117 - Anna Lembke: Dopamine, Drug Addiction, and Recovery

Dr. Anna Lembke received her undergraduate degree in Humanities from Yale University and and her medical degree from Stanford University. She is currently Professor and Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also Program Director of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. In this episode, Robinson and Anna discuss her latest, New York Times bestselling book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Dutton/Penguin Random House, August 2021). More particularly, they talk about just what happens in the brain when someone develops an addiction, what current social and cultural conditions have led to increased rates of addiction, and how all of these factors—and addiction itself—ought to be combatted. Anna is also the author of Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop (Johns Hopkins, 2016), which sounded the alarm on—and covers—various dimensions of the opioid crisis. Dopamine Nation: https://a.co/d/0AJw6Je Drug Dealer, MD: https://a.co/d/2soL324 OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:56 Introduction 04:10 Addiction and Narrative 11:18 The Role of Dopamine in Addiction 20:29 Risk Factors for Addiction 27:31 Anna’s Addiction to Romance Novels 40:39 Pain, Pleasure, and Addiction 59:11 How to Tackle Addictions? 01:15:09 Is The Hype For Medical Psychedelics Overblown? 01:21:51 Honesty, Shame, and Recovery from Addiction Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.