Gabor Maté was arriving at Vancouver airport one day when his phone lit up with a text from his wife, Rae. She asked if he still wanted a lift home, and mentioned she hadn’t yet left their house. The physician, mental health expert and bestselling author, who was 71 at the time, replied brusquely: “Never mind.” So enraged was he, as Maté writes in his new book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture, that, when he got home, he “growled a hello” and then “barely made eye contact” for the next day. “Is this the response of a mature adult in his eighth decade?” he asks.
This kind of candour about his failings has won him fans for his work on trauma, addiction, attention deficit disorder (ADD), stress and childhood development, but it is the wisdom he squeezes from it that has made him a self-help guru for some. With more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram, he has an impact on people akin to that of a rock star, but a cerebral one – more Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell than Justin Bieber (his husky drawl would sound almost as good narrating the lyrics to I’m Your Man).
