Dopamine Nation
"Resettling Your Brain in the Age of Cheap Pleasures"-- We are living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. Lembke explores new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain-- and what to do about it. She illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery. -- adapted from jacket
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Dopamine Nation
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Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke walks through dopamine, the seesaw of pleasure and pain, and how the modern world keeps tipping us toward addiction. She offers a frame for stepping off the seesaw on purpose.
Anna Lembke is the chief of Stanford's Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and the book draws on contemporary addiction research. The dopamine framing is a useful simplification of more complex neurobiology, and the underlying clinical advice is mainstream.
Dopamine Nation was written by Anna Lembke, published in 2021 by Penguin Publishing Group.
Dopamine Nation is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Dopamine Nation takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Dopamine Nation is a standalone novel by Anna Lembke, not part of a series.
Dopamine Nation is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.