After getting her MD from Stanford, she went on to become the university's medical director of addiction medicine. She started taking her Kindle to work and in between patients was reading graphic erotic renditions of the boy meets girl fantasy. Reading about it was a rush, and soon she was craving that rush all the time. I took a book to a party once and hid in a room red during the party," Anna says.
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
The Next Big Idea is produced in partnership with LinkedIn Presents