Dr. Anna Lembke

And the main consequences were I was less present

for my children and my family and my patients.

I started bringing romance novels to work and actually reading them in the 10 minutes between patients instead of reflecting on patients or documenting my patients.

We went on a family vacation at the beach.

I didn't go to the beach.

I spent the whole time in the room reading romance novels.

We even went to like a neighborhood party

And this is so bizarre.

I actually found a room in their house while other people were in the backyard, and I read romance novels during the party.

So it was, again, this kind of narrowing of focus, the inability to take joy and other modest rewards, this resetting of my joy set point.

The only thing that gave me pleasure was the romance novels.

Um, and eventually I got to a point where I didn't care about the writing or the plot structure or the characters.

I was on Amazon trying to get like free because, you know, free drugs like that.

That sounds good to me.

I didn't want to pay more money.

So I got like free romance novels.

I didn't even finish them after a while.

I just got to like three quarters of the way through, which any romance novel is designed.

If you open it to three quarters of the way through, you'll get right to the climax of

Yeah.