Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Lembke introduces a patient named Chris, who at one time had a heroin addiction. He credited his recovery from this addiction to the use of buprenorphine, an opioid-derived drug that helps curb the cravings for heroin and other opioid drugs. Lembke details Chris’s story and how he came to have a heroin addiction. Chris was a seemingly regular kid who attended Stanford. He had a mental health crisis, which led to attempted death by suicide. Things got progressively worse after this, and he soon began using heroin regularly. His heroin use was the consequence of first taking opioid pain pills. This occurred in 2009, as the opioid crisis was beginning. Eventually, Chris was able to stop using heroin—but only with the help of buprenorphine. When he visited Lembke, he insisted that he couldn’t live without it. Lembke uses this story to launch into a larger discussion of using medicine to restore a more level pleasure-pain balance. She revisits the case of David, a college student who developed a substance use disorder of Adderall, and reiterates that this is a stimulant drug, and while it can help with focus, addiction is a risk. Stimulant drugs like Adderall are highly addictive.