Expert profile
Dr. Anna Lembke
Psychiatrist / Researcher
Addiction medicine and behavioral neuroscience
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About the expert
Focus: Dopamine, addiction, and the neurobiology of compulsive behavior
Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford and chief of the Stanford addiction clinic. Author of Dopamine Nation. Treats and studies the spectrum of compulsive consumption from substances to digital media. Frames addiction through a pleasure-pain balance and a homeostatic view of dopamine.
Expert discussions with Dr. Anna Lembke
Lembke: Dopamine, the pleasure-pain balance, and modern compulsive behavior
Modern triggers like social media, sugar, alcohol, and pornography may flood the brain's reward system so often that the body compensates by lowering baseline joy. Small daily over-consumption may quietly add up to a state where even simple pleasures feel flat and stronger triggers feel needed. A 30-day pause from the most reinforcing trigger, plus regular discomfort like cold exposure or hard exercise, may help reset that balance.