Anna Lembke, MD is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she is the author of more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications, has testified before the United States House of Representatives and Senate, and has served as an expert witness in federal and state opioid litigation. She is an internationally recognized leader in addiction medicine treatment and education.

In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic (Zuger, 2018).

Dr. Lembke appeared in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. 

Her book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Dutton/Penguin Random House, August 2021) was an instant New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller, has been translated into 35 languages, and explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world. Her latest book The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook, is a practical, interactive guide to moderating consumption in a world of plenty.

Presentation Title: “The Plenty Paradox: How the Pursuit of Pleasure Leads to Pain … and What to Do about It”

About this presentation: 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 provides a practical, science-informed approach to addressing compulsive overconsumption of everything from food, to sex, to video games.

Key Learning Objectives:

1. Explain the neuroscience of pleasure and pain and what happens in the brain as we repeatedly consume high-dopamine rewards
2. Describe homeostasis and how chronic exposure to intoxicants tilts the hedonic set-point to the side of pain, contributing to rising rates of depression and anxiety, especially in rich nations
3. Identify dopamine fasting as a practical, feasible, and effective way to reset reward pathways
4. Review the science of hormesis: The intentional pursuit of pain/discomfort to improve mood and well-being