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'The Interview': Digital Drugs Have Us Hooked. Dr. Anna Lembke Sees a Way Out.
Sat, 1 Feb
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The psychiatrist and author of “Dopamine Nation” wants us to find balance in a world of temptation and abundance.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Full Episode
From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. We live in a moment where things are more available than ever. You can whip out your phone right now and order lunch, bet on sports, listen to this podcast, watch porn, buy a car, meet a friend, get therapy from an AI bot. But all that convenience isn't making us any happier.
In fact, in the developed world, we are more lonely, anxious, and depressed than ever. Dr. Anna Lembke likens it to the plenty paradox. The more we have, the less satisfied we are. Lemke is a psychiatrist who works at Stanford University, and she's written extensively, including in her bestselling book, Dopamine Nation, about the science behind addiction.
Turns out our brains are wired to constantly seek stimulation, which our modern era delivers in overdrive. I'm sure if you look at your life, maybe there's something you are indulging in a little too frequently than is good for you.
For me, the turning point came at the start of the pandemic, when my sister died of liver failure brought on by alcoholism, something I shared with Dr. Lemke before our interview. It made me take a hard look at my life. After a lifetime of obesity, I ended up taking Ozempic, which curtailed my obsessive relationship with food. Then two years ago, I stopped drinking alcohol.
Hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. So
You published your book, Dopamine Nation, in 2021 with the thesis that the overabundance of modern culture has us constantly stimulated by dopamine. And that's only accelerated since your book was published. And I'm just wondering, broadly, does it feel like a whole new world for your research has opened up just since you've written your last book?
I think the irony is that amazing research has been going on for a long time, but for whatever reason, the American public hasn't been particularly interested until very recently. And why that shift? I mean, I have my theories. I think that with the advent of smartphones and 24-7 access to the Internet online,
All of a sudden, people who saw addiction as a problem that somebody else had began wondering about their own compulsive consumption of digital media. And then I think COVID just really, like, you know, we just went off a cliff with COVID. Sure did. Yeah. And it was, I think, along the lines of, like, life is really weird.
Like, I am at home all day long in my pajamas consuming more alcohol, more cannabis, more YouTube shorts. And I think all of a sudden people were like, wow, this addiction thing is real. And I do think that that's been a big cultural shift. And so I think it's more that the spotlight has turned toward this problem.
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