suffers with us eternally.”

All Saints of Alaska is living that out by establishing a downtown Victoria mission, the St. Maria of Paris Outreach Centre – with a drop-in chapel, coffee house and bookstore. It is located at 824 Johnson Street.

September 2010