Dopamine nation and the neuroscience of addiction with Anna Lembke

Anna Lembke, MD is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she is the author of more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications, has testified before the United States House of Representatives and Senate, has served as an expert witness in federal and state opioid litigation, and is an internationally recognized leader in addiction medicine treatment and education. In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD - How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic (Zuger, 2018). Dr. Lembke appeared in 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 (Dutton/Penguin Random House, August 2021) was an instant New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.
What is the neuroscience of pleasure and pain and what happens in the brain as we become addicted? What happens when we are repeatedly exposed to drugs of all kinds? What is the effect of dopamine? Can intentionally engaging in pain/discomfort improve mood and well-being? This is a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting... The increased numbers, variety, and potency are staggering. As such, we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. Yet, it is possible to find contentment and connectedness by keeping dopamine in check. In this talk, Professor Anna Lembke will provide a practical, science-informed approach to addressing compulsive overconsumption of everything from food, to sex, to video games.
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