Mark Mitrani

“Music gives me a sense of self-sufficiency and nourishment. I don’t need anyone or anything. I bathe in it as in amniotic fluid; it surrounds and protects me. It’s also stable, ever-available and something I can control - that is, I can reach for it whenever I want. I can also choose music that reflects my mood, or if I want, helps to soothe it…music-seeking offers excitement and tension that I can immediately resolve and a reward I can immediately attain - unlike other tensions in my life and other desired rewards. Music is a source of beauty and meaning outside myself that I can claim as my own without exploring how, in my life, I keep from directly experiencing those qualities. Addiction, in this sense, is the lazy man’s path to transcendence.”
― Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No

“The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates.”
― Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“What desire can be contrary to nature since it was given to man by nature itself?”
― Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason