Whether it’s sugar or shopping, voyeuring or vaping, social media posts or sex, we all engage in behaviors we wish we didn’t do or to an extent….we regret.

As we approach the New Year with resolutions in mind...Dr. Anna Lembke will teach your listeners the tools they need to prevent the tendency of making bad habits of cheap pleasures…including practical solutions for how to manage overconsumption, including dopamine fasting, self-binding, and radical honesty – and the lasting advantage to making these practices a part of everyday life. 

DOPAMINE NATION

Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence -

By Anna Lembke, MD

https://www.annalembke.com/

DOPAMINE NATION is a book about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most importantly, it’s about the relationship between the two and how understanding that relationship is essential for a life well-lived. Why? Because the world has transformed from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance: drugs, food, news, shopping, gambling, social media, and the list goes on and on.

Today, we’re all vulnerable to the problem of addiction. In DOPAMINE NATION, Anna Lembke, MD, medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine, explores exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain, combined with the true stories of her patients falling prey to addiction and finding their way out again. 

Dr. Lembke has decades of experience in clinical practice and neuroscientific research and in DOPAMINE NATION, readers will learn:

1. The Internet promotes compulsive overconsumption not merely by providing increased access to drugs old and new, but also by suggesting behaviors that otherwise may never have occurred to us. Videos don’t just “go viral.” They’re literally contagious, hence the advent of the meme.
2. Rates of addiction are rising the world over. The disease burden attributed to alcohol and illicit drug addiction is 1.5% globally, and more than 5% in the United States. These data exclude tobacco consumption. Drug of choice varies by country. The US is dominated by illicit drugs, Russia and Eastern Europe by alcohol addiction.
3. Our compulsive overconsumption risks not just our demise but also that of our planet. The world’s natural resources are rapidly diminishing. Economists estimate that in 2040 the world’s natural capital will be 21% less in high-income countries and 17% less in poorer countries. Meanwhile, carbon emissions will grow by 7% in high-income countries and 44% in the rest of the world.
4. When researchers asked the following question to people in thirty countries around the world – “During the past four weeks, how often have you had bodily aches or pain? Never; seldom; sometimes; often; or very often?” – they found that Americans reported more pain than any other country.
5. Dopamine is not the only neurotransmitter involved in reward processing, but most neuroscientist agree it is among the most important. Dopamine may play a bigger role in the motivation to get a reward than the pleasure of the reward itself.
6. Exercise increases many of the neurotransmitters involved in positive mood regulation: dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. Exercise contributes to the birth of new neurons and even reduces the likelihood of using and getting addicted to drugs.
7. Strategies to manage overconsumption, including Dopamine fasting, self-binding, and radical honesty.
8. The neuroscience of pleasure and pain using easy-to-understand metaphors and real-life examples.
9. Her experiences treating patients with addiction and why she sees them as “modern day prophets” in a dopamine-rich world.
10. Practical solutions for how to manage overconsumption, including dopamine fasting, self-binding, and radical honesty – and the lasting advantage to making these practices a part of everyday life.
11. Her own struggles with compulsive overconsumption and how she has taken the lessons learned from her patients and applied them to her own life, including parenting her children

About the Author: Anna Lembke is Medical Director and Professor of Stanford Addiction Medicine, program director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. She is the recipient of numerous awards for outstanding research in mental illness, for excellence in teaching, and for clinical innovation in treatment. A clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries in prestigious outlets such as The New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, keeps an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.

“Anna Lembke deeply understands an experience I hear about often in the therapy room at the nexus between our modern addictions and our primal brains. Her stories of guiding people to find a healthy balance between pleasure and pain have the power to transform your life.” —Lori Gottlieb, “Dear Therapist” columnist at The Atlantic, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

“In an era of overconsumption and instant gratification, Dopamine Nation explains the personal and societal price of being ruled by the next fix—and how to manage it. No matter what you might find yourself over-indulging in—from the internet to food to work to sex—you’ll find this book riveting, scary, cogent, and cleverly argued. Lembke weaves patient stories with research, in a voice that’s as empathetic as it is clear-eyed.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

“We all desire a break from our routines and those parts of life that upset us. What if, instead of trying to escape these things, we learn to turn toward them, to reach a peaceful harmony with ourselves and the people we share our lives with? Lembke has written a book that radically changes the way we think about mental illness, pleasure, pain, reward, and stress. ” —Daniel J. Levitin, New York Times bestselling author of The Organized Mind and Successful Aging