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A review by lory_enterenchanted
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
3.0
This book had interesting parts, disturbing parts, and missing parts.
Interesting:
- Information about the pleasure / pain balance, and how pursuing only pleasure actually causes pain, and encourages addictive cycles.
- Pain suppression, one of the cornerstones of modern medicine, is thus making pain worse and causing addiction.
- This system evolved in conditions of scarcity where it made sense. In the condition of abundance we have created, we are devouring ourselves.
- Turning toward pain with mindfulness, not resisting it, actually mitigates pain.
- Radical honesty as a healing force.
- The endless loop of destructive shame (fear of punishment, or punishment and shunning, leading to silence and lying about one's guilt), vs. the unfolding spiral of pro-social shame (admitting guilt and making reparation)
Disturbing:
- Passage where "self-binding" (i.e. taking measures to ensure abstinence by making an addiction difficult or impossible to fulfill) is equated to "customs" of body-concealing dress for women in Muslim and Mormon traditions, as if this is an appropriate way to help curb addiction. There is no acknowledgement of how this leads to the oppression and objectification of women, or the way it makes women responsible for men's inability to control their appetites.
- Using pain to increase pleasure seems awfully close to masochism ...
- Last section about "club goods" and the success of religious groups - the perks related to being an "in" group, weeding out freeloaders, etc. The mentality is foreign to me and seems vaguely totalitarian. It's certainly not Christian, in any true sense!
Missing:
- Not much discussion at all about what are actually the root causes for addiction, what needs to be worked out on a soul level. The techniques given seem to be for sort of just coping with life, not actual healing or insight.
- Abstinence is essential to recovery, but what about people who can't just stop? How about finding out what is behind their craving, besides the physiology? (Again.)
- The lack of insight includes the author's own issues with her mother, which would seem to need more work. The author's honesty about this and her romance-novel dependency is laudable, but also reveals some remaining blind spots.
- I suspect there is probably a lot of dopamine deprivation in early childhood, from misguided or suboptimal parenting. Young children are so overlooked, because they can't talk and don't remember those formative experiences. Parents very often have their own trauma, that can be handed down genetically as well as affecting parenting behavior. Our modern culture is also anti-baby health and highly stressful for mothers. The book doesn't really go into this topic.
- Isn't the flood of dopamine-raising substances and activities a substitute for meaningful spiritual activity and human relationship? What is the role of beneficial relationships in healing us and keeping us healthy? There could be much more about that.
LESSONS OF THE BALANCE
1. The relentless pursuit of pleasure (and avoidance of pain) leads to pain.
2. Recovery begins with abstinence.
3. Abstinence resets the brain's reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy in simpler pleasures.
4. Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine-overloaded world.
5. Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.
6. Pressing on the pain side resets our balance to the side of pleasure.
7. Beware of getting addicted to pain.
8. Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy, and fosters a plenty mindset.
9. Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.
10. Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing ourselves in it.
Interesting:
- Information about the pleasure / pain balance, and how pursuing only pleasure actually causes pain, and encourages addictive cycles.
- Pain suppression, one of the cornerstones of modern medicine, is thus making pain worse and causing addiction.
- This system evolved in conditions of scarcity where it made sense. In the condition of abundance we have created, we are devouring ourselves.
- Turning toward pain with mindfulness, not resisting it, actually mitigates pain.
- Radical honesty as a healing force.
- The endless loop of destructive shame (fear of punishment, or punishment and shunning, leading to silence and lying about one's guilt), vs. the unfolding spiral of pro-social shame (admitting guilt and making reparation)
Disturbing:
- Passage where "self-binding" (i.e. taking measures to ensure abstinence by making an addiction difficult or impossible to fulfill) is equated to "customs" of body-concealing dress for women in Muslim and Mormon traditions, as if this is an appropriate way to help curb addiction. There is no acknowledgement of how this leads to the oppression and objectification of women, or the way it makes women responsible for men's inability to control their appetites.
- Using pain to increase pleasure seems awfully close to masochism ...
- Last section about "club goods" and the success of religious groups - the perks related to being an "in" group, weeding out freeloaders, etc. The mentality is foreign to me and seems vaguely totalitarian. It's certainly not Christian, in any true sense!
Missing:
- Not much discussion at all about what are actually the root causes for addiction, what needs to be worked out on a soul level. The techniques given seem to be for sort of just coping with life, not actual healing or insight.
- Abstinence is essential to recovery, but what about people who can't just stop? How about finding out what is behind their craving, besides the physiology? (Again.)
- The lack of insight includes the author's own issues with her mother, which would seem to need more work. The author's honesty about this and her romance-novel dependency is laudable, but also reveals some remaining blind spots.
- I suspect there is probably a lot of dopamine deprivation in early childhood, from misguided or suboptimal parenting. Young children are so overlooked, because they can't talk and don't remember those formative experiences. Parents very often have their own trauma, that can be handed down genetically as well as affecting parenting behavior. Our modern culture is also anti-baby health and highly stressful for mothers. The book doesn't really go into this topic.
- Isn't the flood of dopamine-raising substances and activities a substitute for meaningful spiritual activity and human relationship? What is the role of beneficial relationships in healing us and keeping us healthy? There could be much more about that.
LESSONS OF THE BALANCE
1. The relentless pursuit of pleasure (and avoidance of pain) leads to pain.
2. Recovery begins with abstinence.
3. Abstinence resets the brain's reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy in simpler pleasures.
4. Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine-overloaded world.
5. Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.
6. Pressing on the pain side resets our balance to the side of pleasure.
7. Beware of getting addicted to pain.
8. Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy, and fosters a plenty mindset.
9. Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.
10. Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing ourselves in it.