Highlights - Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation - Chief of Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

Highlights - Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation - Chief of Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

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Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

I'm an addiction psychiatrist. When I use the word addiction, I'm really talking about having crossed the line from basically healthy use with an occasional slip to somebody who's really caught in the vortex of compulsive overconsumption with consequences and typically needing help from others. It's one of the main points of my book Dopamine Nation that we are living in this addictogenic world where almost all human behaviors and substances have become drugified in one way, right? Social media has drugified human connection. Our food has been drugified by the addition of salt, fat, sugar. Reading is drugified, the way that these genre novels fill this sort of gaping hole of compulsive consumption among their readership, people always wanting more. The Netflix binges, where you get the next episode automatically fills unless you do something to stop it. You know, these are all little ways in which our lives have been engineered to keep us clicking and swiping and eating and smoking and drinking to the detriment of the globe. I mean, 70% of global deaths are due to diseases caused by modifiable risk factors, and the top three are smoking, inactivity, and overeating or diet. So we're literally titillating ourselves to death.

Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

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Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

I'm an addiction psychiatrist. When I use the word addiction, I'm really talking about having crossed the line from basically healthy use with an occasional slip to somebody who's really caught in the vortex of compulsive overconsumption with consequences and typically needing help from others. It's one of the main points of my book Dopamine Nation that we are living in this addictogenic world where almost all human behaviors and substances have become drugified in one way, right? Social media has drugified human connection. Our food has been drugified by the addition of salt, fat, sugar. Reading is drugified, the way that these genre novels fill this sort of gaping hole of compulsive consumption among their readership, people always wanting more. The Netflix binges, where you get the next episode automatically fills unless you do something to stop it. You know, these are all little ways in which our lives have been engineered to keep us clicking and swiping and eating and smoking and drinking to the detriment of the globe. I mean, 70% of global deaths are due to diseases caused by modifiable risk factors, and the top three are smoking, inactivity, and overeating or diet. So we're literally titillating ourselves to death.

Highlights - Britt Wray - Author, Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

Highlights - Britt Wray - Author, Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

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Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Broadcaster and Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

I think the general waking up that I'm seeing around me in so many different parts of society, people from all walks understanding that this is here, it's not a future threat. It's active now. We need to get smart about addressing it. A lot of people are also asking themselves how can I be of service? What can I do at this time? How am I going to be? And you know, the more climate job boards and networking communities and sites of bringing people together to do that work of figuring out how they're going to go on their climate journey while infusing it with a sense of joy, with a sense of how can we make this fun, right? How can we reshift so this is not just focusing on the negative, but really focusing on what we want to be building and what is abundant and the better life that we're working towards? All of that has been popping up a lot and that gives me an honest sense of hope. So a lot of it is about that relationality, creating conditions of solidarity that bring a sense of stability and security. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the impacts will be and how they're going to affect us, each and every one of us, in the decades ahead. There needs to, amidst all that uncertainty, be other things that can undergird a child and make them feel held, safe, secure, and like they belong to a protective community that's thinking and feeling with them through this.

Britt Wray - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”

Britt Wray - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”

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Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Broadcaster and Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

I think the general waking up that I'm seeing around me in so many different parts of society, people from all walks understanding that this is here, it's not a future threat. It's active now. We need to get smart about addressing it. A lot of people are also asking themselves how can I be of service? What can I do at this time? How am I going to be? And you know, the more climate job boards and networking communities and sites of bringing people together to do that work of figuring out how they're going to go on their climate journey while infusing it with a sense of joy, with a sense of how can we make this fun, right? How can we reshift so this is not just focusing on the negative, but really focusing on what we want to be building and what is abundant and the better life that we're working towards? All of that has been popping up a lot and that gives me an honest sense of hope. So a lot of it is about that relationality, creating conditions of solidarity that bring a sense of stability and security. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the impacts will be and how they're going to affect us, each and every one of us, in the decades ahead. There needs to, amidst all that uncertainty, be other things that can undergird a child and make them feel held, safe, secure, and like they belong to a protective community that's thinking and feeling with them through this.