GAbor Mate's new book, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" takes its title from the Buddhist concept of the Wheel of Life. In this model, the six realms correspond to experiences any one of us may have on any given day: from the Heaven realms of having our desires satisfied (albeit temporarily) to the depths of the Hell Realms when we feel ourselves to be a blight on life itself. The Hungry Ghost realm population have large heads, skinny necks, scrawny bodies, and most importantly, an inner emptiness that nothing, nothing ever satisfies.

Mate's compassionate drive changed his life from doctor in a family clinic, with all the comforts and status this entails, to doctor of the denizens of hell in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside,home to arguable the largest concentration of drug addicts in Canada.

Mate writes with equal grace and compelling insight whether the topic is the lives of his patients, past and present and their suffering, or the exotic area of neurophysiology whose mazes he makes clear with straight language.

Mate's take including as it does biographies, and his own story of addiction, science, psychology and sociology heralds a new form of text, combining the layers which he maintains are all at work in the creation of addiction.

His book however does not rest with "them, over there", keeping us as readers safely distanced.
His penetrating insight into the nature of addiction, all addiction, includes all of us either as in-mates or at least temporary guests, in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.