The Science of Self Control: Find Motivation, Build Willpower, and Increase Your Focus

Hey, it's friend Mal and welcome to the Mal Robbins podcast. Let me ask you something. Why is it so hard to do the things you know you need to do? Why can't you just get motivated to work out, eat better, stop scrolling, write the email, go to bed, clean the garage, whatever it is. You want to do it, you keep telling yourself, uh, you'll start tomorrow. But somehow you don't, you stay stuck, you keep scrolling, you order the takeout, you waste another hour on your phone. And then you feel like crap about it. Sound familiar? I hear this all the time from friends, from listeners emailing in from my own kids and I've lived it too. But the problem isn't you. The problem is your brain. It's been hijacked and it continues to be hijacked. You're not unmotivated. You're over stimulated. You've been trained by modern life to chase easy dopamine that feel good chemical in your brain all day long food, social media, porn, gaming, constant multitasking. And that's rewired your brain to avoid anything that feels hard even when you want to do it. But here's the good news. You can take your brain back. You can rebuild motivation, focus, and energy. That's why today we're talking about how to get motivated even when you don't feel like it with the world's number one expert on dopamine. And the shift doesn't take a six month cleanse. You just need this episode. Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited that you're here. I'm fired up for today's conversation. It's such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you. And if you're a new listener, you're here because somebody shared this with you. I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. Today's guest is the world's foremost expert on dopamine and it's effect on your brain and your habits. I'm talking of course about Dr. Anna Lemke. Today, you're going to get her protocol for motivation, happiness, and getting things done. Dr. Anna Lemke is a professor and the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. And she's chief of Stanford's dual diagnosis clinic where she treats people dealing with addiction and mental health issues. She's trained hundreds of physicians through the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship where she serves as program director. She's double board certified in both psychiatry and addiction medicine. She is the New York Times bestselling author of two books that have been translated into over 30 languages, dopamine nation and drug dealer MD. She's testified in court rooms, advise national policy and she's published more than 100 peer reviewed papers put simply. She is the greatest dopamine mind in the world. And today she's going to teach you her protocol for motivation, happiness, and getting things done. So without further ado, please help me welcome Dr. Anna Lemke to the Mel Robbins podcast. Thank you for inviting me. I'm absolutely delighted to be here. Dr. Lemke, could you tell me? If I take everything to heart that you're about to teach me today and I truly apply all this research about dopamine and motivation and happiness and pain and pleasure centers and I apply it to my life, how could my life change? If you're like me and you're like many of my patients, you are probably unconsciously organizing your entire life around reward and little dopamine hits. From the moment we wake up in the morning, we reach for our phones, we scroll, we go get our coffee with our caffeine, we get in the car, we're listening to our music, it's not interesting, we're flipping the stations, then we get to work and all of a sudden, we have to let go of those instantaneous pleasures. Now we're like bored, we're frustrated, we're restless, we're anxious, we can't concentrate. So then we're interrupting ourselves and saying, oh, I better check my phone or maybe I should look at that video and we're doing that through the entirety of the day until we get to the end of the day where we go home, we can't wait till we get there to have a glass of wine, watch our shows, eat a cupcake, and then have difficulty falling asleep at night because we're so wound up and restless. So what I'm saying to you is that I hope by the end of the conversation, you can get out of the vortex of compulsive over consumption and get to a place where you're not constantly seeking these rewards, but instead really showing up for your life. Oh my God. Dr. Lec, this is why I've been so excited to talk to you because you just explained every single one of us. And we're in it. And so we don't see how the constant distraction and reaching for all these things and everything you just described. So what I got already so far is that a lot of your work centers around the fact that as a human being, we have this kind of natural system inside us that we will move right like a freight train towards what feels really good, but we reflexively move away from anything that might feel hard is that kind of what you're talking about. Yes, very nicely summarized. Okay. And your research in particular focuses on dopamine. So let's just start at the basics. What exactly is dopamine and why is it important? Okay, so dopamine is a chemical that we make in our brain. It's what's called a neurotransmitter. Neutransmitters are the molecules that bridge the gap between neurons neurons are these long spindly cells that conduct electrical circuits. Our brains are fundamentally a bunch of wires. Okay, but those wires, the neurons don't actually touch and to end there's a little space between them. That space is called the synapse. Okay, and neurotransmitters bridge that gap between neurons to allow for fine tune control of those electrical circuits. Dopamine has many different functions, but one of its most important functions is in pleasure reward and motivation. Okay, now it's not the only neurotransmitter involved in that process, but it has become a kind of common currency for neuroscientists to measure the reinforcing potential of different substances and behaviors. Fundamentally, the more dopamine that is released in the brain's reward pathway and the faster that it's released, the more likely is that substance to be reinforcing or something that our brain recognizes as important for survival, something to approach, explore, and potentially exploit by doing it again and again. So let me just give this back to you to see if I'm understanding this. So your brain releases these chemicals. Dopamine is one of them and dopamine is related to motivation and pleasure. Yes, a more fundamental way to talk about it is it's related to reinforcement. Okay, so something that I do. Yeah, that's often associated with pleasure, but not exclusively associated with pleasure, which then I want to do again and again. Okay. Because my brain recognizes it as potentially important for survival. How important is dopamine in terms of the role that it plays when you are trying to either break and replace bad habits or create new positive habits. You see what I mean? I can understand what you're talking about because the thing I immediately thought of is whenever I've heard anybody talk about something like heroin or oxycontin or something like that, that first time that somebody sadly uses it, there's this boom huge reward. Right. And then experts are very clear that the reward or the spike that you're getting declines with every use, but the poor person who is addicted is chasing that initial first spike and that feeling, even though it's not coming. Exactly. And that's often what we call euphoric recall. We tend to have this very vivid memory of initial exposure to highly emotionally potent stimuli, whether pleasure or pain. Yep, our brain really remembers that. Yep. And if it's pleasurable, we marshal all of our available resources to try to get it again. Oh, okay, wait a minute. So I think that that leads us to something I saw that you covered very early in your book, which is there is this pleasure pain system that you were born with. It is in your body. And there's something that you write about called the pleasure pain balance. Can you explain that a little bit? Yes. So this is an extended metaphor that I use to try to explain. At a very fundamental level, how we process pleasure and pain. And to me, one of the really interesting findings in neuroscience is that pain and pleasure are actually co located in the brain. So the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain and they work through what's called an opponent process mechanism. Okay. Okay. So imagine that deep in your reward pathway, there is a scale or a balance, something like a teeter totter. Like a seesaw. Like a seesaw. Yeah. Okay. And when it's at rest, that balance or that that beam on the central full crumb is level with the ground. Okay. When we experience pleasure, it tips one way and pain, it tips the other. Now again, this is a vast oversimplification because of course we can experience pleasure and pain simultaneously. For example, when we eat spicy food