S4E05: ARE YOU ADDICTED TO DOPAMINE? - how to feel human again in a world full of overstimulation + choosing pain as much as pleasure with Dr. Lembke
What's The Juice
Olivia Amitrano
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2023
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's guest, Dr. Anna Lembke, explains exactly how to reset your brain's reward system so that you can feel happy again — without reaching for something external. Dr. Lembke is a psychiatrist, author, and Chief of the Addiction Medicine Clinic at Stanford University. This incredible woman changed my life and I believe she is the antidote our world needs as we navigate never-ending stimuli from tech, social media, and dopamine-releasing pleasures.
Here's the juice:
- your brain has pain and pleasure "scales"– any tip towards pleasure has an equal cost toward pain
- addiction exists on a spectrum and we’re all affected by it; it’s so much broader than the extremes of alcoholism or drug addiction
- Anyone can get addicted to ANYTHING and we don’t necessarily need to have a history of trauma or mental health obstacles to be impacted by addiction
- there are proven benefits to doing a “dopamine fast” to reset your brain’s reward system
- why delaying gratification in little ways, such as not checking your phone as soon as you wake up in the morning, leads to better outcomes of success in humans in life
Links from the ep:
- Take 10% off Adrenal Recovery and/or Focus Juice with code DOPAMINE10 on organicolivia.com
- Get Dr. Lembke's book, Dopamine Nation, on her site annalembke.com
Connect with Dr. Lembke:
Visit her site HERE
Connect with Olivia:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, okay, look, I know that I've said that a lot of different episodes are my all-time |
| 0:07.0 | favorite episode. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm a Leo, I'm dramatic, I love things really hard, but let me tell you something. |
| 0:13.6 | This right here is my favorite episode. |
| 0:16.7 | I'll go on record, hold me to that if I ever say this again. |
| 0:20.2 | There will never be another doctor and a Lemki. |
| 0:22.5 | Okay, this woman changed my life and is exactly the antidote that our world needs as we |
| 0:29.9 | are heading for a little bit of disaster because of the way that we're so addicted to our |
| 0:35.6 | phones and to a lot of different pleasurable things and just not able to be present with |
| 0:40.5 | one another anymore. |
| 0:42.0 | Dr. Annellemki's book Dopamine Nation is the most impactful book that I've ever read |
| 0:47.7 | and you guys know that I've been on my journey of breaking my addictions the last year or |
| 0:53.3 | so and I have given up everything from cannabis to caffeine to sugar or really hyper palatable |
| 1:02.0 | foods and decided to eat simply for a while and see what I did if I couldn't have processed |
| 1:07.4 | foods and candy and chocolate all the time and I can't believe the difference that I've |
| 1:12.8 | experienced in my brain since I chose to not feed myself so much pleasure at every |
| 1:19.5 | whim and decided to live a life of more discipline and pain. |
| 1:24.2 | I used to be somebody that experienced really severe depression. |
| 1:29.2 | I would experience about of severe depression quarterly and feeling all right, I'm good |
| 1:33.6 | for a month or two months and all of a sudden, oh crap, I feel this feeling coming back |
| 1:38.5 | and I started to realize that that feeling of the depression creeping back in was actually |
| 1:44.1 | more a feeling of this anhydonia, this absolute unenthusiasm, nothing is interesting or stimulating |
... |
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