Dopamine Expert: Doing This Once A Day Fixes Your Dopamine! What Alcohol Is Doing To Your Brain!

There is a very famous experiment in which rats were engineered to have no dopamine, and the scientists discovered that if they put food in the rat's mouth, the rat would eat. But if you put the food even a body length away, the rat will starve to death, which tells us that dopamine is fundamental to get the things that we need for our basic survival. Now, every time we're doing something that's pleasurable, from sugar, to video games, work, pornography, social media, that will affect dopamine. And the more dopamine that's released, the more likely that drug or behavior is to be addictive. But also, the genetic risk of addiction is about 50 to 60%. So if you have a biological parent or grandparent with addiction, you are more likely to develop that addiction. We have to keep it in balance in order to stay healthy.

Dr. Anna Lembke is Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford, Chief of the Stanford Addiction Clinic...

... and a world-leading expert on the subject of dopamine. She will tell you how this one powerful chemical is controlling your life and what to do about it.

One of the most important findings in neuroscience in the past 75 years is that the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain, and the balance wants to remain level. The problem is that we automatically seek out pleasure and avoid pain, and we're exposed to all kinds of pleasures that we have in the modern world. And our brains are reeling in response to try to compensate. Now I need more of my drug in more potent forms to get the same effect, which then leads to addiction. And that's what happened to me when I got addicted to romance novels.

Take me into that phase of your life.

I was out of control and I needed to restore a level balance and take the advice I give my patients.

And what is that advice?

The Diary of a CEO is independently fact-checked. For any studies or science mentioned in this episode, please check the show notes.

This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is, if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. (upbeat music) I've sat here for the last 20 minutes trying to figure out how to say this to you, so I'm just gonna say it how it comes out my mouth, and I apologize if this is messy. But if there was ever an episode this year that you should listen to, it is this one. I've li- since this episode was recorded about a month ago, all I've been thinking about is how on earth I get you to watch this. And I don't say this often. The last time I said this was the first time Mo Gawdat came on this podcast. This is the second time I've said this in almost four years of recording this podcast on YouTube. And the reason for that is, so many of the things that I know you're struggling with in your life that stand in the way of the person you wanna become, that relationship you have with your phone, the procrastination, the cycles of behavior that make you feel embarrassed and full of shame that you've just never been able to crack, all of them, all of them, I genuinely believe, for many of you, are going to be understood today if you listen to this episode. It has changed my life and it has changed much of the lives of my team. If, if I'm wrong here, you have the right to message me and tell me that I was wrong. Please listen to this episode. Really, really, I mean that from the bottom of my heart. And just to make sure you do, throughout this episode there's gonna be these pop-ups. If you collect eight of these codes that are gonna pop up on the screen and put them in the document link below, you'll unlock something very special, some additional content. Please listen to this episode. Dr. Anna Lembke, you wrote one of the most iconic well-known books about dopamine, which propelled the subject matter of dopamine into the public consciousness. But I guess the most important question I should ask you is, why does dopamine matter?