Dr. Anna Lembke

So, for example, a young patient of mine who got very addicted to video games went off to college, continued to play video games constantly, and also found that other things lost their salience or their appeal for him, including his computer science classes.

and he continually procrastinated with video games.

When he gave up video games and really committed to that and then went back to school, he said, it's amazing, my classes are interesting again.

So when we remove all of these ways of distracting ourselves and procrastinating,

We're suddenly left with this big empty space, which feels very terrifying.

And yet it is in that empty space where we go, oh, okay, I can't do this thing that I usually do.

So I guess I'll just do my work.

Right?

I mean, it is really like that.

It's like you kind of sit there and you go, I'd really like to do that over there, but I committed to not doing it.

So, geez, I guess I'll get started filling out this form or, you know, writing this paragraph or, you know, dealing with paying this bill or cleaning out my closet or whatever it is.

It is amazing how...

Just creating that kind of empty space and tolerating that discomfort and not giving ourselves other options, just like, well, okay, I'll do this.

I mean, again, with digital media, you said a lot of them, but deleting apps, turning off notifications is really key.

Every time we get that kind of buzz or ping, that pulls us back in.

Going grayscale can be really important.

If there's a digital medium we need to be on, putting it on our laptop and not on our phone so it's kind of less portable, we have less access.

Those are all really important self-binding strategies.

When it comes to food, so our food supply has become drugified, right?

And you've done a lot of podcasts on this with the addition of