How to Fix Burnout & Overstimulation — The Dopamine Reset Guide | Dr. Anna Lembke

(soft instrumental music) Our brain is essentially reeling in response to this fire hose of dopamine and then needs to down-regulate dopamine transmission to balance it out and get back to baseline levels. Hi everyone. It's Rosie here. Welcome back to "Radio Headspace". I'm so excited about today's conversation because we're diving into something that affects all of us, dopamine. It's the brain chemical that drives motivation, pleasure, and reward. It can also fuel addiction, anxiety, and burnout. And to help us make sense of all of this, I'm joined by Dr. Anna Lembke. She's a psychiatrist, addiction specialist, and the author of "Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in The Age of Indulgence". I'm so excited for you to hear this conversation. So my name is Rosie. I'm one of the meditation teachers here at Headspace, and I personally have been following your work for a long while. And so I'm really, when Danny told us that we got you on the show, I was just beside myself. I had a fan girl moment. Aw, that's fair. So nice of you. That makes me feel sort of like a celebrity. (Rosie laughing) You are. To me, this is that sort of gratifying work that I feel like makes such a huge difference. And it really creates a foundation and a landscape for even people like me that, you know, teaches. Oh, great. You know, the stuff that I do. It really allows us to have a good foundation as to where we need to put our energy and focus. And I did read "Dopamine Nation" twice. Love it, love it. Thank you. Yep. One because I just loved it so much. And two, because it just, it's so content. It's just like the information is so good and it- Oh, thank you. Really took me a little bit of time to really digest everything since I'm also a neuroscience geek. So my first question, and I feel like it's a poignant question, is how did you even get interested in the subject of dopamine? Like, was there an aha moment in your life when you just realized that this was something that you needed to focus on? In fact, there was a bit of an aha moment. So while I was still training, I started seeing this patient nominally for depression. That's what she told me she wanted to work on. And I prescribed her a little bit of an antidepressant. And then one day out of the blue, I got a call from her brother saying that she wasn't gonna make it to her appointment 'cause she'd been in a rollover car accident. So I was like, oh my gosh, that's terrible. Well, what happened? And he said, "Well, she's been using again." And I said, "Using what?" He said, "Well, using heroin. Isn't that what you've been treating her for?" And it was this moment of just total shame where I realized, oh my goodness, this person has been coming to me...