DOPAMINE NATION: Why the Modern World Puts Us All at Risk for Addiction

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Education, Science

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2021

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” Dr. Anna Lembke says today’s superabundance of pleasurable stimuli makes us all vulnerable to overindulgence. But don’t lose hope. Anna, the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford, says that by understanding how modern stimulants — from Instagram to masturbation machines — prey on our primitive brains, we can find ways to overcome the unhealthy dependencies that prevent us from leading balanced lives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The sort of incredible variety of stuff out there now, almost guarantees that we're all
0:11.8	going to develop some kind of compulsive overconsumption problem in our lifetimes.
0:17.2	I'm Rufus Griskem and this is the next big idea.
0:21.0	Today, finding balance in an age of overindulgence.
0:30.0	Anna Lemke never thought she'd become an addict.
0:48.9	I really don't care for alcohol, it doesn't do much for me, caffeine doesn't wake me up.
0:53.4	I'm not a big food person, food has been sort of fuel for me my whole life but never particularly
0:59.6	reinforcing.
1:01.2	That obscenious nature makes sense given what Anna does for a living.
1:04.6	She's one of the world's foremost experts on addiction.
1:07.7	After getting her MD from Stanford, she went on to become the university's medical director
1:11.8	of addiction medicine.
1:13.4	If anyone had a vested interest in temperance, it was her.
1:17.6	But you know, I discovered a drug midlife that was highly reinforcing and that was…
1:22.6	His arms wrapped around me, holding me against him, you know, a variant of the novel.
1:27.6	It felt like every nerve ending in my body was alive wire.
1:31.0	I really got hooked on romance novels in my 40s, which was really quite strange.
1:37.1	Forever he agreed and then pulled us gently into deeper water.
1:42.9	Twilight was her gateway drug.
1:45.4	After she finished that series, she tore through every vampire romance she could find.
1:49.6	Then she moved on to werewolves, fairies, fortune tellers and necromancers.
1:55.3	She got a kindle.
	...

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