Dopamine Nation

In a world where people are less happy, more anxious, more depressed, and experiencing more physical pain now than in previous decades, addiction rates have soared, fueled by easy access to high-reward triggers like opioids, social media, or online gambling. Anna Lembke, an award-winning professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, delves into this pressing issue, exploring how people’s relentless pursuit of pleasure often leads to greater pain and suffering.

The Accessibility of Addiction

Lembke starts by pointing out that easy access to triggers like drugs, junk food, online pornography, and gambling has made addiction more common than ever. She notes the troubling rise in opioid prescriptions, showing that a fourfold increase from 1999 to 2012 matches the spike in addiction rates and related deaths. This connection highlights a key idea in her book: easier access to drugs, whether chemical or digital, increases the chances of developing an addiction. For example, people can encounter new, potentially addictive behaviors online — behaviors they otherwise might not have discovered on their own. Thus, digital tools can facilitate forms of behavioral contagion, where addiction can spread like a virus.