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Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke
46 reviews
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I will definitely re-read this book. Anna is a great storyteller. The testimonies from her patients really moved me and grounded the complex concepts in reality.
I learned so much about myself in reading this book. I cannot recommend this book enough. I am so excited to take the lessons learned and start the challenging work of rediscovery.
Here is a quote from the book that really sums up the main theme:
“We are cacti in the rainforest and like cacti, adapted to an arid climate, we are drowning in dopamine.
The net effect is that we now need more reward to feel pleasure and less injury to feel pain.”
I learned so much about myself in reading this book. I cannot recommend this book enough. I am so excited to take the lessons learned and start the challenging work of rediscovery.
Here is a quote from the book that really sums up the main theme:
The net effect is that we now need more reward to feel pleasure and less injury to feel pain.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Medical content, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Chronic illness, Drug use, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Some descriptions of medical reseach/testing involve the use of animal subjects.
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content
fast-paced
This book is way more about addiction than it is the everyday person’s experience of dopamine. There was almost no discussion of cell phones or social media which is probably the most immediately relevant topic to the majority reading this. I felt the title and description were a bit misleading that way, although that probably wasn’t the author’s decision. The pattern of the book was that the author would share a client’s extreme story, extrapolate a general “rule” from it, and then choose random and possibly unrelated examples from any period in history to try and back it up with little to no class, race, or political analysis. This book seems geared toward very privileged people struggling with addiction without much thought to other demographics. There were some useful concepts, such as the chapter on “self-binding” instead of self-control, but even then there were bizarre examples (such as comparing religious modesty rules to self-binding - um, it’s not self-binding if you impose it on other people?). I did appreciate the point about how people collectively try to medicate ourselves out of a painful reality instead of facing it and trying to change it. An analysis of the market and political forces behind that, or a connection to the “attention economy,” would have been great.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Sexual content, Suicide attempt
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
It has some interesting theories and ideas. It's not the most compelling, and I truly wonder if the theories are scientificly sound. But it's worth a listen to to get you thinking about our current world and dopamine issues.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Xenophobia, Suicide attempt
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
This book helped me learn the basics about how addiction works in the human brain and in people's daily lives. The author Dr. Lembke does a great job of integrating research findings and client cases to show us the way out of common addiction in modern days. Although the book is not focused on my phone/video addiction, most of the information was relevant and helpful.
Of course, understanding the issue and executing the treatment, especially on your own, are different, but I believe understanding is a good start toward the treatment. I tried a period of abstinence, the A in the acronym DOPAMINE, but it didn't work out. However, since Dr. Lembke also explained different ways to practice self-binding (physical, chronological, and categorical), I plan to try another way, specifically setting a time limit on phone use. I look forward to learning more about addiction, mine and that of others, and living a life with more freedom from devices.
Review by Linda (Any Pronouns) in October 2024
Personal essays on DefinitelyNotOkay.com
Artwork on Instagram @KoreanLinda
Of course, understanding the issue and executing the treatment, especially on your own, are different, but I believe understanding is a good start toward the treatment. I tried a period of abstinence, the A in the acronym DOPAMINE, but it didn't work out. However, since Dr. Lembke also explained different ways to practice self-binding (physical, chronological, and categorical), I plan to try another way, specifically setting a time limit on phone use. I look forward to learning more about addiction, mine and that of others, and living a life with more freedom from devices.
Review by Linda (Any Pronouns) in October 2024
Personal essays on DefinitelyNotOkay.com
Artwork on Instagram @KoreanLinda
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction
Moderate: Mental illness, Sexual content
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
I appreciated the insight into brain chemistry.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Sexual content
informative
slow-paced
<i> This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. </i>
... This is the beginning of the blurb of <i>Dopamine Nation</i>. It's written by a psychiatrist and aims to raise awareness about the world of indulgence and "getting it easy" that we're living in now. We're more and more used to instant gratification, we counteract boredom with stuff for our eyes (like doom scrolling if there's nothing better) or for our ears (music or podcasts or anything really that gives some audio stimulation) or for any of our other senses. We have forgotten how to let our minds wander and be free of attention to anything in particular, by focusing on anti-attention (that's my own term haha).
