Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

by Anna Lembke

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Personal Growth & LeadershipPsychology & Mind

When you keep chasing easy pleasure, your brain pushes back with pain to restore its balance. Lembke, who runs Stanford's dual-diagnosis clinic, argues that a world of constant, easy reward makes compulsive overuse predictable, and she lays out a way to reset, drawn from her patients' case histories.

Core ideas
  • Access is the risk: Easy access is the biggest risk factor for addiction, which is why alcoholism fell under Prohibition and rose again after repeal.
  • A month away: About a month of abstinence from your problem stimulus resets reward sensitivity, and self-binding strategies help you hold to it.
  • Radical honesty: Lying sustains addiction, and revealing your flaws tends to draw people closer, a point she makes partly through her own compulsive romance-novel habit.
Published2021
Pages304
ISBN9781524746735
ReadJan 2024

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