Inaugural Addiction Science Keynote: Pleasure, Pain, and Addiction: What Neuroscience and People in Recovery Can Teach Us About How to Navigate a Dopamine Overloaded World by Stanford Psychiatry Professor Anna Lembke, MD

Sponsored by The Well House and Cardinal Recovery, author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, Stanford Psychiatry Professor Anna Lembke, MD decodes complex neuroscience into applicable strategies that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure can lead to pain. An expert in treating addictions of all kinds, Dr. Lembke discusses the biology and psychology of why people become addicted to certain substances and behaviors and the key role that our dopamine balance plays in creating addiction. She holds up people in recovery from severe addiction as modern-day prophets for how to navigate our dopamine-overloaded world.

Dr. Lembke is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop (Johns Hopkins University Press), which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read in the quest to understand the opioid epidemic. Dr. Lembke also appeared in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, which provides an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. In her new book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Dutton/Penguin Random House, August 2021), an instant New York Times bestseller, Dr. Lembke explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.