Dr. Anna Lembke: Understanding & Treating Addiction | Episode 33

Main Takeaways

1. The ease of our ability to survive today can be challenging for people who need friction and lead to addiction

2. Boredom is a necessary experience but highly anxiety-provoking

3. Stop looking for your passion and build a life around what you can do at the moment and what opportunities are available to you right now to benefit yourself and others

4. Dopamine is associated with reward, pleasure, and movement and is always being released in varying levels

5. Experiences have an impact on where baseline dopamine level settles

6. People with naturally impulsive tendencies are more vulnerable to addiction

7. Pleasure and pain are co-located in the brain and work like a balance, tipping inversely, and the brain works hard to keep pleasure and pain in constant balance and neutrality

8. The hallmark of any addictive behavior is that it releases dopamine at high levels

9. Focus on just doing today right, connect with your environment, not trying to escape it, and do 30 days of zero interaction with the addictive behavior to reset the dopamine system and break an addictive pattern

10. Being open and honest creates intimate connections which stimulate dopamine release, and relapse can occur when things are going well for the person because there is a removal of the hypervigilant state.