‘Trauma expert’ Gabor Mate says he bitterly REGRETS controversial Prince Harry interview because of ‘demeaning, dismissive’ backlash he faced – saying ‘foofoo’ surrounding it took over his life and made him ‘lose himself’

‘Trauma expert’ Gabor Maté has admitted he regrets his controversial interview with Prince Harry because the ‘foofoo’ surrounding it consumed his entire life and made him ‘lose himself’.

In March, the Duke of Sussex, 39, spoke to the Hungarian-Canadian doctor, 79, about “living with loss and the importance of personal healing” while promoting his memoir Spare.

During their sit-down, which was streamed live on the Internet and cost $33 to watch, Harry earned a series of bombshell claims about growing up as a royal child.

The conversation came under intense scrutiny, especially after it emerged that Gabor had made a series of eyebrow-raising comments in the past — such as comparing Hamas to the Jewish heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis, defending Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli civilians, and branding the Israeli government as terrorists.

He is also an outspoken advocate of drug decriminalization and has used the Amazonian plant ayahuasca to treat patients with mental illness.

Now the author and doctor has discussed the public’s ‘degrading, dismissive and twisted’ reaction to his conversation with Harry, as he revealed it left him in a truly ‘dark place’.

“There was an incredible reaction on social media to it, which for the most part was so negative and so demeaning and so dismissive and so twisted,” he said recently during an appearance on Steven Bartlett’s The diary of a CEO podcast.

‘I hardly know how to talk about it. I thought I would know better at this age, but you know what, it really hit me.”

Gabor said the response left him in a “very negative state of mind” and feeling like he was “losing himself” – which led to him eventually seeking help from a psychiatrist.

“I was in a dark place, I’m a human being like the rest,” he continued. “It’s so hard to ask for help, but I did it anyway.”

He accused the media of twisting his words and recalled them calling him things like “stern, overbearing and a merchant of pain.”

However, after speaking with a psychiatrist, Gabor said he later realized that his problems were not related to the criticism, but rather stemmed from an “old, unresolved wound” from his past.

According to Gabor, he had reservations about talking to Harry from the beginning because he was uncomfortable with the idea of ​​charging people to watch it.

“All along I felt like I had to disagree with the way they set it up. Because of the way it was set up, to view it, people had to buy a copy of Harry’s book,” he explained.

‘I thought, “This isn’t fair, four million people have already bought the book. Why can’t they watch this interview?” They had to buy another copy.

“I thought this should be a free public service from two people having a really interesting conversation.

‘But I agreed to it out of pure opportunism. I didn’t follow my feelings. I agreed to something I didn’t really like.

“Not that I didn’t like the idea of ​​talking to him, I didn’t like the idea of ​​putting myself behind a paywall. I lost myself by agreeing to do it.”

Despite his regret about the interview, Gabor insisted he “doesn’t care anymore” what the public thinks of him.

But he said he wants people to “see” him for who he is, and “not some twisted version.”

“I don’t care if people agree with me or refute my ideas, but I want them to see me and what I’m actually saying, and not a distorted version created by their own minds,” he concluded.

“So what if someone says (something bad about me). I don’t live in the press. I don’t live in anyone else’s thoughts. Here I am. Let them think and say what they want.’

Gabor has more than twenty years of experience working with people suffering from addiction and mental illness. He believes that all the problems we face as adults stem from traumas we endured as children.

He himself had a traumatic upbringing. He was born in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944, and when he was five months old, his maternal grandparents were among the Jews murdered at Auschwitz. He was then taken from his mother and hidden with an aunt until the war was over.

He is an outspoken advocate of drug decriminalization and has used the Amazonian plant ayahuasca to treat patients with mental illness.

The psychedelic plant, taken as a brewed drink, causes people to experience hallucinations and other side effects, including vomiting – something Prince Harry has admitted to using to manage his ‘trauma and pain’.

It remains illegal in the US, Britain and Canada, and in 2011 Canadian officials threatened Dr. Maté to be arrested if he did not stop using the drug to treat his patients.

In addition to his shocking anti-Zionist comments, Gabor has also contributed to a pro-Kremlin website that defends brutal regimes around the world and speaks warmly about saliva-stained Pink Floyd star and alleged “Putin apologist” Roger Waters.