Anna Lembke on Dopamine Nation (Youtube)
What to do about our chronic dopamine deficit?
Abstain, maintain, seek out pain.
Abstain
When we’re chasing dopamine, we do not see true cause and effect. We need distance from our drug of choice in order to see the true impact that it’s having on our lives, relationships, mood.
4 weeks is the amount of time it takes to reset reward pathways [on average].
Symptoms of withdrawal: anxiety, irritability, insomnia, craving, depression.
Maintain (self-binding):
Create literal and metacognitive barriers so we can press the pause button between desire and consumption and aren’t relying entirely on willpower.
- Geographical (put things far away, create distance/effort between you and addictive substance)
- Chronological (hours of use and non-use)
- Categorical ()
- Chemical (medications, i.e. Ozempic)
Seek out pain?
Hormesis—“In the fields of biology and medicine hormesis is defined as an adaptive response of cells and organisms to a moderate (usually intermittent) stress.” 1
- Exercise
- Ice baths
- Fasting
- Prayer
- Meditation (why meditate)
Footnotes
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Mattson MP. Hormesis defined. Ageing Res Rev. 2008 Jan;7(1):1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.arr.2007.08.007. Epub 2007 Dec 5. PMID: 18162444; PMCID: PMC2248601. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18162444/ ↩