Dr. Anna Lembke

We do see in clinical care people who are getting addicted to many different forms of digital media.

And just looking around, you can see that people are overly engaged with their phones.

Now, maybe they're not meeting threshold criteria for a clinical addiction, but it's getting in the way in many instances, you know, with their goals and even their values.

So that initial exposure to whatever our drug of choice is, and we're all wired a little differently.

So for one person, it might be potato chips, for another cigarettes, for another, you know, short form video on their phone.

That is reinforcing, rewarding, releases dopamine in the reward pathway, at least initially.

And eventually when we become addicted or we're in this compulsive over-consumptive loop, now I'm using not to actually solve the initial problem or even to have fun, but because I'm trying to get back to homeostasis.

And the reason this is important is because in the immediate aftermath of using our drug of choice,

it typically feels good because it's moving our pleasure pain balance back to homeostasis.

But the long-term effect is to actually drive our balance more to the side of pain.

And that is a fundamental key concept that the more we use our drug of choice,

the more we go into this pleasure-pain balance that is tilted to the side of pain, where whenever then we're not using, we lose our ability to take joy in other more modest rewards.

We're in the vortex of compulsive overconsumption and craving.

We've narrowed our focus to just wanting to get to where we can use our drug of choice.

Again,

to bring it to that homostatic position.

So in clinical care, we see a very broad range.

People get addicted to the traditional drugs and alcohol, whether, you know, legal or illegal.

People can get addicted to prescription drugs.

They can get addicted to over-the-counter drugs, right?