One of the most remarkable neuroscientific findings in the past century is that the brain processes pleasure and pain in the same place. Further, pleasure and pain work like opposite sides of a balance.


“Dopamine nation” by Anna Lembke presents a thorough discussion of pleasure and pain and how it affects our ability to control and manage our life.

What really strikes me is how the book has emphasized the problem of over-using drugs in the US. It’s crazy to learn that “In 2009, doctors in Arkansas wrote 116 opioid prescriptions per 100 persons living in Arkansas”, or, even more sadly, “Prescriptions of stimulants (Adderall, Ritalin) in the US doubled between 2006 and 2016, including in children younger than 5 years old. In 2011, two-thirds of American children diagnosed with ADD were prescribed a stimulant”.

The latter figure reminds me of the book “Lost connection” by Johann Hari, in which the author shows how many children, just by being forced to stay inside with dozen of hours watching the screen (TV, ipad, phones), have developed some symptoms of ADHD; while in fact most of them would act like normal if they are allowed to go out and play.

So instead of finding the main cause and treat it, we are actually poisoning our children with those drugs that impact their biochemical system.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that similar situation can be found in the UK as well...

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In “Dopamine nation”, Anna Lembke also courageously reveals her own addiction to erotic genre novels.

As soon as I finished one e-book, I moved on to the next: reading instead of socializing, reading instead of cooking, reading instead of sleeping, reading instead of paying attention to my husband and my kids. Once, I’m ashamed to admit, I brought my Kindle to work and read between patients

It’s such a great reminder of how even such a good habit as reading, can be used in a harmful way. Yes, it’s not the books that we should value, but our ability to grasp its content, play with its idea, and criticize its message that matter. If I remember right, it’s Arnold Bennett in “How to live on 24 hours a day” who suggests that we should spend at least 45 minutes to digest after every 90 minutes of reading, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to gain much from our reading at all.

And finally, in this dopamine-rich ecosystem, where we’re surrounded by too many sources of stimuli, it’s really important to remind ourselves of what makes us human. It’s our reasoning faculty, our ability to think rationally and make decisions upon it.

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?
The neuroscientist Samuel McClure and his colleagues examined what parts of the brain are involved in choosing immediate versus delayed rewards. They found that when participants chose immediate rewards, emotion- and reward-processing parts of the brain lit up. When participants delayed their reward, the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain involved in planning and abstract thinking – became active.
The implication here is that we are all now vulnerable to prefrontal cortical atrophy as our reward pathway has become the dominant driver of our lives