Dopamine & Reward

This week on Psychology Today, my friend Nick Ford and I co-authored an article titled Understanding Dopamine Can Help Us Create Better Habits.

This article was inspired by many conversations with Nick about neuroscience, philosophy, and optimizing one’s habits and sense of meaning in order to chase “the good life,” and by my most recent podcast with neuropsychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke.

Find the podcast on YouTube and Spotify.

Dr. Lembke is a Professor of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University, Program Director of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Medicine, and the bestselling author of the books Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop, and Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. 

In this episode we talked about what dopamine is and how it governs the brain’s systems of pleasure and pain, how dopamine causes addiction (both with drugs and behaviors), how addiction has become a public health crisis in the United States, and what we can do about it. We talk about addictive technologies such as smartphones, and how this impacts today’s youth, and strategies for dopamine detoxification in order to promote happiness and well-being. Lastly, we discuss the difference between biological and sociological problems, and discuss Dr. Lembke’s warning against doctors overprescribing drugs and attempting to “biologize” non-biological problems.