and the brain is just much, much more complex than this pleasure pain balance. Okay. But it's a useful framework for conceptualizing some fundamental concepts in neuroscience, like the concept of homeostasis and the concept of neuro adaptation, which I'm going to explain now. Okay. Okay. So let's say, you know, I do something pleasurable. We talked about potato chips. I also really like potato chips. You know, I eat a potato chip that gives me pleasure. My pleasure pain balance tilts to the side of pleasure. But there are certain rules governing this balance. And the first and most important rule is that the balance wants to remain level with the ground. This is what neuroscientists call homeostasis. Right. It's a range of baseline conditions that the organism must maintain in order to survive. So as soon as I've eaten that potato chip and my pleasure pain balance has tilted to the side of pleasure. I like how you tilt your head when I when I say like a dog. She's going to give me a treat. Right. My brain is going to react by working very hard to bring that balance level again. And that process is called neuro adaptation. And I like to imagine that as these little neuro adaptation and the ground ones hopping on the pain side of balance, because that's the level at which I understand it. But the thing about those ground ones is that they don't get off as soon as I'm level. I wish they did. But they stay on until the balance is tilted and equal an opposite amount to the side of pain. That's the come down the craving the hangover or just that moment of wanting to have one more potato chip drink one more glass of wine. What watch one more tick tock video. Oh, wait, hold on a second. Okay. I think I might have gotten this. But when we say. So take away number one, as I was listening, is that you are designed with this pleasure pain balance and we're imagining a sea saw in life between the things that are easy that you love, pleasurable, the things that are very hard that you need to do that you avoid pain. Right. But your brain is not only able to tilt toward pleasure or tilt toward pain so you can experience it. But it's always going to want to get itself back to that sea saw being level. But you also said another word craving is craving part of this pain thing, which then tries to get you to get more pleasure is that like what where does craving come into this. Yeah, yeah, you're definitely on the right track. And the general area absorbing this. You are you are you are definitely absorbing this. So the first rule is any deviation from homeostasis is essentially a biological stressor. And our brain will want to do the work to get us back to homeostasis. Okay. And there are a couple ways we can get back there. We can just wait till the ground and pop off and homeostasis is restored that is not have more potato chips or we can have more potato chips because that will get us back there faster and of course, you know, potato chips are yummy. So that that's what I want to do. But this this brings us to the second rule of the balance and the second rule of the balance is with repeated exposure to the same or similar reinforcing stimulus that initial deflection to the side of pleasure gets weaker and shorter and duration. But that after response to pain gets stronger and longer. In other words, those gremlins start to multiply. They're now lifting weights. We've got Arnold Schwarzenegger gremlins, right. So the sense of like I'm doing something pleasurable for me right now. Yes, that's true because it brings us back to level position. But in the long run, what it does is it drives us down to the side of pain. And this is really key for understanding what happens in the brain as we become addicted because if we continue to consume our drug of choice over days to weeks to months years, we then have enough gremlins on the panes of the balance to fill this whole room and eventually they are camped out there, Tenson, Barbacuzon toe. And then we've changed our hedonic or joy set point, right. Now we need more of our drug and more potent forms, more potato chips, not to feel good, but just to level the balance and feel normal. And when we're not using, we're walking around with a pleasure pain balance tilted to the center of the body. It's tilted to the side of pain, experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance or behavior, which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression, and craving. And this is why it is so difficult to stop eating potato chips or whatever it is. Once we've changed our brain and gotten into a habitual pattern of exposure to our drug of choice or reinforcing behavior over a long period of time. And you use the word addiction, but you mean that in the broadest of all possible terms. So for my benefit and for the person who's listening benefit, give me a range of things that people could become addicted to and not realize that it's because of this pleasure pain balance getting out of whack and then getting into a pain deficit for your anxious and depressed and cravings. And craving and like all of these things that you just described that a lot of people feel, but may not realize great questions. So first of all, let's define addiction. Okay. It is a brain disease, but we don't have a brain scan or a blood test to diagnose it. We base it on patterns of behavior. It is the continued compulsive use of a substance or a behavior despite harm to self and or others. You could have a range of addictions to mild, moderate and severe and you could have pre-addicted states, right, where you haven't quite yet crossed over into addiction, but now you've got a compulsive habitual behavior where you've lost some agency, but not all agency. And you know it's not good for you. You have regret about doing it. You have some difficulty stopping. But if you really set your mind to it, you can't. Okay. So that's just frame that is kind of what we're talking about. It's really a spectrum or a continuum. What immediately came to mind for me is just constantly being on your phone. Yes. And in a sense of, I wish I weren't on my phone. Yes. Enough are as much and that feeling that every one of us has after you blow through two hours mindlessly scrolling. Yes. And wishing that you hadn't. So is that an example of what you're talking about in this range? That is a great example. And digital media, social media, short form videos, activate the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. And so we're talking about the same thing. And we're talking about the same thing. And we're talking about the same thing. And we're talking about the same thing. Okay. And just looking around, you can see that people are overly engaged with their phones. Now maybe they're not meeting threshold criteria for a clinical addiction. But it's getting in the way in many instances, you know, with their goals and even their values. So that initial exposure to whatever our drug of choices. And we're all wired a little differently. So for one person, it might be potato chips for another cigarettes for another, you know, short form video on their phone. That is reinforcing rewarding releases dopamine in the reward pathway, at least initially and eventually when we become addicted or we're in this compulsive overconsumptive loop. Now I'm using not to actually solve the initial problem or even to have fun. But because I'm trying to get back to homeostasis. And the reason this is important is because in the immediate aftermath of using our drug of choice, it typically feels good because it's moving our pleasure pain balance back to homeostasis. But the long term effect is to actually drive our balance more to the side of pain. And that is a fundamental key concept that the more we use our drug of choice, the more we go into this pleasure pain balance that is tilted to the side of pain, where whenever then we're not using. We lose our ability to take joy in other or modest rewards. We're in the vortex of compulsive overconsumption and craving. We've narrowed our focus to just wanting to get to where we can use our drug of choice again to bring it balance to the, you know, to that homeostatic. You also and also behavior of choice. So what are the wide range of things that might surprise the person who's listening or give them this wake up call. At epiphany. Yeah. About what they're actually dealing with. What are the types of things that people can find themselves addicted to? So in clinical care, we see a very broad range. People get addicted to the traditional drugs and alcohol, whether, you know, legal or illegal. People can get addicted to prescription drugs. They can get addicted to over the counter drugs, right. So taking them for a medical reason, but then over time finding that they their brain has adapted to that and wants more and more. People can get addicted to all kinds of behaviors, gambling, sex, all kinds of digital media, social media, video games, online pornography, online shopping. People can get addicted to other people love and other forms of