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Samantha Shelley's Reviews > Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
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This book did contain some valuable information (mostly for people who are pretty new to the topic) and I found it interesting most of the time, but I had some frustrations with it, namely:
- Complete vilification of cannabis. No mention of how people can use it medicinally or in a healthy way recreationally.
- Praising Islamic and Mormon dress codes, which in my experience as an ex-Mormon, are a dangerous part of toxic purity culture as well as rape culture. The author could have used them to make her point while also mentioning their potential harmfulness.
- Complete vilification of psychedelic drugs, with no mention of research showing that they’re an amazing tool for many with treatment-resistant depression, anxiety. etc.
- Complete vilification of cannabis. No mention of how people can use it medicinally or in a healthy way recreationally.
- Praising Islamic and Mormon dress codes, which in my experience as an ex-Mormon, are a dangerous part of toxic purity culture as well as rape culture. The author could have used them to make her point while also mentioning their potential harmfulness.
- Complete vilification of psychedelic drugs, with no mention of research showing that they’re an amazing tool for many with treatment-resistant depression, anxiety. etc.
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Reading Progress
September 13, 2021
–
Started Reading
September 13, 2021
– Shelved
September 13, 2021
–
33.0%
September 14, 2021
–
Finished Reading
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Nathan
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rated it 1 star
Jan 20, 2022 06:29AM
This. Exactly!
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Agreed with your review. In addition, I’d add that she says some questionable statements about why people are “obese”, claiming that most obese people are that way due to food addictions which is not supported by science. She later praises one of her patients for losing a lot of weight, but then describes that he did it through some pretty disordered/anorexic behaviors. Not good. She seems like a good doctor on the whole, but she’s clearly uninformed about a number of topics, such as purity culture, diet culture, and eating disorders.
Apart from the section where she explicitly says that there is good work going on with psychedelics in therapeutic systems and that they likely have a use in the way they always have, as substances to treat respectfully and with a certain amount of ritual.
The reference to the dress codes & modesty was so strange and out of place to me - she was talking abt a man’s issue with sex addiction & immediately mentioned two cultural expectations of *women* to dress modestly, like … sorry, how are these related? The addict can restrict *himself* - that doesn’t mean he gets to dictate the rest of the - as she calls it - “ecosystem”
