The Risk of Addiction is Everywhere. Anna Lembke Explains the Pleasure-Pain Balance

Dr. Anna Lembke: "We have an innate tendency to want to avoid pain. On the other hand, pain avoidance and the pursuit of pleasure leads to more pain.

And this is, of course, the great paradox - that although we want to avoid pain, our efforts to avoid pain actually lead to more pain.

And if you look at every major philosophy or religion in the world, they essentially come down to these kinds of similar messages - that we have to face struggles, that suffering is a part of life, and that suffering gives us really valuable information that helps us make our lives better.

But this kind of ancient wisdom, we've really forgotten in large part. And we have lots of narratives that tell us the opposite - that if we're uncomfortable in any kind of way, there must be something wrong with our lives or wrong with our brains, or we need to go get treatment, or we need to go on an antidepressant, and that really, we should be experiencing this constant euphoria, otherwise we're doing something wrong.

And I think this is really a misleading narrative, because it's also contrary to our biology, because our biology essentially says no matter what we pursue - pleasure-wise, and no matter how much we avoid pain, our brains will essentially recalibrate or neuro-adapt to a new hedonic or joy set point, such that we'll constantly need more pleasure over time to get the same effect.”