I completely agree with the premise and the starting point. It's why I picked up this book and was interested in finding out how to manage all this context and maybe limit my own issues (I've recently had the revelation that I don't really make the time anymore to reflect on anything. I've "optimised" the dead times with books or audiobooks or music or scrolling or mobile gaming; basically anything that fills the time and a minimal amount of attention. Which in turn lead to other things).
What kept me from rating it higher is its relevance (from my point of view) for the mere mortals who don't necessarily have pathological habits/ addictions, but who would like to improve their lives by limiting all this instant gratification. Dr. Lembke talks a lot about her patients with various types of addiction, be it that they admitted to the problem or not in the first place. She practices empathy and works together with her patients to reach treatment plans and behavioural changes, instead of directly prescribing (she actually avoids prescribing medicine where it's not crucial). She also has a system for tackling the problem together with the patient, which she kindly shares with us.
There is interesting information about how we're wired and what makes our brains tick. There are also tougher topics with which she deals head on, maybe coming off as judgmental. But it's judgment she admits to experiencing and moving over (one quote that stuck with me - <i>"If we don't like our patients, we can't help them. When I first met Laurie, I didn't like her.") which for me is more genuine - we're all human beings with our own biases and preconceptions; psychologists and psychiatrists and coaches are no different, but the difference lies in being able to get over your initial thoughts and go into the session with an open mind and a real wish to help the person in front of you and support them through their process.
Listening to these stories has been interesting, as well as to some of the techniques used. And for some mental health practitioners it might even come off as a handy guide for some situations (such as the D.O.P.A.M.I.N.E. acronym). But for self improvement it's a bit harder to put into practice and figure out a personal process.
... This is the beginning of the blurb of <i>Dopamine Nation</i>. It's written by a psychiatrist and aims to raise awareness about the world of indulgence and "getting it easy" that we're living in now. We're more and more used to instant gratification, we counteract boredom with stuff for our eyes (like doom scrolling if there's nothing better) or for our ears (music or podcasts or anything really that gives some audio stimulation) or for any of our other senses. We have forgotten how to let our minds wander and be free of attention to anything in particular, by focusing on anti-attention (that's my own term haha).
I completely agree with the premise and the starting point. It's why I picked up this book and was interested in finding out how to manage all this context and maybe limit my own issues (I've recently had the revelation that I don't really make the time anymore to reflect on anything. I've "optimised" the dead times with books or audiobooks or music or scrolling or mobile gaming; basically anything that fills the time and a minimal amount of attention. Which in turn lead to other things).
What kept me from rating it higher is its relevance (from my point of view) for the mere mortals who don't necessarily have pathological habits/ addictions, but who would like to improve their lives by limiting all this instant gratification. Dr. Lembke talks a lot about her patients with various types of addiction, be it that they admitted to the problem or not in the first place. She practices empathy and works together with her patients to reach treatment plans and behavioural changes, instead of directly prescribing (she actually avoids prescribing medicine where it's not crucial). She also has a system for tackling the problem together with the patient, which she kindly shares with us.
There is interesting information about how we're wired and what makes our brains tick. There are also tougher topics with which she deals head on, maybe coming off as judgmental. But it's judgment she admits to experiencing and moving over (one quote that stuck with me - <i>"If we don't like our patients, we can't help them. When I first met Laurie, I didn't like her.") which for me is more genuine - we're all human beings with our own biases and preconceptions; psychologists and psychiatrists and coaches are no different, but the difference lies in being able to get over your initial thoughts and go into the session with an open mind and a real wish to help the person in front of you and support them through their process.
Listening to these stories has been interesting, as well as to some of the techniques used. And for some mental health practitioners it might even come off as a handy guide for some situations (such as the D.O.P.A.M.I.N.E. acronym). But for self improvement it's a bit harder to put into practice and figure out a personal process.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug abuse, Sexual content
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Sexual content