Transcript

Welcome to the Sabbath Cafe Podcast. This is episode 129 Understanding Addiction: Thoughts on the book Dopamine Nation. Please be aware that this episode will include topics on addiction and compulsive behavior.

Hi everyone! This is Michele. Thank you for joining me on the Sabbath Café Podcast.  This week I want to talk about this book that I read that has had a profound influence on me. The book is called The Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke. Dr. Lembke is actually a psychiatrist at Stanford University.  

I first picked up this book just at a bookstore. And I was really curious about it because I know that it was a book dealing with addiction. I’ve known people, whether it’s family or friends, who deal with nicotine addiction. They are chain smokers. And I know people that are recovery alcoholics. And so when I picked up this book, when I saw the title about “Dopamine Nation”, it just really hit me.  

If you don’t know what dopamine is… dopamine is the pleasure hormone. And so what it is is that when we get that fix… whether it’s just binge watching your favorite show, and you just click on that next episode, we get a pleasure.  We get a sense of high from it. And that high, biochemically, is a result of a shot of this dopamine hormone that’s released into your brain to give you that sense.  And also, the subtitle of the book is called “finding balance in the age of indulgence.”  Now who would not want to find balance? 

And so the first thing I did was I went and listened to a two hour podcast by Dr. Anna Lembke. Just because that was the fastest thing.  Actually, she has done many podcasts on Youtube. So I’m going to put the name of the book, Dr. Lembke’s name, and one or two Youtube videos that I really liked in the show notes and the transcripts.  Please go to www.sabbathcafeblog.com.  And this episode is episode 129.  So go to the website and look up the show notes. I really highly recommend anyone who’s interested in this area, this topic, to just spend some time to listen to the podcast. 

And so the amazing thing is after I listened to the podcast, I was just so encouraged that I actually finished reading.  And the book was even better. Because in the book, she actually includes a lot of the patient cases. Like I mentioned before, she is a practicing psychiatrist. Her official title is that she is the medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine. Wow.  

And she’s not just one of those people that has a lot of theories when she writes the book. In the book, you can read many of her patient’s case stories. And Dr. Anna shares these stories to show us the steps on how to break the cycles of addiction and start new habits for recovery.  And that just really gave me hope. 

In my experience being in the Christian community, I think addiction is one of those areas that really honestly people don’t like to talk about. Because there is a stigma of shame. Everyone who I know that wrestles with that almost always feels like they’re suffering because… or that they’re stuck in it because they don’t have enough self-discipline…or if they just tried hard enough… or have accountability that this will go away, that this will be fixed. And that’s a very simplistic way of looking at it.  And I think what I’ve come to learn is that addiction is a very complex issue. And even though choice and discipline do play part of the recovery, but there are so much more elements involved with that.   

And one key thing that I learned from this book is to understand how our brains are wired to handle pleasure and pain.   Because one of the main motivations for people that wrestle with addiction and compulsive behavior is that most of the time, we’re trying to run away from pain by pursuing pleasurable experiences. There’s a sense of escape. But what I’ve learned from this book is that this idea of chasing after pleasure to avoid pain is actually counterproductive. The result is that we will end up experiencing more pain and less pleasure.  And why is that?  It’s because our brain is actually wired to have pain – or to experience pain and pleasure in a balanced way.  So Dr. Anna was illustrating it.  It’s like having a teeter-totter in our brain.  So with pain on one side, and pleasure on the other side.  And our brains are wired that when one side have more experience… So let’s say that you have more pleasurable, more fun, more satisfying experiences, the brain would actually secrete chemicals to push down on the pain side, and lessen the experience of the pleasure.  So the brain is actually fighting against our trend.  

And this is totally counter-intuitive because I think for all my life, I’ve always been trying to avoid painful experiences. I deal with them. I process through them because that seems to be what God always recommends for me: don’t brush these experiences… don’t brush these feelings under the carpet. But face it, process through it, and then you will be free from it.  You will be healed from it. That is the right process that God seem to always be teaching me.   

After I read Dr. Anna’s book, I feel like wow, I now understand why God seems to be recommending that. And what I learned from the book, and Dr. Anna includes a lot of… goes into these into a lot more detail.  And I don’t want to try and teach that here because I’m still processing through it myself. But one thing I have learned is that when I face difficult things in life, to not try and run away… and try to go to my coping mechanism. But to actually deal with the challenges and negativities, and to learn to process through them.  

And I just want to thank Dr. Anna for writing this book, and just for her work in helping so many of her patients to come to recovery.  And I just want to encourage anyone out there listening that if you also feel like you’re stuck in a compulsive behavior, if you’re stuck in some kind of addiction, and I don’t care how long it has been.  If it’s been decades.. If you just want to change, but you don’t know how, and you feel like you’ve given up.  Just go and get this book right away. Again, her name is Dr. Anna Lembke, and the book is called Dopamine Nation. It’s a wonderful place to get started to have some understanding and to take the first step towards having more information to understand why we do the things we do.  And to understand how our brain is made and created to function so that we are working with our bodies and not against it. 

And that if anything you get out of this [podcast] today, I just want to say that there is hope for anyone stuck in addiction.  And Dr. Anna also shared a lot of examples on patients that have success with prescription medication to deal with chemical dependency. So there are a lot, a lot of paths out there to recovery. And I just want you to know you are not alone. There is hope for anyone dealing with addiction.  So if you get a chance, search for her name on Youtube, check out her book.  Just do the next thing. Take the next step to your recovery.  You can be free. You can be free from addiction.  

So that’s what I wanted to share with everyone this week. I’ve just been so excited about this book. Thank you for listening to Sabbath Café Podcast.  This is episode 129.  If you like more information on this episode or on the transcript, please visit www.sabbathcafeblog.com.  And we will see you next time.  Have a blessed week.