Anna Lembke

And making it just way, way more difficult to get a handle on those kinds of unhealthy consumptive behaviors.

You can basically binge on anything now.

I personally think, and my professional experience speaks to this, that's where getting help from others, especially from other individuals struggling with the same problem, either through 12-step peer support like Food Addicts Anonymous or Overeaters Anonymous,

or other forms of support from people who are struggling with the same or similar problem, even if it's not 12-step.

Connecting with others around regulation of our consumptive behaviors is hugely helpful or has the potential to be hugely helpful.

This is a kind of co-regulation of

that we can engage in first by being radically honest about the problem with others, recognizing we're not alone, and then in tandem with others and sharing our struggles together, finding a way to get into balance.

I also think that this is

where certain psychological techniques can be helpful.

Mindfulness is often talked about, and there's a sort of a mindful eating movement.

You know, it's interesting because the mindful eating movement folks, I think, on some level push back on any kind of restrictions.

because their argument is that restricting any food group leads or contributes to the cycle of sort of abstinence, restricting, and then binging, and then starting all over again.

And I think that there is some truth to that, except that what I would say is that I think it's really important to recognize that

Our orientation with food is potentially an addiction because we've drugified our food supply and made it so much more reinforcing.

So that cutting out addictive foods can really help with this cycle.

And that speaks to also just the question or comment more broadly about how healthy behaviors have become addicted.

And I think that's really the central point here, that things that really we do think of as healthy, like reading, like playing chess, like eating food, like having sex, we live in a world now in which the technology has turned these otherwise healthy behaviors into something that is potentially addictive forever.

for certain vulnerable individuals.

And so reconceptualizing our consumptive behaviors around that knowledge, I think can be helpful if we can identify ways to de-drugify those behaviors and substances.

Yeah, so this phenomenon of switching one addiction for another is very well known.