Anna Lembke: How Dopamine Hijacks Your Brain (And How to Fix It)

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Curt Jaimungal

Physics, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2023

⏱️ 144 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Anna Lembke discusses dopamine detox, addiction, and how narratives shape trauma recovery. She examines dopamine‑seeking behavior, the paradox of pain relief, and the role of abstinence, higher power, and storytelling in overcoming addiction.- 00:00:00 - Introduction- 00:02:40 - Anna Lembke's experience with addiction- 00:10:46 - Dopamine-seeking behavior vs coping mechanism- 00:12:35 - The paradox of pain relief- 00:24:21 - The self-perpetuating cycle of addiction- 00:24:00 - Neuroadaptation- 00:29:23 - The power of abstinence- 00:34:04 - Life as an experiment- 00:37:15 - Dopamine reward and misconceptions of the "present moment"- 00:41:06 - Freud, Jung, and mindfulness- 00:45:35 - East vs West in mental health- 00:51:15 - Importance of self-talk and bedside manner- 00:56:00 - Attachment styles in trauma (and intergenerational trauma)- 01:01:00 - Power of stories and a Higher Power in addiction recovery- 01:07:42 - Radical honesty / truth-telling- 01:12:02 - The relevance of free will- 01:23:26 - Love as a catalyst for tough decisions- 01:31:02 - Digital Sabbath (and Curt's coffee abnegation)- 01:42:12 - Methadone for severe opioid use disorder- 01:51:00 - The language of addiction, stigmatization, and identity- 01:57:32 - Rat Park experiments (society's role in addiction)- 02:08:16 - Writing as a therapeutic tool- 02:14:12 - The necessity of a Higher PowerSPONSORS:- BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/TOE- Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal- Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE- PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt- Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs- iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802- Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e- Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything- TOE Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerchRESOURCES:- YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKL0Pw3Q6mA- Dopamine Nation (Anna Lembke): https://amzn.to/47euRic- Podcast w/ Karl Friston on TOE: https://youtu.be/SWtFU1Lit3M- Podcast w/ Lilian Dindo: https://youtu.be/L_hI7JNsbt0- Pure White and Deadly (John Yudkin): https://amzn.to/3snMZHW- Drug Dealer MD (Anna Lembke): https://amzn.to/40G4WOJ Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal features long-form, technically detailed interviews with leading researchers in physics, mathematics, consciousness, and philosophy, exploring topics at the level of active research. For academics, graduate students, and anyone seeking depth beyond popular science. SPONSOR: I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE FOLLOW: Substack | Spotify | YouTube | Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Raise a spoon to Grandma, who always took all the hungry cousins to McDonald's for McNuggets and the Play Play Play Slide.
0:06.5	Have something sweet in her honor.
0:08.3	Come to McDonald's and treat yourself to the Grandma McFlurry today.
0:11.8	Bar-da-pa-pa-pba.
0:13.3	And participating in McDonald's for a limited time.
0:15.0	The reason that you're depressed or anxious or inattentive or unable to sleep or just not interested in your life, could be because
0:22.7	of this high potency substance that you're using or this high potency behavior like pornography
0:29.3	and masturbation or online gambling or video game. And if you could just cut that out for a period
0:35.2	of time, that would allow those neuroadaptation
0:38.0	gremlins to hop off the pain set of the balance and for homeostasis to be restored.
0:43.4	Anna Lemke is an award-winning professor at Stanford University, who's written extensively on
0:48.3	behavioral sciences, addiction, and psychiatry. She demonstrates how the most minor of activities
0:53.6	can lead to ruinous habit formation.
0:56.0	And in this podcast, we talk specifically about action steps you can take if you find yourself
1:00.6	addicted to pornography, to social media, to masturbation, to drugs, to your phone, to coffee,
1:06.8	to virtually anything, because addiction uses the same dopaminergic reward pathways, and so luckily
1:12.0	the treatments themselves can be generalized. Questions explored are how do you know you're addicted?
1:16.8	Is that different than just being reliant on something like sex or shopping or eating? Is it different
1:21.7	than a predilection? We also cover trauma and how that relates to cravings and what you can do
1:26.6	about it, of course.
1:32.0	Professor Lemke is warm, inviting, and a decidedly open person.
1:36.3	Such candidness is rarely seen in any human, let alone a guest on a podcast.
	...

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