attachment. Really? Yes. Yes. And what you just said, something that caught my attention, I'm sure it caught yours is your listening watching. What are the things that turn something or someone else into a drug for you? Yeah. So, so three general categories. The first is simple access. Simple access to our drug of choice. It's one of the biggest risk factors. If you live in a neighborhood where drugs are sold in the street corner, you're more likely to use them and more likely to get addicted to them. Now, there is genetic variation between individuals for susceptibility to addiction and that plays a role. But whoever you are, you know, if you have more access to whatever your drug of choice is, you're more likely to use it more likely to get addicted. And what we have in the world today is so many more drugs and the old drugs are so much more potent than they used to be and everybody has more access to a much larger quantity. Number two is potency. So how much dopamine is released and how quickly it is released has a huge impact on how addictive that substance or behavior. And what we have with digital devices is technological affordances or dynamic design features that make them more potent things as simple as short form video. Short form video is highly reinforcing for our brains is just we love it. You know, these moving images, the colors, the sounds often integrated with story and narrative. But what's really key here is the interactive aspect of it. So the way in which my engagement with the device and the medium actually changes the medium. And this is where the algorithmic feed is so key because the algorithms are designed to learn what we've liked before and continue to give us what we've liked with just a little bit of novelty. So the longer I spend on the platform, the more I change the platform to be tailored for me. And that tailoring really contributes to it. It's addictive potential because again, it's narrowing that drug of choice down to exactly the types of videos that you know I like to watch or or you know whatever that engagement is. Plus we have the likes and the followers and the shares and the comments again, it's this sense, what is sometimes called the neuroscience, the sense of grip or more colloquial, the sense of control. What is so key to addiction and what so many people don't appreciate is that addiction at heart is really not about escape. It's really about control. It's about trying to create a world within a world, especially if my world is really chaotic in which I have this fine tuned control of my perception and action loops such that I can manage and change my experience with my input. Does that make sense? It does. And what I what I really related to is grip. Yeah. Because if you've ever struggled with a type of behavior where you feel like you're in a loop. Why do I keep obsessively obsessively checking where this person's location is that has a grip on you? Yes. And if you have had a super chaotic day at work and you know that what you should probably do is go home and cook a nice meal and read a book and go to bed early and take a bath and all those things. But instead you flop down on the couch and you waste four hours on your phone while the TV is playing doing absolutely nothing. It has this grip on you but you have this sense of being in control perhaps for the first time that moment. And so it's pleasurable in that regard. Yes. Yes. But so I completely get what you're talking about. So you said simple access potency in terms of how much dopamine gets released. What's the third thing? Okay. So this is what I find so so paradoxical in a way is that the third thing is the uncertainty or the mystery. So at the same time that we want to experience grip right or we want to experience this sense of fine tune control where I can do this action and change the way I feel. If that's all there was we would get bored. But built into the algorithm is this novelty or this mystery where we are intentionally fed the occasional video that's not something that we've watched before right but that's something that. Who knew I never thought I would be interested in acts we are wired for uncertainty were wired for friction and for challenge again because that has is what has kept us alive in a world of uncertainty. We live in a world of certainty that in many ways is incredibly boring because there aren't these challenges for us to resolve beyond what we make up for for ourselves. That's where this third piece comes in where we crave that uncertainty and again there's enormous uncertainty still in our lives but what we want is the controlled digital uncertainty where we have this very short perception action loop of resolving it right kind of the drugified uncertainty. Can you talk a little bit about dopamine and ADHD yeah so we do know that people with ADHD are at higher risk for developing addiction and the mechanism is not well understood but there are some interesting studies suggesting that people with ADHD might have baseline lower levels of dopamine transmission in the reward pathway meaning they don't make a lot of it or they don't they don't know what I'm doing. Meaning they don't make a lot of it or they don't they don't have enough firing through in the system or yet so these are brain imaging studies where you take you measure dopamine transmission in the nucleus of combs in healthy control subjects you compare that to people with ADHD and you find low and behold in that reward pathway people with ADHD appear to have lower baseline levels just at rest of dopamine transmission and even fewer post-anaptic dopamine receptors which is. Again related to dopamine transmission you had that would that mean you would be more impulsive at going after pleasurable things and quick hits of distraction and dopamine all that stuff yeah because remember that's what we see in addiction so the path of physiology of addiction is this down regulation of dopamine transmission in the reward pathway so folks with ADHD might at baseline have some reward in some way. So there's a lot of sensitivity which might contribute to their impulsivity their stimulus seeking their vulnerability to over consume intoxicants their vulnerability to addiction you know one of the thing that I see a really big connection to is anxiety and dopamine yeah and I'll share this because I think it might be helpful one of the things that my daughter and I are working on right now because we definitely have a relationship where we're where I'm going to do that. I'm like her blanky and she has no problem with me talking about this and it's something that I notice that I've struggled with in relationships to which is whenever life gets stressful or whenever I get flooded with emotion yeah whether I feel a little homesick or I I I nervous about what's about to happen or I just am on and sure I wake up feeling like sick that there is almost this reflexive need to quickly reach out and touch base and quickly reach out and touch base and quickly reach out and touch base and I'm going to be able to do that. Reach out and get assurance from somebody else yes and I have as I've gotten older really notice this propensity whether it was with my husband or with my business and taught myself to just ask wait am I reaching out because I want to connect or am I reaching out because I myself am feeling something that's difficult and uncomfortable and instead of just standing in this moment and holding myself here and going okay I can get through this it's okay this this emotion is going to pass I'm capable of handling this difficult thing about to do I'm capable of feeling these emotions I would reach out and borrow the the confidence or whatever from somebody else and it's like a simple quick hit that immediately resolves the anxiety or feeling and now I'm my daughter is working on this with me that anytime she feels this blood and it's painful when you feel that and obviously every expert out there says when you're anxious the worst thing you can do is avoid the painful thing but seeking reassurance I just realized is pleasurable and that's why the anxiety gets worst that's why you start to become addicted in those moments oh got to reach out to mom got to check him with mom got to make sure my spot like that that is part of this mechanism of pain pleasure dopamine and not forcing yourself to do the small uncomfortable things is that can you explain a little bit like what are you because I see you're not in a spot I absolutely love this and this is why I think we're sisters from another mother because that's essentially my drug of choice is attachment let me start by saying it is wonderful to have emotional intimacy and people in your life you can reach to an interdependency and that we need each other and and love each other and want to reach out to each other so like that that's obviously the wonderful starting point but what you're getting at is really really important and it's that moment that we cross from sort of mutual love and respect to I'm actually using you to