EP 21: Dr. Anna Lembke — The Doctor Behind Netflix's The Social Dilemma

Professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and New York Times bestseller Dr. Anna Lembke joins me to discuss how people get addicted to different behaviors, the dangers of social media addiction, and how we can beat our addictions. Dr. Anna Lembke has always been interested in psychology and how the brain works, and as the professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, she knows a thing or two.  A clinician scholar, Dr. Lembke has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries where she dives into what makes us tick. 

Dr. Lembke also sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, she has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate and maintains a thriving clinical practice.

The Social Dilemma rocked many of our beliefs around social media and addiction and you may recognize Dr. Lembke for her appearances in the Netflix documentary, discussing how social media was affecting our lives and the vast dangers of social media addictions.

She is also the author of Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop and New York Times Bestseller Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence which explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of The Anthony Sarandrea Show:

• What makes social media addictive.
• How dopamine works and the ways it can hijack your brain.
• The drugification of everyday life and our increased vulnerability to addiction.
• The need for government intervention in social media.
• How governments can limit damaging internet behavior.
• The science of the ‘lizard brain’ and what causes compulsive repetitive behavior.
• The similarities between drug addiction and internet addiction.
• How to detox from social media and quit addictions.
• The dangers of being addicted to social media.
• How long do you need to abstain from addictive behaviors for your brain chemistry to reset.

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Resources:

• The Social Dilemma
• Dopamine Nation

Connecting with Dr. Anna Lembke:

• Website

Connecting with the host:

• Anthony Sarandrea on LinkedIn

Quotes

• 02:05 - “Human connection is good, and it also feels good, and the reason it feels good is because it releases dopamine, which is our rewarding neurotransmitter, so then what happens with social media?.”
• 03:14 - “Social media has essentially drugified human interaction.”
• 10:12 - “The reason that the platforms are created to keep us engaged is because the longer we’re engaged the more likely we are to interact with the ads. So if there were regulations on advertising that could potentially mean that the makers of these products would be willing to make them less engaging.”
• 13:48 - “Anything that’s pleasurable will release dopamine, the more pleasure the faster and more dopamine it releases, our brains will immediately try to compensate for that increased dopamine by downregulating our dopamine production and transmission, not just to baseline levels, but actually to below baseline levels so we go into this dopamine deficit state before we go back to equilibrium.”
• 16:38 - “Understand the neuroscience, and be honest, what is that behavior that we’re overconsuming that is contrary to our goals and values.”
• 17:23 - “What people, in my experience, are mostly looking for is just to not be for a while they just want to escape and that's a very natural human urge and we've lost the art of finding more adaptive ways of doing that.”
• 18:46 - “The universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression, and craving but if you can just get through the first two weeks usually people feel like the sun comes out in weeks three and four.”
• 22:02 - “The smartphone itself has become the equivalent of the hypodermic syringe, it delivers this portable 24/7 hits of dopamine, and quantity and frequency really matter, the more that we’re pinging our brains the more likely we are to get into this addicted brain.”
• 29:09 - “You really need to do the full 30 days to get to the place where you restore baseline reward pathways and dopamine firing and feel better, and short of that people usually don't see it.”
• 30:35 - “We live in a very narcissistic culture where we’re preoccupied with the individual, we’re encouraged to be preoccupied with ourselves and I don't really think that’s how we are happy or healthy.”

How to Get Involved:

Anthony Sarandrea, the founder of SiteFlood, is a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker known as a renowned customer and lead generator across the globe. 

Be sure to follow him on LinkedIn, Instagram, and gain access to his consulting and speaking engagements via his website.

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