70. Dr. Anna Lembke: Finding Balance in a Dopamine-Overloaded World

Dr. Anna Lembke is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. 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, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.

In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop, which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic. Dr. Lembke recently appeared on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. 

Her latest book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence explores how to moderate overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.

Today we are chatting about... 

• What inspired Anna to write Dopamine Nation 
• Anna’s definition of addiction
• The 3 C’s of diagnosing addiction 
• The neuroscience of addiction 
• Whether or not we all have a drug of choice 
• How the mere anticipation of our drug of choice gives us a dopamine hit
• What drives cravings 
• The role substances play in the presentation of mental health symptoms
• Whether or not there is such a thing as an addictive personality
• The problem of overprescribing psychotropic medications
• How to reset your dopamine threshold 
• The number one risk factor for addiction 
• How drugs are becoming a substitute for self-care
• The opioid epidemic and the rise of benzodiazepine prescribing 
• What the addictive potential for drugs is
• Why there’s power in sharing your shame
• The addictive potential of different drugs 
• What abstinence violation syndrome is 
• The impact substances have on a growing fetus’s brain 
• My struggle with sugar as my drug 

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ALL THE GOODIES FROM THIS EPISODE:

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