as a drug essentially I'm using you to kind of help me modulate you know my emotions which again in and of itself is not necessarily bad because whoever was well of course yeah but when it becomes the baseline yes and for me what I started as myself is wait am I reaching out because I want to connect with this person right or am I reaching out as a drug yeah yeah like I'd grab a glass of wine yes and and here's where the technology has become so destructive and insidious you know even just 20 years ago if you wanted to reach out to your daughter living across town I mean essentially you had to go over there right and it took a little bit of time and it took some effort now with the devices this reaching out really has become drugified you know whether it's and I do this too you know we're newly empty nesters and it's been very difficult for me to be at home without any kids there now and you know I kind of got to a point where I was like literally stalking my kids on fine my iPhone and I'd be like my daughter was like doing an internship in DC and I'm like are you a good will and DC she goes mom that's weird like I you know I don't want you to use fine my iPhone with me if you're going to like be stalking me and it's been this is a real area I'm working on because my kids occupy a lot of my mental real estate right and they're well being I do use it as a drug to make myself feel better and when they're doing well and I get little information when they're doing well I feel good and when they're not doing well I ruminate and I worry and I feel bad but here's how this is so you know counterproductive and potentially harmful for me and my kids is that my kids then get trapped in this thing where we can actually tell mom that things are not going well because we have to be doing well for her to be okay and it's very subtle but this creeps up on you I'm so glad you're trying out this for the same age yeah yeah yeah exactly gone through the empty nest or thing but I think regardless of your age if you're in your teens or your 20s or your 30s you can probably think of moments where you have been going through something uncomfortable right and you are now trying to make yourself feel okay by using another person yes I invite you if there's a person who's location you check all the time or there is a person who you notice you only reach out to them when you're feeling a little distressed or bored or whatever just take everything that Dr. Lemke has shared and try to for the next couple weeks not texts or reach out to that person when you're feeling a moment of distress and try to reassure yourself through it and just notice what starts to open up and I think it's a little dopamine yes yes I think your bio steasus that's back in that's right that's right it's so cool Dr. Lemke I knew you were going to be awesome but holy I cannot believe how much we are learning right now I knew dopamine was powerful but this this is turning everything that I thought about motivation and the way the brain works like on its head and you know as you've been talking Dr. Lemke I'm already thinking about so many people that I cannot wait to share this conversation with and I'm sure as you're listening or watching right now on YouTube you're thinking oh my gosh my partner my kids my friend my colleague at work that's been feeling really stuck they need to know this stuff too so take a moment and share this with the people that you have in mind and don't go anywhere we're going to take a quick break we're going to hear a word from our amazing sponsors we're going to also give you a chance to share this episode with people who need all of this amazing research and stay with me because Dr. Lemke is just getting started we're going to go even deeper into this plain pleasure center in the brain and her protocols for how to reset your dopamine when we return stay with me. Welcome back at your buddy Mel Robbins and today you and I are getting to learn from the number one dopamine expert in the world Dr. Anna Lemke we're hearing all about her protocol for building willpower getting things done being happier and I hope you're just as fired up as I am because holy cow Dr. Lemke this is really game changing information that you're sharing and so here's the next topic I wanted to talk about with you one of the things I really love about your work and your research and your way you explain this stuff Dr. Lemke is that you are very open with your own story and I love that here you are researching all this stuff you are teaching it you're simplifying it for your patients and all of a sudden you have this epiphany oh my gosh I myself have become addicted to something yeah would you share that story yes absolutely so um okay uh where did where did I go into this so so in my early 40s yeah you know um life was basically running along pretty well um and it's not like I was trying to escape into anything I mean I had some you know marital conflict around whether or not we were going to um you know try to have more children or stop there but and I've always been a reader yeah um so I'll always enjoyed reading as you know a pleasure and escape as well and I was hanging out with some moms at the elementary school and they were talking about this book that they had read and you know how great it was so I was like oh well what are you reading they said oh it's the twilight saga and I thought huh okay that sounds you know I've never read a book like that I'll go check it out so I go to the bookstore and I'm looking for it in the adult section they're like no no you got to go find it in the kids I'm like okay the adolescent section you know so it's for those who don't know it's a vampire romance series written for teenagers so anyway I can't really explain it other than just saying I found it completely transporting and I read the whole series and then I went back and read it again and again and again and I just it just put me in this place that was just I don't know I just didn't have to think about myself I didn't think about my life it was like a translate state a very very pleasurable more so then you know books I had been reading at a time right so then I thought to myself well maybe there are other vampire romance novels yeah so I go to my local library and lo and behold there's like a whole shelf of that I mean I know it's kind of weird that I didn't really like discover the romance genre until late in life but I really hadn't so then I'm like oh so I'm reading you know I'm reading again right so I'm reading all the romance novels that have to do with vampires and then I'm like okay what now and then it was were wolves and you know necromancers and sous-sayers and fairies and and as time went on you know I just was spending more and more time reading romance novels especially romanticy combining fantasy and romance then my friend Susan you know lover but she's like on it you should get a kindle and I'm like oh you know and this was sort of early like the e-readers were early so I'm like okay and I get a kindle and then all of a sudden I can be reading like bodice rippers with these really embarrassed and covers but nobody knows I'm like oh yeah I'm reading war and peace isn't that amazing you know and you know it's the crazy part is even as an addiction psychiatrist I did not see the progression as it was happening and there were a couple things with the progression number one I started developing developing tolerance where I noticed I didn't notice it only in retrospect but I needed more and more graphic forms to get the same effect so more sexualized more eroticized I was spending more and more time reading so staying up later and later at night being tired the next day I was becoming mentally preoccupied where that's all I wanted to do I just wanted to get through my day deal with the kids deal with my husband and then get to my place where I could read my romance novels right so this kind of narrowing of focus which we see with addiction and then then there were also real consequences and the main consequences were I was less present for my children and my family and my patients I started bringing romance novels to work and actually reading them in the 10 minutes between patients instead of reflecting on patients or documenting my patients we went on a family vacation at the beach I didn't go to beach I spent the whole time in the room reading romance novels we even went to like a neighborhood party and this is so bizarre I actually found a room in their house while other people were in the backyard and I read romance novels during the party so it was again it's kind of narrowing of focus of the inability to take joy and other modest rewards this resetting of my joy set point the only thing that gave me pleasure was the romance novels and eventually I got to a point where like I didn't care about the writing or the plot structure or the characters I was on Amazon trying to get like free because you know free drug is like that that sounds good to me I didn't want to pay more money so I got like free