Michael

“Lessons of the balance.
1. The relentless pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, leads to pain.
2. Recovery begins with abstinence
3. Abstinence rests the brains reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy and simpler pleasures.
4. Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine overloaded world.
5. Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.
6. Pressing on the pain side, resets our balance to the side of pleasure.
7. Beware of getting addicted to pain.
8. Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy and fosters a plenty mindset.
9. Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.
10. Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing ourselves in it.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway