New PN: Dopamine Nation
 |
Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgenceby Anna Lembke, MD |
“Today, more than one in four American adults - and more than one in twenty American children - takes a psychiatric drug on a daily basis."ANNA LEMBKE, MD |
FROM THE BOOK“This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about the relationship between pleasure and pain, and how understanding that relationship has become essential for a life well lived.
Why? Because we’ve transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance: Drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . the increased numbers, variety, and potency of highly rewarding stimuli today is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. If you haven’t met your drug of choice yet, it’s coming soon to a website near you. Scientists rely on dopamine as a kind of universal currency for measuring the addictive potential of any experience. The more dopamine in the brain’s reward pathway, the more addictive the experience. This book aims to unpack the neuroscience of reward and, in so doing, enable us to find a better, healthier balance between pleasure and pain. But neuroscience is not enough. We also need the lived experience of human beings. Who better to teach us how to overcome compulsive overconsumption than those most vulnerable to it: people with addiction. Whether it’s sugar or shopping, voyeuring or vaping, social media posts or The Washington Post, we all engage in behaviors we wish we didn’t, or to an extent regret. This book offers practical solutions for how to manage compulsive overconsumption in a world where consumption has become the all-encompassing motive of our lives. In essence, the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.” |
Brian's Notes
I got this book years ago when it first came out.
And... I hunted through my stack of books to find it after Jonathan Haidt referenced wisdom from it in his brilliant book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
The quote from this book that grabbed me in his book?
The same one that grabbed me when I read it on the first page of the book:
“The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.”
Anna Lembke, MD, is one of the world’s leading “clinician scholars” on the science of addiction. Among many other things, she is the medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries in the most prestigious outlets and has received numerous awards for outstanding research in mental illness, for excellence in teaching, and for clinical innovation in treatment.
If you or a loved one is going through challenging times with an addiction (it’s hard to imagine anyone for whom that won’t be the case!), I think you will find this book incredibly empowering. (Get a copy here.)
The book is packed with wisdom. I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas so let’s get straight to work.
And... I hunted through my stack of books to find it after Jonathan Haidt referenced wisdom from it in his brilliant book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
The quote from this book that grabbed me in his book?
The same one that grabbed me when I read it on the first page of the book:
“The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.”
Anna Lembke, MD, is one of the world’s leading “clinician scholars” on the science of addiction. Among many other things, she is the medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries in the most prestigious outlets and has received numerous awards for outstanding research in mental illness, for excellence in teaching, and for clinical innovation in treatment.
If you or a loved one is going through challenging times with an addiction (it’s hard to imagine anyone for whom that won’t be the case!), I think you will find this book incredibly empowering. (Get a copy here.)
The book is packed with wisdom. I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas so let’s get straight to work.
Big Ideas
01: THE PLEASURE-PAIN BALANCE
02: DOPAMINE FASTING
03: SELF-BINDING
04: RADICAL HONESTY
05: PROSOCIAL SHAME
“The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation."ANNA LEMBKE, MD |
Get all 700+ notesĀ and 101 masterclasses.
Master the Big Ideas from the best books in under 20 minutes a day for one lifetime payment of $99.
