Mar 15, 2023
In this episode of the Smarter Not Harder podcast, host Dr. Ted
Achacoso is joined by Dr. Anna Lembke who educates us on the opioid
epidemic and answered the question: how can a person get addicted
to pain?
Doctor Anna Lembke is a professor and the medical director of
Addiction Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a
New York Times Best Selling author. She received her undergraduate
degree in humanities from Yale University and her medical degree
from Stanford University.
Dr. Lembke is a diplomat for both the
American Board of Psychiatry and
Neurology,
and the
American Board of Addiction
Medicine.
She is also a specialist in the opioid epidemic of the United
States. She appeared in the 2020 subcommittee
The Social Dilemma. Her
works include
“How
Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard
to Stop,”
and the New York Times bestseller
“Dopamine
Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence”
which was released in August 2021.
What we discuss:
00:00:40 - About Dr. Anna Lembke
00:01:45 - Uncovering co-occurring addictions alongside subsctance
abbuse
00:03:46 - Uncovering substance addictions with
behavioral-addicted patients
00:04:54 - Is it true that people have addictive
personalities?
00:08:02 -
Decreasing the amount of the addictive substance over time
vs. total abstinence immediately
00:13:16 - Statistics on substance addiction
00:18:14 - How dopamine plays into addiction
00:22:23 -
The journey to abuse
00:30:08 - How does one get addicted to pain?
00:39:28 - What happens to dopamine once
abstinent
00:42:55 - How does opiate induced hyperalgesia
happen?
00:46:25 - How does mindfulness help with
addiction?
00:52:02 - Is romantic love an addiction?
00:53:48 - Should hard and sudden heartbreak be treated with drugs
from sudden dopamine drops?
00:57:42 - Can psychedelics lead to addiction? Can it help in
mitigating addiction?
01:00:29 - Smarter not harder advice to parents on how their
children can navigate the dopamine nation
Find more from Smarter Not
Harder:
Find out more about Dr. Anna
Lembke:
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