romance novels I didn't even finish them after all I just got to like three quarters of the way through which any romance novel is designed if you open it to three quarters of way through you'll get right to the climax yeah you know what I mean that in multiple ways yeah um and I didn't even finish it then I was and it was really only in retrospect that I I could see in myself what my patients had been describing where you know it was like oh I'll never use heroin then all the said you know they're in the tenderloin you know selling their jacket in their laptop for a tiny amount of black tar heroin you know this kind of like sort of the kind of lowest common denominator yeah anything to get my fix um now I don't want to trivialize moment where you were like holy cow I I the pleasure pain like it's it's what I am I don't go off the rear of your like holy cow because what you're describing honestly sounds like everybody's basic use of their phone yeah the conflict the grip the this right that it's not a satisfying why am I doing it I'm searching for more yeah they've followed different things right and so I love this story also love this for him and tell you reason because I found the whole genre of adult fairy fantasy yeah court of thorn and rosins yeah graphic audio right I would I would be in my kitchen listening to this Chris would be standing there the volume would be down I'm in the night court yeah listening to my characters in a completely different world yeah I can hear him talking and I'm kind of not is if I'm there and I'm like no you you have to and that the other thing that happened is after I finished the entire series which I got my whole family and half this company to listen to I have been looking for something like that holds my attention yeah yeah and so when you have can you use that to explain just the cycle of pleasure pain and how dopamine is involved yeah just like in the beginning so the first one you're really like oh my god right so it's novel dopamine gets released because of why again dopamine is our reward neurotransmitter okay it is what signals to us that something in the environment is important for our survival we should approach it explore it and potentially execute it dopamine evolved to bring us to the natural rewards that we need to live food closing shelter finding a mate what happens in addiction is that that dopamine signal and the reward pathway gets hijacked by this drug that resembles a natural reward and works through that similar mechanism but is not in fact a natural reward and is not and is actually adverse or contrary to our well-being but we no longer recognize it as such in part because over time our brain adapts to that increased dopamine firing eventually we end up in this chronic dopamine deficit state and now we're needing to use not to get pleasure but actually just to bring ourselves back up to baseline and stop feeling pain but we don't see that right we don't see that okay so let me see if I can give this back to you so the fact that you keep looking for another novel the fact that you keep going back to the novel that's a sign that you're in a dopamine deficit state because you're chasing something like that even more importantly yeah when you that you lose some agency around your use and that even when you or others recognize its problematic you have trouble stopping okay and when you're not using you experience a lot of craving to use and a compulsion driven by that craving to want to do it again even when you committed to not doing it okay you've said that in today's world every single one of us is vulnerable to addiction even if we don't realize it can you explain what you mean by that yeah so we talked about these technological affordances that make digital medium or addictive and you know kind of the big idea in dopamine nation is that we've essentially drugified everything whether it's substances or behaviors or work or relationships we've made it more accessible more potent you know more novel such that now we're vulnerable to get addicted to just about anything including things that we typically think of as healthy like what like reading right no I don't know like oh great my kids reading a book that's awesome but I can tell you I and many of my patients have gotten addicted to various forms of reading huh but also things like human connection as we talked about right like the super healthy we need each other we need human connection but now we have these devices that are so reinforcing because of their dynamic design features that they create the illusion of connection even when there's no real connection happening and more importantly they hijack our reward system so that we don't want to disengage even when we've exhausted their utility right so these these digital media are great when we use them as a tool not great when we use them as a drug to change the way we feel all right I'm just going to come out and say it this conversation is intense I mean in the best way Dr. Lampke it's like someone just opened a window in your brain and flipped the lights on and if you're like me you are already thinking holy cow my partner needs to hear this my kid needs to hear this I need to play this back tomorrow morning so while you text this episode to somebody who needs a motivation reset we're going to take a quick break and let our sponsors shine but don't go anywhere Dr. Lampke is about to walk us through exactly how to reset your dopamine when we come back stay with me Welcome back at your buddy Mel Robbins today you and I are getting to learn from the number one dopamine expert in the world Dr. Anna Lemke and we're learning her protocols for resetting your dopamine building willpower getting things done being happier so Dr. Lemke the next thing I wanted to ask you about was this why is it so damn hard to do the simplest things like going to the gym eating healthy or just getting started on that project or unstudying you know you need to do it but you can't seem to get the get up and go to do it we evolved to reflexively approach pleasure and avoid pain gotcha in a world of scarcity okay where we would have to do a lot of upfront work for a tiny little bit of reward got it so we are designed to move toward what's easy now towards what's pleasurable now and we are designed to move away from the gym or away from the project that we don't want to do yes and again that is a great built-in mechanism to keep us alive in a world of scarcity but in this world of overwhelming over abundance it's a very bad mechanism because now we're exposing our brains to this fire hose of dopamine we're getting into this dopamine deficit state now we've narrowed our focus all we want to do is keep pursuing pleasure to bring ourselves back up to baseline and the prospect of getting up off the couch and actually going out the door much less going to the gym has become a kind of a Mount Everest for us right because we've reset our hedonic or joy set point plus we are embedded in a culture that tells us that pain is dangerous that if we're uncomfortable then we're potentially creating a psychic scar that's going to set us set us up for future pain in the form of post traumatic stress disorder that what we need is to pursue comfort to be happy to be relaxed that any kind of distress is actually going to harm our brains and in fact the opposite is true that when an organism is exposed to right-size pain that actually triggers our body's own re-regulating healing mechanisms and we start to up-regulate our feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine like serotonin like our endogenous opioids like our endogenous cannabinoids so we get our dopamine indirectly by paying for it up front which is the way that we evolved to get it again we evolved to have to do work to get a little bit of reward so the message here is to be happier to experience more joy we need to do the counter intuitive thing of moderating and greatly reducing our use of instantaneous easy pleasures and intentionally leaning into right-size pain in order to reset our pleasure pain balance. That makes so much sense the way that a human being is designed is we need moments of pain all day long and what you're talking about is shoving yourself out of bed you're talking about getting out the door for a walk you're talking about how painful it can be to just get yourself out of that wall turn off the TV stand up and go fold the laundry you're talking about picking up the phone and having the hard conversation you're talking about working on your resume we're taking that AI skills class instead of scrolling on your phone and the problem and and that we need that we need to be able to push ourselves through moments of pain all day long because that's how we were designed to work and modern life and the way it is so easy and so convenient and we've optimized for you can order your food you don't even have to cook anything or think about it oh you can sit on the couch and somebody will bring it as you don't even have to you can listen you can