The number of people struggling with severe sex addiction in various forms is growing every year. The fine-tuned pleasure-pain balance of ours has evolved over millions of years to help us approach pleasure and avoid pain. But here's the problem: We no longer live in that world, we now live in a world of overwhelming abundance. Our compulsive overconsumption has led not just to increased psychological suffering, we are literally consuming ourselves to death.
In “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” Dr. Anna Lembke says today’s superabundance of pleasurable stimuli makes us all vulnerable to overindulgence. But don’t lose hope. Anna, the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford, says that by understanding how modern stimulants — from Instagram to masturbation machines — prey on our primitive brains, we can find ways to overcome the unhealthy dependencies that prevent us from leading balanced lives.
(This episode originally aired in December 2021.)
Host: Rufus Griscom
Guest: Anna Lembke
Executive Producer: Caleb Bissinger
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