Anna Lembke

Time is weird for me then, but I think it developed over the course of about a year or two.

But I did bring a romance novel to work and was reading in the 10 minutes between patients.

Well, that's what's so fascinating.

I really didn't have anything to escape from.

I have a great husband.

I have got these great kids.

I have work that I adore.

My patients are just so fantastic.

There was nothing wrong.

I was really just escaping to.

And the thing that I was escaping to was just not having to be in my body, not having to think, being able to experience this kind of intense euphoria, this other place, which was very, very pleasant for me.

It just felt good.

That's really the key that we start out doing whatever the behavior is for, you know, rational reasons, and it succeeds in achieving what we're trying to achieve, either to give us pleasure or to, you know, accomplish some other goal.

But if it then hijacks our brain's reward pathway, it gets a life of its own.

And then even when it stops doing what we want it to do, we can't stop.

And that's really the hallmark of addiction.

This discovery was the fact that pain and pleasure are co-located in the brain.

So the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain, and they work like opposite sides of a balance.

So almost like a seesaw?

Exactly, like a seesaw or a teeter-totter in a kid's playground.