listen to 15 different radio stations on the way to work if you get bored so you don't even tolerate boredom which was I would imagine would be just one of these small moments of pain it's not any fun to be bored but we reach for our phone and so we've so completely whacked ourselves from the inside out because we're constantly now reaching for pleasure we are so used now to constantly being stimulated right that simply sitting in the quiet is terrifying for us it's absolutely terrifying because we're always reacting to external stimuli we're not comfortable with our own thoughts you know when we disconnect for a period of time we have this flooding of these you know thoughts and emotions that we've been putting at bay you know by distracting ourselves with all these you know pleasurable stimuli and it can be really scary like that is painful but the longer we can sit and just kind of like okay be curious about what comes up for us and this is where mindfulness practices are so important and even welcome that discomfort but also name it and recognize it so you know not even just so much pushing through discomfort but just going okay I'm uncomfortable now and that's okay you know and I can sit with this and just be curious about it and it it too will pass and I will get to a place where I have actually then built up mental calluses to tolerate more discomfort and this is of course you know the the sort of underpinning of exposure therapy that I think so many people are finding helpful one thing I want to ask you for we talk about what the hell do we do Dr. Limp is how does overwording yourself with these small little cheap dopamine pleasure easy easy easy do the easy thing how does that mess up our motivation in the long term it messes up our motivation because we become narrowly focused on short-term rewards and we lose the ability to see the longer term rewards that require the upfront work that are actually better for our well-being you know over months to years so does the pain also feel bigger so if you have constant pleasure easy distraction around you'll just do the easy thing I'll just order the Uber Eats I'll just do this I'll just do that does it feel harder over the long run to get off the couch or to go for that walk absolutely and again by changing our hedonic or joy set point yep what it means is that we need bigger pleasures to feel any pleasure at all and even the nearest pain is incredibly painful and we see this now in clinical care where you know people talk about really quite ordinary things that they struggle to do you know simply paying a bill or getting off the couch and going in meeting with people or doing the dishes now these are you know kind of everyday things that you know nobody really likes or generally we don't like but they're even more painful than in prior generations well you know one example that I can point to to kind of broaden this out to a normal person who's just really struggling with motivation yeah you know doesn't I'm not really addicted anything but as really leaned in to say but I've really screwed up the pain pleasure yes balance in my body I am finding it harder and harder to concentrate or to do the little hard things or to be motivated to do the things that I needed to do if you've ever had an experience or you have an experience as a parent where your kids go to like a school sleep away camp or they go on a field trip and they take their phones away and they are forced to tolerate that yeah they are so much happier yes and so it's an example of how your body naturally resets yes to a homeostasis once the cheap dopamine thing is removed from your environment and from you and that's why I think we all need a dopamine detox yeah and to really understand that if you're struggling with motivation in any area of your life if you're struggling with doing anything difficult yes if you're struggling with enjoying aspects of your life that this is a really serious place to take a look because this makes a lot of sense just add something in there yeah um so and key to this this absence trial or the stoke mean detox that we're not actually abstaining from dopamine because we're not ingesting dopamine it's something that gets triggered in our brains but it's kind of a metaphor or meme at this point the key to it though is to abstain for long enough to allow those gremlins to hop off the pain side of the balance and for homeostasis to be restored because if we don't abstain from for long enough what happens is we take our pleasure our reward off of the pleasure side the gremlins accumulating on the pain side crash us down and we are in withdrawal right and in that state of withdrawal we experience anxiety irritability insomnia dysphoria and also intense craving that feels like it will never get better but what is so amazing is that once we get over the hump of sort of that acute withdrawal for most people which is about 14 days we come out the other sort of drug or is that for everything could that be for like not checking oh persons location it could be yes in fact you know studies looking at teenagers who get off of social media find that they feel less depressed less anxious and less lonely but only if they go for long enough which is on average about three to four weeks of abstaining from social media in my clinical experience kind of no matter the drug and no matter the the sort of severity of the attachment if people can go for about three to four weeks they generally not always but about 80% of folks feel better and experience less craving wow but if they only go for two weeks or less they do not typically get out of that vortex of craving and then they don't also kind of you know believe in the experiment right because they feel like oh it didn't work for me it's like well how long did you abstain because you really really needs to be long enough you know again for those metaphorical gremlins to hop off and for sort of baseline reward well it's also helpful to say to know that the craving is simply your body working through this pain pleasure seesaw being out of whack and it's time limited it's time limited that it will pass but it is a sign yes that everything's functioning as it should be because you're trying to get back to homeostasis and if you're feeling the craving you're actually doing it correctly that's right exactly you're you're moving toward a good place so it's reframing the dopamine faster the abstinence trial as not denying ourselves a reward but actually doing something healthy moving toward a better life so you could create a dopamine detox over a three to four week period over anything yeah whether it's I'm not going to sleep next to my phone for four weeks and I'm going to wake up in the morning and I'm going to feel the craving to reach for it I'm not going to do it you could take on the standing in line challenge every time I'm standing in line for the next four weeks I am not going to reach for my phone I'm going to practice all the tolerance and the painful experience of feeling anxious depressed agitated pissed off in that line and if I feel those things I'm doing this correctly yeah because I'm getting myself back into homeostasis oh I love this this makes a lot of sense to me yeah good and let's talk about discomfort how can intentional discomfort help us become happier and more motivated and could you explain to the person listening what does that look like great so getting back to dopamine fasting and the pleasure pain balance we're encouraging people to abstain for a period of time minimum four weeks from their drug of choice to allow those grommons to slowly hop off it takes time so that homeostasis can be restored but hypothetically we can speed up that process by intentionally pressing on the pain side of the balance so for example there are studies showing that people in withdrawal from you know alcohol and drug addiction if they engage in vigorous exercise they can decrease the symptoms of withdrawal they can get to a place where they're feeling more of a strong recovery and they can actually prevent or decrease their risk of relapse just by engaging in exercise and why well again using this metaphor to sort of visualize what might be happening in the brain is that if we intentionally now press on the pain side of the balance those grommons those metaphorical grommons will go to the pleasure side and we can get our dopamine indirectly by paying for it upfront and the classic example of this is the runner's high right so we know that that exercise is actually injurious to cells so at the cellular level exercise is toxic but we also know exercise is really good for us so how does it work what's probably happening is that the body senses minor injury in response to exercise and then starts to up regulate again our own feel good neurotransmitters including dopamine since we now understand that intentional pain throughout your day doing hard things pushing that lever inside yourself forcing yourself to do these things that it is so important for your happiness it's so important