The Mel Robbins Podcast - How to Get Motivated: #1 Dopamine Expert’s Protocol to Build Willpower & Get Things Done

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to get motivated, even when you don’t feel like it. If you feel unmotivated, scatter brained, or exhausted… If you keep reaching for your phone, wine, or the remote even when you want to stop… If you’re frustrated with yourself for lacking discipline…. This conversation will help you stop wasting time and finally understand why it’s so hard to do the things you know you should do. Joining Mel today is Dr. Anna Lembke, MD, who is the world’s leading expert on dopamine and compulsive behavior. Dr. Lembke is a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University, chief of Stanford’s Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. But even with all of her knowledge, she will share with you: she also falls into the same traps you do! In this episode, Dr. Lembke explains the truth most people don’t understand: Modern life has trained your brain to chase constant dopamine hits, and that’s why motivation, focus, and joy feel harder than ever. But here’s the good news: you can reset your brain. Dr. Lembke walks you through the science of dopamine, pain, pleasure, and motivation, and shares a practical protocol for rebuilding focus, energy, and self-control in a world designed to hijack your attention. In this episode, you’ll learn: -The “pleasure–pain seesaw” that explains why you keep reaching for the thing you swear you’re done with -How dopamine really works (and why chasing pleasure backfires) -The hidden reason scrolling, snacking, and multitasking make you feel worse, not better -The simple but powerful way to rebalance pleasure and pain -What to do when you feel stuck in compulsive habits you “can’t quit”  This is not a conversation about shame, addiction labels, or self-control. It’s about taking your brain back. If you want more energy, clarity, and motivation, and if you’re ready to stop fighting yourself and start working with your brain, this episode is for you. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page.   If you liked the episode, check out this one next: How to Create a Successful Mindset: The Science of Passion and PerseveranceConnect with Mel:   Order Mel’s new product, Pure Genius ProteinGet Mel’s newsletter, packed with tools, coaching, and inspiration.Get Mel’s #1 bestselling book, The Let Them TheoryWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast InstagramMel's TikTok Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes ad-freeDisclaimer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel 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 its 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. 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 best-selling author of two books that have been translated into over 30 languages, Dopamine Nation and Drug Dealer MD. She's testified in courtrooms, advised 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 sleep 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 overconsumption 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. Levk, 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. 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. Neurotransmitters 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. But those wires, the neurons, don't actually touch end to end. There's a little space between them.

That space is called the synapse. 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. 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 that's often associated with pleasure, but not exclusively associated with pleasure, which then I want to do again and again. Because my brain recognizes. 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. 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 and a kid. Oh, like a seesaw. Like a seesaw. Yeah, okay. And when it's at rest, that balance or that beam on the central fulcrum 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 neuroadaptation, 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, when I, when I, I say that. Like a dog. Is she going to give me a treat? Right. Right. My brain is going to react by working very hard to bring that balanced level again. And that process is called neuroadaptation. And I like to imagine that as these little neuroadaptation gremlins hopping on the pain side of the balance,

because that's the level at which I understand it. But the thing about those gremlins 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 till an equal and 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, you know what, watch one more TikTok video. Oh, wait, hold on a second. Okay, I think I might have gotten this, but let me see. So takeaway number one, as I was listening, is that you are designed with this pleasure, pain balance, and we're imagining a seesaw 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 seesaw 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, where does craving come into this? Yeah, yeah, you're definitely on the right track. So am I in the general area absorbing this? You are.

You are definitely absorbing this. So, yeah, 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, yep. And there are a couple ways we can get back there. we can just wait till the gremlin's hop 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 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 in 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 the 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 to years, we then have enough gremlins on the pain side of the balance to fill this whole room. And eventually they are camped out there, tents and barbecues and tow.

And then we've changed our hedonic or joy set point, right? Now we need more of our drug in 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 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 our 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 where you're anxious and depressed and craving and like all of these things that you just described that a lot of people feel, but may not realize. Great question. So first of all, let's define addiction.

Okay. Okay. It is a brain disease, but we don't have a brain scan or a blood test to diagnose. 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 a

You have some difficulty stopping. But if you really set your mind to it, you can't. Okay, so that's just frame that as 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 the sense of, I wish I weren't on my phone enough 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? this range? That is a great example. And digital media, social media, short form videos activate the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. They're highly reinforcing. We do see in clinical care, people who are getting addicted to many different forms of digital media. 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, 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 over-consumptive 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 more modest rewards. We're in the voice. vortex of compulsive over consumption 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 balanced to that homestatic position. 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 and epiphany 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 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. You just said something that caught my attention.

