As many as 80% of your patients do choose at the end of a month of abstinence to continue to recreationally use the substance, whether it's marijuana or alcohol. So in choosing to go back to trying to use in moderation doesn't mean that they successfully manage it. The vast majority will be able to moderate for a while, but then we'll eventually sink back into kind of compulsive overuse and addictive use.
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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