The Rich Roll Podcast

The relentless pursuit of pleasure always leads to pain. As the world evolves from one of scarcity to overabundance, we increasingly orient our lives around the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain—an instinct that has produced a myriad of unprecedented types of addiction, and consequently, the pain we so desperately seek to avoid. To better understand this conundrum, I’m joined today by one of the world’s leading authorities on the neuroscience of addiction, Anna Lembke, MD. If that name sounds familiar, it’s likely due to her on screen presence in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma—a must-watch for anyone with a smartphone. Anna is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. She is widely published, has testified before Congress, and has authored two important books, Drug Dealer MD and her newest work, Dopamine Nation—a powerful primer on compulsive overconsumption in a world where feeling good has becom