Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“Jacob stopped talking and looked at me. We shared a small smile of understanding. If such straightforward admonitions solved the problem, I would be out of a job.”

Lembke demonstrates her sense of humor here. Even though much of the book’s content of the book is serious and heavy, passages like this demonstrate Lembke’s tone. It isn’t meant to make people feel threatened; instead, passages like these create the impression that Lembke is a likable narrator.

“But if we do that, you and I, we miss an opportunity to appreciate something crucial about the way we live now: We are all, of a sort, engaged with our own masturbation machines.”

Lembke’s use of the third-person here indicates that although Jacob’s problematic behavior is perhaps shocking, people shouldn’t see it as an opportunity to distance themselves from the way it happened. Addiction like Jacob’s can happen to anyone—when they least expect it and even against their will.

“I was struck by how much hotel rooms are like latter-day Skinner boxes: a bed, a TV, and a minibar. Nothing to do but press the lever for drug.”

Lembke uses analogy here to elaborate on her point that dopamine reward is seemingly always made available. In this case, the Skinner box, a term named after psychologist B. F. Skinner, is apt in that the hotel room actually resembles the confinement of the box that Skinner used to see how reward and punishment shape involuntary movements.