Author Guide · Psychiatry & Addiction
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In a rat experiment Anna Lembke cites, chocolate raised dopamine in the brain by about 50 percent above baseline, sex by 100 percent, nicotine by 150 percent and amphetamine by 1,000 percent. Lembke, born in 1967, is a psychiatrist at Stanford, where she is medical director of addiction medicine and chief of the Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. She trained at Yale and Stanford, spent years treating patients who were prescribed into opioid addiction, and wrote about it in Drug Dealer, MD (2016). Her second book, Dopamine Nation (2021), widened the lens from pills to phones, food and sex and became a New York Times bestseller. A third, Radical Surrender, is due in November 2026. This guide covers her three key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 key books · 2016–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Anna Lembke has written Drug Dealer, MD (2016), about the American prescription opioid epidemic, and Dopamine Nation (2021), a New York Times bestseller on pleasure, pain and compulsive behaviour. A companion workbook followed in 2024, and Radical Surrender is due on 10 November 2026. Start with Dopamine Nation, which covers drugs, phones and everything in between.
Where to Start with Anna Lembke
If you want her defining book
→ Dopamine Nation (2021) — the pleasure–pain balance and the 30-day dopamine fast.
If you want the opioid crisis specifically
→ Drug Dealer, MD (2016) — how doctors came to prescribe an epidemic.
If you want her newest thinking
→ Radical Surrender (2026) — on letting go of control, due November 2026.
3 Anna Lembke Books, in Order
Drug Dealer, MD
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, it explains how the American prescription drug epidemic grew, at a time when opioid deaths had roughly quadrupled between 1999 and 2013. Lembke argues that most prescribers meant well but were poorly trained to recognise addiction and were misled by drug-company marketing, patients and a medical system run for throughput. Each chapter opens with part of the story of one of her patients.
Dopamine Nation
Published by Dutton in August 2021 (in the UK by Headline as Dopamine Nation: Why Our Addiction to Pleasure Is Causing Us Pain). Lembke describes pleasure and pain as a seesaw the brain keeps trying to level, so every high is followed by a comedown, and argues that a world of constant access to drugs, food, porn and phones keeps us tipped toward pain. Her treatment advice starts with a month of abstinence — a “dopamine fast” — and moves on to self-binding, radical honesty and “prosocial shame”, illustrated with her patients’ stories. It was an instant New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
Radical Surrender
Due from Dutton (and Headline in the UK) on 10 November 2026. Lembke argues that a culture built on control feeds anxiety, boredom, loneliness and shame, and defines surrender as acknowledging a power greater than oneself and giving one’s will over to it. The publisher describes a mix of personal story, neuroscience and practical tools, starting from a loss in her own life.
In What Order to Read Anna Lembke
Her books do not depend on each other. Drug Dealer, MD is the narrower, more clinical book, about prescription opioids in the United States; Dopamine Nation takes the same understanding of addiction and applies it to any pleasure that can become compulsive, which is why most readers start there.
Read Dopamine Nation first, then Drug Dealer, MD if you want the medical and policy background behind it. The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook (2024) is for putting the first book into practice, not a new argument. Radical Surrender moves from addiction to control and meaning more broadly.
A reading path
1. Dopamine Nation (2021)
2. Drug Dealer, MD (2016)
3. The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook (2024)
4. Radical Surrender (2026)
Everything Else Anna Lembke Published
Beyond the 3 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Companion book
1
1 book · 2024
- 2024The Official Dopamine Nation Workbookexercises, tables and a guided dopamine fast, for individuals, families, therapists and teachers
The years · 1967–2026
Quick facts about Anna Lembke
- Known for
- Explaining addiction — to opioids, but also to phones, food and other everyday pleasures — through the brain’s balance of pleasure and pain.
