Drug hijack your dopamine. Dopamine is a neurochemical we need to live. We need it like oxygen and water. Without it, people feel they are dying.

Anna Lembke, MD is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she is the author of more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications, has testified before the United States House of Representatives and Senate, has served as an expert witness in federal and state opioid litigation, and is an internationally recognized leader in addiction medicine treatment and education.

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), highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic (Zuger, 2018).

Dr. Lembke appeared in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives.

Her latest book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Dutton/Penguin Random House, August 2021) was an instant New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and has been translated into 35 languages. It combines the neuroscience of addiction with the wisdom of recovery to explore the problem of compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.

Dawn, a prevention specialist noticed brightly colored packing of mushroom products in a smoke shop near a school. She wanted to know what they were selling children. Dawn found Josh Swider who agreed to testing of several products. The results were shocking - the products included a range of chemicals from THC to bath salts. Consumer protections are important for food and all types of drugs, especially when sold legally.

Josh began his career in chemistry at Eastern Washington University, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and degrees in physics and biology. His quest for a deeper understanding of science led him to graduate school, where he attended the joint doctoral program at the University of California, San Diego, and San Diego State University. Josh saw the problems in the analytical cannabis industry with the lack of analytical research and public understanding associated with it. He wanted to change this, and with his knowledge and passion for the industry, Josh founded the lab with fellow chemist Dave Marelius in 2016. Together they’ve made it InfiniteCAL’s mission to ensure only safe; quality products are allowed to be sold to consumers

Connor Sheets' investigative stories have resulted in public health alerts, federal investigations, and international ramifications. His investigations included finding that Mexican pharmacies were selling counterfeit pain pills that contain fentanyl and smoke shops were selling chocolate magic mushrooms that contain THC or bath salts.

Connor Sheets is an investigative and enterprise reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He was part of the team that was a 2024 Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the mass shooting in Monterey Park. Before joining The Times in 2021, he worked for six years as an investigative reporter in Alabama, reported from four continents as a New York-based enterprise reporter and covered local news for a weekly newspaper chain in Queens. A father of two, Sheets grew up in Maryland, where he delivered newspapers as a teenager and landed his first reporting job after graduating from the University of Maryland.

Social media handle: https://x.com/ConnorASheets