IT’S ALL ABOUT BALANCE

IT’S instinctive for human beings to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We are programmed to do so – it dates back to a time when people needed to find food and shelter every day or risk death.

But we don’t live in that world anymore. Today these basic needs are often readily available. In fact, we’ve transformed our world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance: not only of food, but of all sorts of things that stimulate our pleasure centre – shopping, news, gaming, gambling, texting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting, alcohol . . .

This overabundance changes things, says psychiatrist and addiction specialist Dr Anna Lembke, and understanding the relationship between pleasure and pain has become essential for a life well lived.

This extract from her book Dopamine