for your body to function correctly and your brain to function correctly and so I want you to take this on as Dr. Lemke describes this what would it look like from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed to start to insert intentional discomfort for your own happiness and well-being let's just take somebody who is really concerned about their overuse of the phone and technology but they still have to go to work and let's just walk through the moment you wake up yeah and what you could do with intentional discomfort to start to help yourself reset this okay the moment that you wake up actually begins with the night before oh okay where you make a plan because if we find ourselves choosing between pleasure and pain we will always choose pleasure unless we have anticipated that moment and put in self-binding strategies that put a barrier between ourselves and our drug of choice so that we can press the pause button between desire and consumption got it so you're basically saying do not rely on willpower do not rely on willpower alone because you are wired to move toward the chief dopamine yes and so if you truly want to do this you're going to make a plan the night before yes and that plan will include having no digital devices in the bedroom or within easy reach it will include making a plan for starting your day with pain now that that I know some examples really first of all just getting out of bed okay when you wake up get I mean it can be hard to just get out of bed there right and then you know if you're schedule and your lifestyle allows doing some exercise or some mind body work some meditation something that maybe you know you don't necessarily look forward to before you do it but you know that after you do it you feel better okay so you any plan all that out you put your your exercise bag there or you it ranged to meet with a friend to exercise or you put your you know whatever your meditation practices you get it already and you plan it out and then when you wake up you don't linger um you know in the bed when you know especially you're not coming back to sleep don't grab for any digital devices don't look at any screen your brain is going to tell you oh I need to check this or or I'm just going to look at that or or this is really important really try to plan it out so you don't need to look at your device for any reason not for not for a text not for mapping like know where you're going to go plan it out in advance get up leave the device behind go outside if you can move your body you know be in in nature if you can be in a space where you you are not counting yourself or digitally monitoring yourself you're just with yourself or other people but you're not it's not through this digital medium when you've done that that alone is awesome if you do that change your leg that that right there and doing it with consistency but also coming back and then delaying the point at which you get on your device so whatever you're you know one patient I had called it is more his morning jamboree you know whatever it is like making your bed eating good breakfast, brushing teeth, cleaning up all of the things right before you actually get on the device and then before you get on the device make a list of what you're going to do on the device why because the instant our brains are exposed to those screens all of a sudden we forget what what we were going to do we forget how we were going to use it as a tool and instead we use it as a drug so make a list get on there hopefully the night before you've also deleted the apps that you want to abstain from for that period of time you know whether it's a social media app or a game playing app or an online shopping you know app unsubscribe you know get get rid of them because you're really committing to you know not using your drug of choice behavior or drug whatever it is um and then also just really be aware that you're going to feel uncomfortable and you're going to experience craving and part of craving will manifest as an elaborate narrative for why it's a stupid experiment I don't need to do that that's dumb or yesterday that seemed like a good idea but today that's just stupid and I need for this and this and this reason you know for for other people's safety um you know or for work now I want to emphasize that it really is true that a lot of us need to be digitally connected for our work but we also use that as an excuse to be over connected so this is all the part of the planning in advance how are people going to reach me when I'm on my dopamine you know digital dopamine fast how am I going to negotiate work even though I'm not going to be using that app or even though I've turned off notifications so I'm not constantly triggering you know my reward pathway with the little alerts that pull me back in so it's really anticipating it knowing you're going to feel uncomfortable but trusting that with the passage of time your brain will re-adapt and you will find yourself in a place which is so much better right where you're not in that constant constant state of craving where you have more presence because really what we're losing so much of is our presence right when we're in the line checking we're not really looking around at where we are or what other people are doing or what's happening on the road or in the sky or in our own mind so we really recapture that presence and that's that is our life right we're getting back our life I think it's so important because um I did this a couple years ago got very serious about this and it all started with not looking at the phone and a line yeah and I don't have the phone within reach right and I don't look at it first thing in the morning right I have a ritual even a hotel room that I do before I even check and I am probably 85 percent compliant with it great I have a place in the kitchen where I plug in the phone it's almost never on my person in fact if people that work with me will be like I always walk around like is anyone's your phone right right right right I cannot even tell you the level of peace that you have nice if you take this on and what I appreciate that you said Dr. Lemke is that when your brain goes nuts oh and starts negotiating with you that sounds like an addict yeah telling you why they need a drink tonight right right and you should expect it and it's a sign of the pain pleasure mechanism in your brain being out of whack yes and that's why you need to do this type of dopamine detox for yourself because it will get better with time yes the longer you can go the less you'll miss it and then you'll even get to a place where you don't want to have anything to do with absolutely not how how while doing this help motivate you to achieve your goals great question part of recapturing our motivation is not having these frictionless cheap pleasures that we can distract ourselves with so for example a young patient of mine who got very addicted to video games went off to college continued to play video games constantly and also found that other things lost their salience or their their appeal for him including his computer science classes and he continually procrastinated with video games when he gave up video games and really committed to that and then went back to school he said it's amazing my classes are interesting again so when we remove all of these ways of distracting ourselves and procrastinating we're suddenly left with this big empty space which feels very terrifying and yet it is in that empty space where we go oh okay I can't do this thing that I usually do so I guess I'll just do my work right I mean it is really like that it's like you kind of sit there and you go I'd really like to do that over there but I committed to not doing it so jeez I guess I'll get started filling out this form or you know writing this paragraph or you know dealing with paying this bill or cleaning out my closet or whatever it is it is amazing how just creating that kind of empty space and tolerating that discomfort and not giving ourselves other options just like well okay I'll do this well one of the things that I love about this conversation is the connection between making yourself intentionally do things that are hard and painful knowing that it has a huge impact on how happy you are yeah and in the long run in the long run and how much more motivated you yes can you share more examples of simple things that I can do that the person listening can do in their daily lives to help get this dopamine detox and the pain pleasure center back in the homeostasis like what what are some other things we can be taking on every day I mean again with digital media you said a lot of them but deleting apps turning off notifications is really key every time we get that kind of buzz or ping that pulls us back in I'm going grayscale is can be really important if there's a digital medium we need to be on putting it on our laptop and not on our phone so it's kind of less portable we have less access those are all really important self-binding strategies