Trauma is not foreign to Maté. He was born in Budapest to Jewish parents a month before the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944. His grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and his father was sent to forced labor. For his safety, his mother decided to give him to a Christian stranger. They were separated for a few weeks. Family members were eventually reunited and made their way to Canada. He became a physician, treating people in addiction on the eastside of downtown Vancouver, the drug-use capital of North America. During this time, he was a workaholic, depressed, and addicted to purchasing classical-music CDs, once spending as much as $8,000 on music in one week.