Dopamine Nation
Why Our Addiction to Pleasure is Causing Us Pain
Anna Lembke
Having read it
★★★★☆
It has interesting, compelling and honest stories, views and opinions with even the author adding her own to a societal subject worth collectively, constructively and compassionately facing and tackling without the need to keep making monetary-profit, status and attention the benchmarks of progress and success which just seed more issues not nurture stasis and helpful and meaningful growth.
The question is: Why, in a time of unprecedented wealth, freedom, technological progress, and medical advancement, do we appear to be unhappier and in more pain than ever?
The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.
A good passage
The Internet promotes compulsive overconsumption not merely by providing increased access to drugs old and new, but also by suggesting behaviours that otherwise may never have occurred to us. Videos don’t just ‘go viral’. They’re literally contagious, hence the advent of the meme.
Human beings are social animals. When we see others behaving in a certain way online, those behaviours seem ‘normal’ because other people are doing them. ‘Twitter’ is an apt name for the social media messaging platform favored by pundits and presidents alike. We are like flocks of birds. No sooner has one of us raised a wing in flight than the entire flock of us is rising into the air.
A second good passage
Rates of addiction are rising the world over. The disease burden attributed to alcohol and illicit drug addiction is 1.5 percent globally, and more than 5 percent in the United States. These data exclude tobacco consumption. Drug of choice varies by country. The US is dominated by illicit drugs, Russia and Eastern Europe by alcohol addiction.
Global deaths from addiction have risen in all age groups between 1990 and 2017, with more than half the deaths occurring in people younger than fifty years of age.
The poor and undereducated, especially those living in rich nations, are most susceptible to the problem of compulsive overconsumption. They have easy access to high-reward, high-potency, high-novelty drugs at the same time that they lack access to meaningful work, safe housing, quality education, affordable health care, and race and class equality before the law. This creates a dangerous nexus of addiction risk.
[...]
Our compulsive overconsumption risks not just our demise but also that of our planet. The world’s natural resources are rapidly diminishing. Economists estimate that in 2040 the world’s natural capital (land, forests, fisheries, fuels) will be 21 percent less in high-income countries and 17 percent less in poorer countries than today. Meanwhile, carbon emissions will grow by 7 percent in high-income countries and 44 percent in the rest of the world.
We are devouring ourselves.
A third good passage
In today’s dopamine-rich ecosystem, we’ve all become primed for immediate gratification. We want to buy something, and the next day it shows up on our doorstep. We want to know something, and the next second the answer appears on our screen. Are we losing the knack of puzzling things out, or being frustrated while we search for the answer, or having to wait for the things we want?