📖 Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

Topic: Addiction | Medium: Audible | Rating: 4/5

Notes:

• We live in a dopamine economy / limbic capitalism fueled by increased access, variety, and potency to drugs, alcohol, sex, food, social media, etc.
• Are we oversantised, overprotected, distracted, or just bored?
• Blaming mental conditions to keep taking medication. Anti-depressants, aderol.
• Higher-income countries with wealth, freedom, tech, and advanced medical experience more anxiety and pain.
• "The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we are working so hard to avoid being miserable?"
• Pleasure-Pain Balance - processed in the same part of the brain and always wants to be in equilibrium.
• Our dopamine response from repeated use of drugs and alcohol can alter the brain forever. 😳 Hence why addicts can easily go back to the same response
• Loss chasing - endless pit of.
• Pleasure and pain are survival mechanisms - eat, reproduce, and protect from threat. We live in overwhelming abundance - we are cacti in a rainforest.
• We overstate short-term rewards.
• Study on kids: The tendency to delay gratification leads to better educational, social, and cognitively better-adjusted adolescents.
• Self-binding strategies - Space (Physical), Time, and Meaning
  Physical
• Pressing on the pain side leads to pleasure. e.g., exercise
• Radical honesty and prosocial Shame (e.g., AA meetings) help with recovery.