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book2021

Dopamine Nation

Disciplines:
self-help
psychiatry
neuroscience
clinical psychology/addiction

Summary

Anna Lembke's 2021 book — explaining addiction through the brain's dopamine balance mechanism and arguing that modern life's overabundance of pleasure-inducing stimuli has triggered a mass addiction epidemic — a clinical psychiatrist's account that became a popular bestseller.

Core Contribution

Creates the pleasure-pain balance framework for everyday addiction — Dopamine Nation makes the dopamine see-saw model accessible and shows that addiction is not limited to drugs but applies to any behavior that provides supra-normal dopamine stimulation, including smartphones, sugar, and social media.

Historical Influences

Dopamine research Addiction medicine

Intellectual Lineage

Anna Lembke Dutton

Allied Works

Drug Dealer, MD The Molecule of More Chasing the Scream

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

Addiction public understanding

Intellectual Posterity

Dopamine Nation Pleasure-pain balance

Discussing

Dopamine Nation

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