Careers, Life, and Yale Presents: Dopamine Nation: a Conversation with Dr. Anna Lembke ’89

Anna Lembke ’89, is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, keeps an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.

In 2016, she published “Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic (Zuger, 2018). Dr. Lembke recently appeared on the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma,” an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives.

“Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence” (Dutton/Penguin Random House, August 2021), an instant New York Times Bestseller, explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.