Meet Dr. Anna Lembke, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and author of Drug Dealer M.D. and Dopamine Nation.
In this episode, I chat with Dr. Lembke about giving your brain a dopamine detox to take back control of your life.
In recent years, we’ve become so accustomed to dopamine that we heavily rely on it to make us feel normal.
Between phones, TV, computers, and online shopping, we experience so much pleasure that we can barely handle it when pain comes along.
However, by slowly replacing those dopamine addictions with doing hard things, we can avoid becoming dependent on dopamine to feel normal.
According to Dr. Lembke, doing hard things is actually paying for dopamine upfront because we choose pain first and are rewarded with dopamine later rather than choosing dopamine first.
For example, instead of choosing to watch TV all night, work on your skills or start a side hustle.
In the modern economy, we have the ability to create any life we want, yet we choose to fall into the dopamine trap.
So, I challenge you to endure a little pain once in a while to avoid falling into the trap of dopamine addiction.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
Or tune into the audio version!