📖 Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

David Guerrero -

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.