For over ten years Gabor Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. His patients are challenged by life-threatening drug addictions, schizophrenia, mental illness, Hepatitis C, HIV and, in many cases, all four. But if Dr. Maté's patients are at the far end of the spectrum, how many of us are also struggling with addictions? Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, work, food, sex, gambling and excessive inappropriate spending: what is amiss with our lives that we seek such self-destructive ways to comfort ourselves?