Dr. Anna Lembke: Dopamine Nation - Finding Balance In The Age Of Indulgence (And The Secret To Life In One Quote)

Brad Kearns

Dr. Anna Lembke joins us to discuss how to achieve balance in the age of indulgence and her book Dopamine Nation.

As a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, Dr. Anna is passionate about helping others see how the world has transformed from a place of scarcity to “a place of overwhelming abundance.” From drugs to food to news to gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, and even tweeting, there has been a massive increase in the numbers, variety, and potency of highly rewarding stimuli—a staggering increase that Dr. Anna finds extremely concerning and seriously harmful. She even refers to smartphones as, “Modern-day hypodermic needle[s], delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.” 

During this episode, I call attention to a quote from Dr. Anna that could be the secret to leading a rich, meaningful, and fulfilling life. She’ll detail the idea in the show, but here you go to consider for now: The routine things you do in daily life can take on epic proportions, but it doesn't mean you have to get to the top of the mountain. This idea reminded me a lot of a famous Martin Luther King quote, one that you’ll hear me share during this episode: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”

Enjoy this show with Dr. Anna and thanks for listening.

TIMESTAMPS:

The smartphone is today’s hypodermic needle delivering digital dopamine. [01:20]

Should we allow ourselves to get excited about things? Are the highs and lows good for you? [05:20]

Dopamine is triggered when we enumerate things rather than looking at the process. [09:24]

After you win the gold, what is next? The consumption of sports even as a spectator is very much vulnerable to this problem of addiction. [11:37]

The point is that we all have the same mental circuitry that gets us to instinctively approach pleasure and avoid pain. [15:00]

How to we navigate that balance of existing in competitive, modern culture? [17:36]

What’s amazing about our phone screens is that the screen itself is reinforcing. [23:27]

It is hard to imagine the world we grew up in with no phones and internet when we look at what today’s youth are living with. [27:09]

The routine things that you do in daily life can take on epic proportions, but it doesn't mean you have to get to the top of the mountain. [29:56]

We need to convey the message to young people to not try to find the grandiose thing you need to do but, instead look at your life as it is and whatever hand you’ve been dealt, make a positive difference every day.  [32:24]

We need to recognize that our vulnerability to primitive signals, is part of the solution. [36:10]

We need to do intermittent fasting with our devices in order to narrow the window in which we are engaged. [39:46]

We are constantly commandeered to keep connected. It starts with awareness. In this addictogenic world, how do unhook ourselves from video games, for example? [41:10]

With repeated exposure to the reinforcing drug or behavior, the response gets weaker and shorter. To reset from the addiction, it seems that 30 days is the magic number. [46:03]

The progression to addiction is exactly the same whether you’re dealing with a drug that you ingest or you’re dealing with a behavior like gambling or video games. [48:04]

Are there genetic vulnerabilities with addictions? [49:50]

How is radical honesty involved in this story? [52:14]

LINKS:

Brad Kearns.com
Brad’s Shopping page
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Weight of Gold, documentary
The Hacking of the American Mind
Dr. Anna Lembke

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