Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Recommended by Dr. P Jamnadas and Dr. A Huberman. I decided to give it a go, and I loved this book! Through storytelling, Dr. Lembke walks you through the complex works of dopamine in the human machinery, specifically, the brain. It’s scientific data made simple and easy to read. If I didn’t have to put it down, I’d read it in one sitting. Also, the stories were so relatable. I walked away empowered by Dr. Lembke’s suggested methods of working against “addictions.”

0 star This book is not a nonfiction on discussing how world is full of dopamine and how we should navigate through it. This book is a SCI-FI written by a MD who abused Prozac before. Fallacies and failed logics are not just the only features of the book, it also got a ton of anecdotes that has no coherence with data or the narratives. Many of the stories are about the high achievers in the silicon valley abusing substances, yet our MD author is correlating that with poor Brazilian kids living in the slum are more likely to abuse substances. Then suddenly she states how much effort we need to put to provide basic needs to the poor so they won't be abusing substances. Maybe I'm the one being blinded of how the rhetorics work out. What makes it the worst, in my opinion, is the lack of depth of her arguments while having the obsession of quoting Kant, Socrates and Nietzsche. The quotes did nothing but showing her so-called "pain therapy" and drug therapy a self delusional mirage. Avoid.

Very anti-drug and moralistic. She treats any enjoyment as if it's something to be squashed, except when those pleasures are ones that she accepts. There may be an opponent process to pleasure, but all she provides as evidence are anecdotes and finger-wagging. The whole thing seems blown out of proportion to reality. She cloaks herself in science, but refuses to engage in it when writing this book. Even if it's not outright, the reasoning she uses reeks of religiosity, no different than simply arguing that certain pleasures are sinful. It boils down to "Drugs are bad, m'kay." It's a waste of money, so don't bother with this if you want to be informed on a nuanced issue. This supremely lacks nuance.