We describe the effect of physical dissipation on stability of equilibria which have been stabilized, in the absence of damping, using the method of controlled Lagrangians. This method applies to a class of underactuated mechanical systems including "balance" systems such as the pendulum on a cart. Since the method involves modifying a system's kinetic energy metric through feedback, the effect of dissipation is obscured. In particular, it is not generally true that damping makes a feedback-stabilized equilibrium asymptotically stable. Damping in the unactuated directions does tend to enhance stability, however damping in the controlled directions must be "reversed" through feedback. In this paper, we suggest a choice of feedback dissipation to locally exponentially stabilize a class of controlled Lagrangian systems.