DOPAMINE: A Practical Approach to Compulsive Overconsumption in a Reward-Overloaded World
This is a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . The increased numbers, variety, and potency are staggering. As such, we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. Yet, it is possible to find contentment and connectedness by keeping dopamine in check.
In this talk, Professor Anna Lembke will provide a practical, science-informed approach to addressing compulsive overconsumption of everything from food, to sex, to video games. Q&A will follow Dr. Lembke’s presentation.
After participating in this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Describe the neuroscience of pleasure and pain what happens in the brain as we become addicted
- Recognize the ways in which the mismatch between our primitive wiring and our modern ecosystem has made us all more vulnerable to addiction, as well as depression and anxiety
- Identify what we can do to guard against compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world
Agenda
12:00 Welcome and Introduction of Speaker
12:05 Presentation
12:50 Q&A
1:30 Adjourn
Biography
Anna Lembke is Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. She is author of Drug Dealer MD (2016) and Dopamine Nation (2021). She appeared in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and on NPR’s Fresh Air.
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