Understanding Dopamine and Addiction in the Modern World

Jonathan Bastian talks with Dr. Anna Lembke, director and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, about the role of dopamine in the brain. She also offers advice on keeping the pursuit of pleasure in check and maintaining balance and contentment, and discusses her New York Times bestseller “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.”

“We're living in an adicto-genic world,” says Lembke. “In which almost all substances and human behaviors, even behaviors that we typically think of as healthy and adaptive, like reading, have become addicted, have become drug refined, in some way made more potent, more accessible, [and] the internet has absolutely exploded this phenomenon.” 

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