I'm sure it caught yours as you're listening watching. What are the things that turn something or someone else into a drug for you? Right. Yeah. 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 on 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, 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. It's 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

to its 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 in 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 show. change my experience with my input. Does that make sense? It does. And 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, like why do I keep 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, 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 finding. 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, oh, who knew? I never thought I would be interested in X. We are wired for uncertainty. We're wired for friction and for challenge, again, because that 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 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, you know, digital uncertainty where we have this very short

perception action loop of resolving it, right? Kind of the drug-a-fied 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 have enough firing through in the system? Yeah. So these are brain imaging studies where you measure dopamine transmission in the nucleus accumbens in healthy control subjects. You compare that to people with ADHD and you find, lo 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-synaptic dopamine receptors, which is, again, related to dopamine transmission. If you had that, would that mean you would be more impulsive at going after pleasurable things and quick hits of distraction and dopamine and all that stuff? Yeah, because remember, that's what we see in addiction. So the path of

physiology of addiction is this downregulation of dopamine transmission in the reward pathway. So folks with ADHD might at baseline have some reward insensitivity, which might contribute to their impulsivity, their stimulus seeking, their vulnerability to overconsume 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 I'm like her blankie, and she has no problem with me talking about this. And it's something that I notice that I've struggled with in relationships too, which is whenever life gets stressful or whenever I get flooded with emotion, whether I feel a little homesick or I, I, I, I, nervous about what's about to happen, or I just am on edge, or 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 get assurance from somebody else. Yes. And I have, as I've gotten older, really noticed this propensity, whether it was with my husband or with my business partner, 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 emotion's going to pass. I'm capable of handling this difficult thing I'm about to do. I'm capable of feeling these emotions. I would reach out

and borrow the confidence or whatever from somebody else. and it's like a simple, quick hit that immediately resolves the anxiety you're feeling. And now my daughter is working on this with me, that any time she feels this flood, 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 worse. That's why you start to become addicted in those moments.

Oh, got to reach out to mom. Got to check in with mom. Right. 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 nodding and smiling. Oh, yeah. 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 love each other and want to reach out to each other. So 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. Oh, everyone's well, of course. Yeah. But when it becomes the baseline, yes. And for me, what I started asking myself is, wait, am I reaching out because I want to connect with this person? Right.

Or am I reaching out. That's a drug. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'd grab a glass of line. Yes. 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 your... 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 Find my iPhone. And I'd be like, my daughter was like doing an internship in D.C. And I'm like, are you at a goodwill in D.C.? She goes, Mom, that's weird. Like, I, you know, I don't want you to

use Find my iPhone with me. 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 their 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 from them that 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 harm for me and my kids is that my kids then get trapped in this thing where we can't 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 talking about this. We're the same age. Yeah. Yeah, we are exactly the same. We've 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 and you are now trying to make yourself feel okay by using another person. I invite you if there's a person whose 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 text 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 reset. Yes, yes. I think you're right. Homeostasis sets back in. That's right. That's right. It's so cool. Dr. Lemke, I knew you were going to be awesome.

But holy God, 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 patience, and all of a sudden you have this epiphany, oh my gosh, I myself have become addicted to something. Would you share that story? Yes, absolutely. So, okay, where to go into this? So in my early 40s, you know, life was,

basically running along pretty well. 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, you know, try to have more children or stop there. But, and I've always been a reader. Yeah. So I 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 how great it was. So I was like, oh, what are you reading? And 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.

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 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 have to think about my life. It was like a trans-like state, a very, very pleasurable, more so than, you know, books I had been reading at the time. So then I thought to myself, well, maybe there are other vampire romance novels. So I go to my local

library and lo and behold, there's like a whole shelf of them. 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 Anne Rice. 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 werewolves and, you know, necromancers and soothers and fairies. And as time went on, you know, I just was spending more and more time reading romance novels, especially romanticcy, combining fantasy and romance. Then my friend, Susan, you know, lover, but she's like, Anna, you should get a Kindle. And I'm like, oh, and this was sort of, like, the E-readers were early. So I'm like, okay, and I get a Kindle. And then all

a sudden, I can be reading like bodice rippers with these really embarrassing covers, but nobody knows. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm reading War and Peace. Isn't that amazing, you know? And, you know, the crazy part is even as an addiction psychiatrist, I did not see the progression as it was happening. And there were a couple of things with the progression. Number one, I started developing tolerance where 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 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 the 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, this kind of narrowing of focus, 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 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 drugs 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 a while. 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. Yep. And I didn't even finish it. And it was really only in retrospect that I could see in myself what my patients had been describing where, you know, it was like, oh, I'll never use heroin. And then all of a sudden, you know, they're in the tenderloin, you know, selling their jacks. in their laptop for a tiny amount of black tar heroin, you know, this kind of like sort of the lowest common denominator, anything to get my fix. Now, I don't want to trivialize...

What was the moment where you were like, holy cow? I... The pleasure, pain... Like, it's what we've got, yeah. I am, like, was there a moment where you're 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,

the that, it's not as satisfying. Why am I doing it? I'm searching for more. Maybe follow different things. And so I love this story. I also love this story. I'm going to tell you a reason, because I found the whole genre of adult fairy fantasy. Yeah. Court of Thorne and Rosens, graphic audio. I would be in my kitchen listening to this. Chris would be standing there. volume would be down. I'm in the night court listening to my characters in a completely different world. I can hear him talking and I'm kind of nodding as if I'm there and I'm like, Mel, you have to. And 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

that holds my attention and haven't found it. 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 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 exploit it. Dopamine evolved to bring us to the natural rewards that we need to live, food, clothing, 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, that you lose some agency around your use. And that even when you or others recognize it's 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. Got 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 media. more addictive. And, you know, kind of the big idea in Doakene 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, and I were like, oh, great, my kid's 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. But also things like human connection, as we talked about, right? Like, they're 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. So 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. Lemke, it's like someone just opened a window in your brain and flip 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. Lemke 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,

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 on studying? 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, 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 overabundance, 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 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 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-sized pain, that actually triggers our body's own re-regulating healing mechanisms and we start to upregulate our feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, like serotonin, like our endogenous opioids.

