Interview with Dr. Anna Lembke; Dopamine Nation: Technology, Addiction, and the Path Forward

Wisdom 2.0 Emergence | April 2022
Dopamine Nation: Technology, Addiction, and the Path Forward

[@danielwalsh9057]

I'm a recovering heroin addict n I truly believe my doctor asking me to let my brain reset naturally was some of the best Dr direction I've ever received. I was diagnosed with major depression, however for two years have not had to take any pill for anything.

[@keitha.neubert3063]

Wonderful talk. Always enjoy Dr. Lembke's scientific and personal information. Shout out, also, for the excellent sound engineering on this presentation.

[@rachaellouise2666]

She's just beautiful. Her message is so powerful. I hope it spreads. What an honour it would be to have her as your psychiatrist.

[@JawHacks]

excellent, thank you. Dr. Lembke is a star.

[@raginald7mars408]

.. as a German Biologist - from my own experience and life long observations it is our systemic Over Rewarding “too Much! Is never Enough!” - Mick Jagger, 1982... The Asketic Path no Rewards enduring dis comfort PAIN accepting adversity is the daily endurance training then we are surprised about a sudden unexpected miraculous encounter that lasts forever... there is no Market for this so it will get worse Hard Times forge Hard Persons...

[@jdawgxpxduh8763]

I think she's good... just started listening...

[@socialcelerity8983]

12:12 just relating to my own practice, what I used to do 20 years ago when I had patients coming in struggling with depression, anxiety was I would go to a pill and I would prescribe that for them, or I would recommend some sort of psychotherapy. I still use those tools, but more and more what I’m asking patients to do is to actually abstain from their drug of choice for long enough for 30 days, which is usually the minimal amount of time to reset dopamine reward pathways, and what I find in doing that in many instances that just by abstaining from video games, or cannabis, or alcohol, or social media, or whatever it is for a month, people come out of that depression state without me having to do anything else. Yeah, it is very powerful that I see enormous a number of young people, many of them are children of very wealthy and successful people and they’ve been encompassed what I call a great lassitude where they have lost motivation really for living, many of them suicidal and they’re spending an enormous amount of time consuming online contents.

[@socialcelerity8983]

This is really the central point of this conversation.

[@davidnich3394]

Reminds me of Ivan Illich's writing, on affluence making us less happy, he talked about the abundance of industrial commodities hampering joyful austerity, genuine autonomy/ freedom, Lemke is a lot clearer.

[@socialcelerity8983]

1:30 Dopamine is a chemical that we make in our brain. It is essential for the experience of pleasure, motivation and rewards. … It is probably the final common pathway for all the reinforcing substances and behaviors. Dopamine is also essential for movements. … It is no coincidence that dopamine is involved in both motivation, reward and movement, because for most human existence, if we wanted to get reward, we have to locomotor toward it. Even the most primitive nematode will release dopamine in response to its environment. 6:10 the four things that make something additive are Access, Quantity, Potency and Novelty. Every business knows how to do these. In addiction in general, we lose agency.

[@carlaborba9550]

Que importante essa discussão! Precisamos aprender a lidar e compreender os efeitos do uso massivo de tecnologia em nossas vidas. Gostei muito e vou tentar o 30 d digital detox

[@socialcelerity8983]

16:08 Well, I don’t think it is too far afield to conceptualize the phone as a drug and recognize that we’re getting little hits of dopamine or looking for them when we engage with the phone and that the difficulty we have in not checking it is we’re in dopamine free fall, we’re in dopamine deficit state that we are restless, we’re anxious, we’re looking to normalize our balance. I think the best way to recognize it is indeed the case is to put the phone away, and all devices with screen, for 24 hours. Yes, 24 hours, I know, a whole 24 hours. And you can’t replace it with your laptop, and you also can’t watch TV. … To actually do this is hard. I recommend that you do it with a friend or family member, have some company. I recommend that you plan some non-digital oriented things, maybe print out some paper that you have to move the pages. And you plan it out, and then it is really an interesting exercise of mindfulness. …. Initially you’re going to experience some withdrawal, and it is the same exactly as my patients who withdraw from heroines or cocaine, it’s this kind of anxiety, this restless, it tinged also with the fear of missing out, because the collective to getting together, then you make it through, there’s this wonderful kind of lightening that happens where you feel free and you don’t feel that constant pull to go to check. It is a very nice feeling, and you can go into your rest of the week with some plans about how to maintain that, and fro not get caught up. I think analogizing our digital device with food is a good one. For food, We do internittent fasting. I think intermittent fasting for our digital devices is very nice, say, I’m not going to check it before 8am and I’m not going to check it after 8pm. I’m not going to a digital sabbath. I’m going to avoid these websites. I’m going to turn off the alerts, I’m going to go grayscale. Anything the potency. Alerts are the key, because what happens with alerts is that an alert is essentially we get a little release of dopamine with a notification, followed by a little mini dopamine deficit which is craving. So then we are in that loop all day log. By the way, that then release cortisol which is stress. So it is really important to protect ourselves not just the drug, but also the constant reminder of the drug.

[@JennyB957]

At first I thought , this lady has been spying on me .