Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

In the introduction, Lembke examines the book’s subtitle, “Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.” Unlike our ancient ancestors, who lived in a world in which scarcity was the norm, people today live in a world transformed by the age of “overwhelming abundance.” While this has obvious benefits for the quality of life compared to that of ancient ancestors, it does have present greater risks for other consequences: “Drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting […] the increased numbers, variety, and potency of highly rewarding stimuli today is staggering” (1). This statement introduces one of the book’s main themes: The Dangers of Digital Drugs. Ostensibly, the modern world is a somewhat novel environment in which people are overstimulated by artificial means, and people haven’t quite evolved to handle it all. It becomes easier to move away from a centered, balanced approach to processing the modern world. Lembke sees this as a monumental problem facing societies. As attention becomes a commodity, and people are under a constant barrage of stimuli, striving for balance becomes difficult, though it’s essential to a general sense of well-being. Additionally, Lembke notes, “In essence, the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery” (2). Hence, Lembke’s purpose for this book, in part, is to provide ideas and approaches to finding balance that she has gathered from her clinical practice as a psychiatrist and from her research into addiction.

Chapter 1 has an attention-grabbing anecdote about a man named Jacob, a patient of Lembke’s who sought help with compulsive behavior involving masturbation. One reason that Lembke may have chosen to open her book with this particular anecdote is that it works effectively as a hook, drawing people into the book. The details of Jacob’s experience with addiction are both shocking and compelling. Also significant is that Lembke occasionally writes in a reflective tone, which indicates that the style of this book is different from a purely scientific analysis of addictive behaviors. The stories of her patients provide important anecdotal evidence of her claims: “I have heard many tales on the variations of human suffering, but Jacob’s story shocked me” (10). She likely anticipates that upon reading the details of Jacob’s experience with addiction, including his machine, people will cringe, and she aligns herself with them, suggesting that she too felt shocked. She adds, “What disturbed me most was what it implied about the world we live in now” (10). Here, Lembke reflects on the broader, societal implications of Jacob’s experience. His story serves as an eye-opener for Lembke, and she realizes just how omnipresent temptation is in our modern age: “One of the biggest risk factors for getting addicted to any drug is easy access to that drug. When it’s easier to get a drug, we’re more likely to try it. In trying it, we’re more likely to get addicted to it” (18). Significantly, she broadens the term drug so that it implies any kind of compulsive behavior that can trigger dopamine responses in the brain. In other words, for Jacob, masturbation was a drug. In addition, Lembke highlights the theme of The Danger of Digital Drugs, incorporating technology into her discussion of dopamine because of the ways that technology, like substances and other means of artificially inducing a pleasure response, creates imbalances between pain and pleasure. Lembke calls these “digital drugs” (22), and notes that they pose increased risks for overconsumption as well. Given Lembke’s comments about addictive behaviors in modern society stemming from oversaturation of not only drugs but technology lends the chapter’s title, “Our Masturbation Machine,” a broader meaning, as “masturbation” encompasses other addictive behaviors as well and “machine” represents the industries that provide the means.