A story is a story. It doesn’t have one fixed meaning any more than a dream does. It would be wrong for me to say that the familiar children’s story Hansen and Gretel was simply a parable of addiction. It is, but that’s not all it is, and the story would never forgive me for putting it in a little cage (well-fed though it might be.) However, the story IS very instructive as a paradigm of addictive processes and I believe it encodes a great deal of information that can be extremely useful to those of us who are interested in these pathologies and who are prepared to respectfully allow the story to disclose its wisdom. “Childhood trauma is really what puts the rocket fuel behind addiction.” -Drew Pinsky MD, addictionologist. As the story opens, there is “a great famine” that has come to the land. The poor woodcutter, his children, and their stepmother have become desperate and hungry. The children, Hansel and Gretel, hear their stepmother propose, and their father agree to, a plan to abandon the children in the woods where “wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces." The story suggests that vulnerability to addiction begins in childhood trauma. Children are dependent on their parents for care and protection, and fears about losing parental care are common. Hansel and Gretel are already dealing with the stress of hunger and poverty; their parents unreliable are unreliable caregivers, a common source of childhood stress—now add to that…