How We've 'Drugified' Our Entire Existence: Dopamine & Addiction In the Digital Age with Anna Lembke
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Measuring dopamine responses in reward
Anna describes nucleus accumbens dopamine increases across rewards and how that predicts addictive potential.
Dopamine: the most famous neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure, motivation, and (perhaps most importantly) addiction. When examining why our society is hooked on consuming more and more of everything – food, clothes, videos, news, vacations – it's imperative to look at how our modern environments hijack our brain's dopamine, sending it into overdrive at nearly every turn. Could taking a closer look at how our societal norms make us more vulnerable to addiction help us transition to more balanced and mindful lifestyles?
In this episode, Nate is joined by New York Times bestselling author and professor of psychiatry, Anna Lembke, to explore how modern society has "drugified" our lived experience through digital media, processed foods, and instant gratification, resulting in an environment that propagates addiction. She explains how dopamine works as our brain's reward signal and why our ancient wiring is mismatched for today's level of high-dopamine stimuli in everyday life – leading to tolerance, withdrawal, and even anhedonia. Ultimately, Anna emphasizes that addiction is not a personal failing but a predictable response to an environment designed to take advantage of our brain's neurochemistry.
What are the key practices individuals can use to reduce their addictive tendencies, even as our culture continues to prioritize quick dopamine hits and consumption? How long does it take to see the positive effects after moving away from the stimulus related to our addictive behavior? Lastly, if we acknowledge that information alone isn't enough, what cultural shifts can we make to foster more connection, digital mindfulness, and authenticity, in order to return to a slower, lower throughput way of living?
(Conversation recorded on November 18th, 2025)
About Anna Lembke:
Anna Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. As a clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.
In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It's So Hard to Stop, which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic. Dr. Lembke also appeared on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives.
Her most recent book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world and is a New York Times Bestseller.
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