Alcoholics Anonymous Is One of the Most Remarkable Social Movements of the Last Hundred Years

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Alcoholics anonymous was started in the 1930s by two men who themselves were addicted to alcohol Dr. Bob and Bill W. They came together in desperation and realized that by talking to each other and sharing their lived experiences they managed amazingly not to drink even when all these other medical interventions hadn't been helpful. It's a volunteer grassroots mutual help organization but it probably works through multiple different mechanisms one of them being just having a sober social network right affiliating with other people who are not using or who are trying not to use. And then I speculate that the other way that it works is by leveraging pro-social shame which can motivate people to stop using.

Are you scrolling on your phone constantly? How badly do you crave that morning cup of coffee? Are you compulsively gambling, drinking, shopping, or even reading romance novels just to fall asleep? The potential for addiction is everywhere in our society, and on this episode of The Knowledge Project psychiatrist and author Dr. Anna Lembke discusses dopamine, addictive behaviors, warning signs and treatment for addiction, and how our brains handle all that pleasure and pain in life. Dr. Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. She appeared in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma to discuss the addictive nature of social media, and she is the author of the 2021 New York Times bestseller Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, which explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.

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