Dopamine is our feel-good hormone: the one that encourages us to seek out pleasure. But the relentless pursuit of pleasure can lead to pain too. How can we find contentment in an age of instant gratification and overindulgence?
We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting... And it's made all of us vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
Psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke runs the Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University and is the author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. She joins us in The Garden to explore the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain, and how we can find the kind of contentment that sticks.
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30 minute talk
20 minute Member Q&A
Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist, author and expert in addiction. Her most recent book, Dopamine Nation, explores xplores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain.
Are our hormones being hijacked by technology?
Dopamine is our feel-good hormone: the one that encourages us to seek out pleasure. But the relentless pursuit of pleasure can lead to pain too. How can we find contentment in an age of instant gratification and overindulgence?
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