Anna Lembke

It's because we've literally forgotten

physiologically changed our brains as a result of constantly bombarding them with these high reward substances and behaviors.

So the way that our modern society has drugified these things that used to be normal and healthy, like having sex or eating food or playing games, is essentially by increasing four factors, quantity, access, potency, and novelty.

because our incredible manufacturing system has allowed us to make these reinforcing substances in enormous quantities and our amazing supply chain allows us to ship them all over the world.

you know one of my favorite sort of anecdotes is that the in the 1880s the cigarette rolling machine was invented allowing manufacturers of cigarettes to go from manufacturing four cigarettes uh you know a minute to twenty thousand cigarettes a minute wow and that's just one example of of what we've done all around and my you know my own romance

novel reading addiction that developed.

And one of the things that I discovered when I went looking for other romance novels is that there's a whole universe of romance novels out there.

There was no, it was really a never ending quantity and quantity really matters because the more we use our drug of choice, our substance or behavior that's reinforcing our

The more that we expose our brains to and the more often, the more likely we are to change our brains to this addicted kind of circuitry.

Yeah, so quantity is the first one.

Availability or access is huge.

So if you grow up in a neighborhood where drugs are sold on the street corner, we have lots of epidemiologic data showing that you're more likely to try drugs and more likely to get addicted to them.

And now we live in a world where we all have more access to our substance or behavior of choice, whether it's vampire romance novels or potato chips or games or pornography or, you know, old fashioned drugs like alcohol, cannabis and nicotine.

And of course, the smartphone is essentially the equivalent of the hypodermic syringe delivering digital dopamine 24-7 for our wired generation.

And that's really what it is.

The smartphone totally changed things.

When people could carry in their pocket this device that gave them access to digital media and digital content 24-7, we all essentially became more addicted to these kinds of digital drugs.

Yeah, availability, accessibility.

And the other one is potency.

So one of the ways to overcome these gremlins on the pain side of the balance, or what's often referred to as tolerance, is to either use more of the drug or use more potent forms or have a more potent drug delivery mechanism.