Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke

29 reviews

alwaysreadmore's review against another edition

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informative inspiring fast-paced

4.25

I appreciated the insight into brain chemistry.

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maddelleine's review against another edition

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informative slow-paced

3.5

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. 

... This is the beginning of the blurb of Dopamine Nation. 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 - "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.

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