Release year: 2021

Author: Dr. Anna Lembke

Link to my handwritten notes

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Review

For a long time, I have felt like I was more prone to addiction than most people around me. Personal examples abound:

Thanks to my parents for teaching me about the importance to leave addictive substances alone, I have steered clear of alcohol, cigarettes and even coffee for most of my life, knowing that my tendency to get addicted to anything surely would get the best of me when it came to actual addictive substances. I’m far from perfect, though. Pornography and sex have been a struggle for most of my life, and I am only now beginning to learn how to live without compulsive overconsumption. Cannabis use is now the slippery slope I am finding myself battling against: I tested its limits, it seems to have a positive purpose in my life, and even though I believe my consumption is not harmful to myself or others, that I could “quit at any time” as any addict would say, I can’t help but wonder, am I once again trading an addiction for another?

According to the author, addiction is the continued and compulsive consumption of a substance or behavior (gambling, gaming, sex, drugs) despite its harm to self and/or others. I found it interesting to read about the author’s own addiction of reading vampire romance novels, which shows that addiction and consumption are loose terms that can take many forms.

This was a slightly scary read for me, because I didn’t know how much of a light it would shed on some of my deeply rooted personal issues. Even though I’m embarrassed to write about these things and fear about how they might be received, I chose to do so because I want to practice one of the core ideas from Dopamine Nation, which is radical honesty. In particular, two quotes come to mind as I write these lines:

  • “What would you be giving up if you stopped that behavior? What is one step you can take to change that behavior?” (p. 181)
  • “I am responsible.” (p. 187)

I find “I am responsible” particularly powerful, due to its double meaning. I am indeed responsible for the harm done to myself and those around me related to my addiction(s). It’s my fault and my fault alone. On the other hand, I strive to be a different kind of responsible: I now want to be on top of things. I am, after all, responsible for my well-being. Knowing myself, I believe I have the strength to pull it off.

I know that these substances and bad habits bring me more harm than good. Thanks to the book, I now have a powerful image to motivate me to do things differently:

Pleasure and pain work like a balance. The balance does not want to be tipped for very long to one side or another. Hence, every time the balance tips toward pleasure, powerful self-regulating mechanisms kick into action to bring it level again. These self-regulating mechanisms do not require conscious thought or an act of will. They just happen, like a reflex.

(p. 50)

The goal is to find ways to press on the pain side of the balance, so that it can tip back into pleasure naturally. This is why going to the gym and exercising are now defining parts of my identity: as much as it hurts to work out, everything feels better afterwards.

I know that abstinence is the real, long term solution to any addiction problem. I have done it once with pornography, and this convinces me that it could be done again with cannabis. This read raised the question in my mind.

What I enjoyed from my read was that it taught me about the power of radical honesty, which can turn destructive shame into prosocial shame. By being honest, we foster acceptance rather than isolation, because despite our individual uniqueness, our experiences might be more similar than we initially think. Fortunately for us, the warmth of this social acceptance is much longer lasting than any high we might come across. It’s a slower burn for sure, but I believe it will always be worth it in the end.

Félix rating:
👍👍

⭐ Star quotes

  • (p. 41) Boredom is not just boring. It can also be terrifying. It forces us to come face-to-face with bigger questions of meaning and purpose. But boredom is also an opportunity for discovery and invention. It creates the space necessary for a new thought to form, without which we’re endlessly reacting to stimuli around us rather than allowing ourselves to be within our lived experiences.
  • (p. 43) “Many of my patients use drugs, prescribed or otherwise, to compensate for a basic lack of self-care, then attribute the costs to a mental illness, thus necessitating the need for more drugs. Hence poisons become vitamins.”
  • (p. 46) The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.
  • (p. 50) Pleasure and pain work like a balance. The balance does not want to be tipped for very long to one side or another. Hence, every time the balance tips toward pleasure, powerful self-regulating mechanisms kick into action to bring it level again. These self-regulating mechanisms do not require conscious thought or an act of will. They just happen, like a reflex.
  • (p. 57) The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own safe, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.
  • (p. On social media apps, the response of others is so capricious and unpredictable that the uncertainty of getting a “like” or some equivalent is as reinforcing as the “like” itself.
  • (p. 66) With prolonged and repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity to tolerate pain decreases, and our threshold for experiencing pleasure increases.
  • (p. 76) A month is usually the minimum amount of time it takes to reset the brain’s reward pathway.
  • (p. 82) Mindfulness is the ability to observe what our brain is doing while it’s doing it, without judgement. It demands that we see our thoughts and emotions as separate from us and yet, simultaneously, part of us. Reserving judgement is important to mindfulness because as soon as we start condemning what our brain is doing (“Eww!”), we stop being able to observe.
  • (p. 88)
    • D = Data
    • O = Objectives for using
    • P = Problems related to use
    • A = Abstinence
    • M = Mindfulness
    • I = Insight into our behaviors
    • N = Next steps after a month of abstinence
    • E = Experiment pleasure in many different forms
  • (p. 92) Three types of self-binding:
    • Physical strategies (space)
    • Chronological strategies (time)
    • Categorical strategies (meaning)
  • (p. 107) For addicts, the drug becomes the reward when they succeed and the consolation prize when they fail.
  • (p. 112) Categorical self-binding fails when we inadvertently include a trigger in our list of acceptable activities.
  • (p. 118) Binding ourselves is a way to be free.
  • (p. 142) Try ending a hot shower with at least a minute of cold shower.
  • (p. 152) Our contemporary preoccupation with sex may be because it’s the last physical activity still widely practiced.
  • (p. 171) All my patients who have achieved long-term recovery have relied on truth-telling as critical for sustained mental and physical health.
  • (p. 176) Radical honesty:
    • promotes awareness of our actions
    • fosters intimate human connections
    • leads to a truthful autobiography, which holds us accountable not just to our present but also to our future selves
    • is contagious, and might even prevent the development of future addiction
  • (p. 181) “What would you be giving up if you stopped that behavior? What is one step you can take to change that behavior?”
  • (p. 184) Consuming leads to isolation and indifference, as the drug comes to replace the reward obtained from being in relationship with others.
  • (p. 187) ⭐ “I am responsible.”
  • (p. 193) ✅ “Hunger is a notification I can ignore.”
  • (p. 194) Truth-telling engenders a plenty mindset. Lying engenders a scarcity mindset.
  • (p. 210) To truly understand someone is to care for them.
  • (p. 215) Destructive shame:
    1. Overconsumption
    2. Shame
    3. Lying
    4. Isolation
    5. (Go back to step 1) Overconsumption…
  • (p. 217) Prosocial shame:
    1. Overconsumption
    2. Shame
    3. Radical honesty
    4. Acceptance
    5. Belonging and decreased consumption.
  • (p. 227) It is not our perfection but out willingness to work together to remedy our mistakes that creates the intimacy we crave.
  • (p. 233) We must be willing to move forward despite being uncertain of what lies ahead.
  • (p. 233) ⭐ We must have faith that actions today that seem to have no impact in the present moment are in fact accumulating in a positive direction, which will be revealed to us only at some unknown time in the future.