Our health consumes a growing share of our economy and our attention, but we are not in great shape. Even as a ruinous pandemic subsides, epidemics of chronic disease, obesity, addiction and mental illness continue. Systems of care strain to cope and many of us engage in an anxious and often thankless quest for wellbeing.
In his latest book, The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté offers a diagnosis for our health crisis. The problem, he suggests, is the burden of trauma people endure and the toxic culture that creates and compounds it. He prescribes profound societal change, holistic healing practices and spiritual growth assisted by psychedelics.
Both diagnosis and prescription have proven to be controversial. Skeptics worry that Maté’s explanations for ill health oversimplify a complex and incompletely understood web of causes and that his solutions dart ahead of the scientific evidence, sometimes veering towards quackery.
