This is an ABC podcast.

In times past, addiction was primarily considered a moral problem, a problem of the will or a spiritual problem, a problem of sin and redemption.

Over the past century, how we think about addiction has totally changed.

In modern medicine, addiction is conceptualized as a brain disease.

That's based on recent neuroscientific findings, as well as the fact that when we treat addiction

like a disease, people show similar recovery and response rates as

other patients with chronic relapsing and remitting disorders such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart

disease. This is Dr. Anna Lemke. She's a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University,

and author of the book Dopamine Nation.

And dopamine is the key to understanding why we become addicted to things, everything from

our compulsion to scroll social media too often, to more severe substance addictions.

Our brains evolved over millions of years to approach pleasure and avoid pain. And of course,

that's a wonderful thing in a world of scarcity and ever-present danger, but not very adaptive

in a world of overwhelming abundance, where our brain neurocircuitary is constantly getting us

to try to get rewarding things and avoid painful things.

So how does dopamine work in the brain and how does it influence addiction?

And does it offer a clue for overcoming addiction too?

You're listening to All in the Mind. I'm Sana Khadar.

Today, how dopamine drives us and how it can, in the worst-case scenarios, destroy us.

When we experience something pleasurable, we eat chocolate, have sex, enjoy a drink with a friend,

our brains release the chemical dopamine in what's referred to as the reward pathway.

It's a particular circuit in the brain that processes pleasure and reward.

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