It's 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 counterintuitive thing of moderating and greatly reducing our use of instantaneously. easy pleasures and intentionally leaning into right-sized 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 lull, 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 or taking that AI skills class instead of scrolling on your phone and the problem 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, you don't even have to. 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 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 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 sort of underpinning of exposure therapy that I think so many people are finding helpful. One thing I want to ask before we talk about,

what the hell do we do, Dr. Lempty? Is how does over-wording 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, I'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 history, or joy set point, what it means is that we need bigger pleasures to feel any pleasure at all. And even the merest 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 and 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, it doesn't. I'm like, well, I'm not really addicted to anything, but has 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 sleepaway camp or they go on a field trip and they take their phones away and they are forced to tolerate that,

they are so much happier. Yes. And so it's an example. It's an example. of how your body naturally resets 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. 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. So, and key to this absence trial or this dopamine detox, and 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 a 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 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 side. Well, that's for a hard drug. Or is that for everything? Could that be for like not checking a person's location? Yes. 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 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 it really needs to be long enough, you know, again, for those metaphorical gremlins to hop off and for sort of baseline reward to be reset.

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 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.

And you're moving toward a good place. So it's reframing the dopamine fast or the abstinence trial as not denying our 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 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 how 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 gremlins 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 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. 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 grammlins, those metaphorical gremlins, will go to the pleasure side and we can get our dopamine indirectly by paying for it up front. And the classic example of this is the runner's high, right? So we know that that exercise is actually injurious to cell. 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 upregulate, 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 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 cheap 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 I know. Give me some examples. First of all, just getting out of bed. Okay. Okay. When you wake up, get, I mean, it can be hard to just get out of bed.

Very right. And then, you know, if your 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 plan all that out. You put your exercise bag there or you arrange to meet with a friend to exercise or you put your, you know, whatever your meditation practices. You get it all ready and you plan it out. And then when you wake up, you don't linger, you know, in the bed when you know, especially you're not going to be able to go 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 I'm just going to look at that. 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 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 nature if you can, be in a space where 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. That'll change your life. 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 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 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, unsubscribe, you know, get rid of them because you're really committing to, you know, not using your drug of choice, behavior or drug, whatever it is. 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 other people's safety, 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 overconnected. 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 notification 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 readapt and you will find yourself in a place, which is so much better, right, where you're not in that 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 is our life, right? We're getting back our life. I think this is so important because I did this a couple years ago, got very serious about this, and it all started with not looking at the phone in a line. Yeah. And I don't have the phone within reach. And I don't look at it first thing in the morning. I have a ritual, even a hotel room that I do before I even check. And I am probably 85% 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, people that work with me will be like, I always walk around like, is anyone see my phone? Right, right, right. And I cannot even tell you the level of peace that you have if you take this on. And what I appreciate that you said, Dr. Lemke, is that when your brain goes nutso and starts negotiating with you, that sounds like an addict. Yes.

Telling you why they need a drink today. 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. 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 it. Absolutely not. How will 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 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, geez, 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. In the long run. In the long run. And how much more motivated you are. 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 into homeostasis? Like 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 gray scale 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? You've done a lot of podcasts on this with the addition of fat, salt, sugar, and flavorance. 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-processed 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 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 over-extended 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, and I do often. But when I do... I love how you are all you are. Oh, my God. But when I do, it's like I plan to just watch for 15 minutes, or I was just going to watch this one video. And there I am two, three hours later. Oh, my God. I know.

Yeah. And we use it to kind of relax and self-soothe, 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 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, rolling. Yeah. 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 over-stimulated. 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 wade into those existential areas, it can really, you know, cause us to feel some degree of terror, especially since we don't tend to think about those things because we're always distracting us, ourselves with our drugs. But boredom is really, really necessary because it's only when we allow ourselves to be bored and to sort of quiet our minds that, number one, we become acquainted with

our own thoughts and feelings, you know, 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 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 a lot of Matt, and I get down and I'm like, okay, we're done. Like 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 in a way, again, that's harmful. Like we're not talking about overexercising, right? Like people can get addicted to exercise. But just, just recognizing that 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 your happiness.

Yes. And resetting your dopamine and getting more motivated. How cool is this? It's so cool. And it makes me feel this sense of urgency around boundaries with behavior and devices or substances 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. 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 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. Thanks, mao. You're welcome. And I also want to thank you. 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 righty, 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. 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 100 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. Valentia. Oh, and one more thing.

And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal. 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. Serious XM Podcasts.