Dr. Anna Lembke

And then I'm like, okay, what now?

And then it was werewolves and necromancers and soothsayers and fairies.

And as time went on, I just was spending more and more time reading romance novels, especially romantasy, combining fantasy and romance.

Um, then my friend Susan, you know, lover, but she's like, Ana, you should get a Kindle.

And I'm like, oh, you know, and this was sort of early, like the e-readers were early.

So I'm like, okay.

And I get a Kindle and then all of a sudden I can be reading like bodice rippers with these really embarrassing covers, but nobody knows.

I'm like, oh yeah, I'm reading war and peace.

Isn't that amazing?

You know?

And, you know, it's the crazy part is even as an addiction psychiatrist, I did not see the progression as it was happening.

And there were a couple of things with the progression.

Number one, I started developing tolerance where I noticed I didn't notice it only in retrospect, but I needed more and more graphic forms to get the same effect.

So more sexualized, more eroticized.

I was spending more and more time reading.

So staying up later and later at night, being tired the next day.

I was becoming mentally preoccupied where that's all I wanted to do.

I just wanted to get through my day, deal with the kids, deal with my husband, and then get to my place where I could read my romance novels, right?

So this kind of narrowing of focus, which we see with addiction.

And then there were also real consequences.