when it comes to food so our food supply has become drugified right and you've you've done a lot of podcasts on this with the addition of fat salt sugar and flavorants so having non-drugified foods in our home right wholesome foods the way that mother nature made them so that when we eat them we are getting the calories we need and we're not getting this incredible spike of dopamine that we get from ultra-process food which is what has us continuing to consume it even after you know we should be satiated or should feel full from it so that's a big one I really think also you know when we think about work and you know work we typically think of as effortful and hard but not all work gives us that sense of natural reward or satisfaction at the end of the day either because there's too much of it we pressed too hard on the pain side of the balance or it's the kind of work that's really been divorced from the meaning of work and so we don't really feel the satisfaction of having an impact and a lot of people have have jobs like that so there's a real risk of getting into this work hard play hard which remember any deviation from homeostasis is biological stress we're releasing our adrenaline every time we have to do the work to get back to a level balance so when we're pressing hard on the pain side by doing too much work it is a natural inclination at the end of the day to want to then you know use our intoxicants to bring it back to the level position so I think being really thoughtful about limiting the amount of work that we're doing if we're able to you know trying to limit the stress related to work and then being really mindful that at the end of a really hard day it's probably not the time to indulge in intoxicants because of course you know people are going to indulge you know moderation is okay you know it's the spice of life in many instances I'm not here saying you know never take a drink or never eat a cupcake or you know that's not the message at all but if we've had a really rough day where we've overextended ourselves at work that would be the day to intentionally avoid these kind of cheap intoxicants because we will not have the ability in that context to moderate our consumption and I'll just use myself as an example you know I love my work but on the end of my busy clinical days I cannot watch videos and I say cannot of course I can't and I do often but when I do I love how you are oh my god but when I do it's like I plan to just watch for 15 minutes or I was just gonna watch this one video you know there I am two three hours later oh yeah and we use it to kind of relax and self-south but I don't think it's actually relaxing for our brains so again intentionally planning getting together with friends or meditating or going on a walk something where we're oh finding a way to calm our brains down without using our drug of choice what is so powerful Dr. Lemke about boring movements taking a walk stretching yes rolling yeah what what why is that a powerful thing to do well essentially you know boredom is a really fascinating emotion because number one it's painful because it's boring right and we're really used to being overstimulated but also boredom is kind of terrifying because when we are bored we are then confronted with kind of fundamental questions about life like why am I doing this or what is my purpose anyway and when we wait into those existential areas it can really you know causes to feel some degree of terror especially since we don't tend to think about those things because we're always distracting ourselves with with our drugs but but boredom is really really necessary because it's only when we allow ourselves to be bored and just sort of quiet our minds that number one we become acquainted with our own thoughts and feelings you know and and and sort of acquire the mindfulness that we need in order to move at the pace of mindfulness which is this peaceful and grounding place but also boredom really is kind of the midwife of invention right it's only when we're bored enough to allow ourselves to explore a new idea and not interrupt ourselves in the middle of that thought that we get to a place where we have a new idea right or an inspiration or something that we want to move toward or even know what we want to move toward you know what is it that I really do like to do like what actually gives me deep joy and we can't know those things if we're constantly distracting ourselves and never allowing ourselves to be bored it feels almost like boredom is when you're probably in homeostasis and you why not you just gave me a little bit of an insight because I have no problem taking a walk because I find it visually stunning in nature and the dogs are running around and I'm good about you know not looking at my phone at all but I cannot stretch to save my life I literally roll out of mat and I get down and I'm like okay we're done like my my my brain is like ping pong ping pong and so I'm realizing that's an area where I could step on the pain intentionally and start to build a bit of tolerance there that would probably bring more happiness into my life Dr. Lemke if you could speak directly to the person listening if they take just one action out of everything that you have taught us today what do you think the most important thing to do is I think the most important thing is just to recognize how resilient we actually are and how we really are wired for pain and lean into it not not in a way again that's harmful like we're not talking about over exercising right like people can get addicted to exercise but just just recognizing that we we can do these hard things and in the process reset our reward pathways and that slowly over time things will get better oh my gosh I learned so much for you today I'm so excited the connection between intentional moments of discomfort and pain and the hard things that you need to do and you're happiness yes and resetting your dopamine this is and getting more motivated I mean how cool is this it's so cool and it makes me feel the sense of urgency around boundaries with behavior yes and devices or substances right that you feel the grip around and I also feel so encouraged and I know you do too as you're listening about the fact that you're wired to do this yes and your brain and your happiness and your heart and your body they are dying for you to wake up and start doing this and moving toward these moments of intentional discomfort that's a secret yeah that's the detox yeah that's the dopamine reset that's it I love that Dr. Lemke what are your parting words I mean we're all in this together you know I think everybody is struggling with this in some shape or form it's the world that we live in now but I have a lot of optimism that through talking about it kind of owning it and collectively problem solving we can get to a better place well I already feel like I'm in a better place thanks on everything thanks to everything you taught us today so you know Dr. Lemke thank you thank you thank you thank you for the work that you do thank you for the genius that you have in explaining this in a way so that we can grasp it and understand the power in what you just taught us I am so grateful that you hopped on a plane I'm grateful that you're doing the work that you do so don't stop thank you thank you thank you thank you thanks you're welcome and I also want to thank you thank you for being interested in learning more about how your brain and your body works and learning about dopamine this was so cool I know you probably loved it as much as I did thank you for sharing it with people that you care about I cannot wait to send this to my kids to everybody that I care about I know you feel the same and one more thing in case no one else tells you as your friend I want to be sure to tell you I love you I love that you're interested in learning that you're interested in science that you're interested in doing better and I believe in your ability to create a better life because you're listening to things like this and learning all right I will see in the very next episode I'll be there to welcome you in the moment you hit play and she's chief of Stanford's dual diagnosis diagnosis how do you say that diagnosis okay she's testified in courtrooms advised national policy she's testified in courtrooms advised national policy and she's published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers so without further ado let's get motivated and jump in oh my god thank you for being here yeah I'm really happy to be here that's right that's right it's so cool okay we're good we're good great job thank you Dr. Lentian Pope oh and one more thing and no this is not a blooper this is the legal language you know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you this podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes I'm just your friend I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician professional coach psychotherapist or other qualified professional got it good I'll see you in the next episode