- 1967
- Born
- 1995
- MD, Stanford University School of Medicine
- 2021
- Dopamine Nation
- 2026
- Radical Surrender due
- Born
- 27 November 1967
- Education
- BA in humanities, Yale (1989); MD, Stanford (1995); psychiatry residency, Stanford (1998)
- Works
- Professor of psychiatry, Stanford; medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine
- Clinic
- Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic
- Research
- More than 100 peer-reviewed papers, chapters and commentaries
- Public role
- Has testified before committees of the US House and Senate
The red mark is 2021: Dopamine Nation, the book that took her work far beyond medicine.
How Anna Lembke Writes: The Clinic as Evidence
Lembke builds her books out of patients. Drug Dealer, MD follows one man’s path into prescription drug addiction chapter by chapter; Dopamine Nation is full of case stories — a student hooked on Adderall after a short consultation, a former heroin user who credits buprenorphine with saving his life — that carry the argument as much as the science does.
She explains neuroscience with a single image. In Dopamine Nation it is the seesaw of pleasure and pain that the brain keeps trying to level, which lets her talk about heroin, chocolate and smartphones in the same terms. The practical advice is equally plain: stop for a month, put distance between yourself and the thing you crave, tell the truth about it.
She writes as a doctor inside the system she criticises: Drug Dealer, MD blames poor training and drug-company marketing more than individual prescribers, and Dopamine Nation says that mild compulsions and severe addiction run on the same mechanism. For writers who cover the same ground, from Gabor Maté to Johann Hari, see Authors like Anna Lembke.
Watch
Anna Lembke on understanding and treating addiction
Lembke talks with the Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman about dopamine, the pleasure–pain balance and how addiction is treated, shortly before Dopamine Nation came out.
Frequently asked questions about Anna Lembke’s books
How many books has Anna Lembke written?
Three books of her own: Drug Dealer, MD (2016), Dopamine Nation (2021) and Radical Surrender, due on 10 November 2026. She has also published The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook (2024), a companion to Dopamine Nation.
What are Anna Lembke’s books in order?
Drug Dealer, MD (2016), Dopamine Nation (2021), The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook (2024) and Radical Surrender (due November 2026).
What is the best Anna Lembke book to start with?
Dopamine Nation — her best-known and most widely applicable book, which treats drugs, phones, food and sex with the same framework. Read Drug Dealer, MD if the opioid crisis is your main interest.
What is Anna Lembke’s most famous book?
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (2021), an instant New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller. Her publisher puts her sales at more than 1.5 million copies.
Is Anna Lembke a practicing psychiatrist?
Yes. She is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine, director of its addiction medicine fellowship and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and she keeps an active clinical practice.
What is a dopamine fast in Dopamine Nation?
Lembke’s first step for breaking a compulsive habit: about a month without the drug or behaviour, so that the brain’s pleasure–pain balance can reset. She warns that the first two weeks are usually the hardest, and that if nothing improves after a month, something else may need treatment.
What is Radical Surrender about?
Her third book, due from Dutton on 10 November 2026, with the subtitle Letting Go in a World Addicted to Control. It argues that a culture of control feeds anxiety, boredom and loneliness, and that surrendering to a power greater than oneself is an answer.
Was Anna Lembke in The Social Dilemma?
Yes. She appeared in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, where she argued that social media works like a drug.
Is the science in Dopamine Nation disputed?
Partly. The book simplifies dopamine for a general reader, and “dopamine fasting” is a popular rather than a clinical term. Some neuroscientists have worried that her strongly anti-dopamine framing implies ADHD medications are overused, which conflicts with the established evidence. Behavioural addictions such as smartphone use are also not formal diagnoses in the DSM-5.
Is there a Dopamine Nation workbook?
Yes. The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook (2024) turns the book into exercises and fill-in tables, including a guided dopamine fast, for individuals, families, counsellors and teachers.
Footnotes
- Anna Lembke — Wikipedia
- Radical Surrender — Penguin Random House
- In Dopamine Nation, overabundance keeps us craving more — NPR Fresh Air, 2021
- Review of Drug Dealer, MD — The Pharmaceutical Journal, 2017
- Dopamine Nation — Publishers Weekly, 2021
- Anna Lembke — official site
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.”
— Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation (2021)
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