Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

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For those of you that are begging for more specificity, we can give you a tool. One would be you can flip a coin before engaging in any of these types of activities and decide whether or not you are going to allow other dopamine-supportive elements to go, for instance, into the gym with you. Are you going to listen to music or not? If you enjoy listening to music, well then flip a coin, and if it comes up heads, bring the music in. If it comes up tails, don't. Okay? Sounds like you are undercutting your own progress, but actually you are serving your own progress both short term and long term by doing that. Now, the smartphone is a very interesting tool for dopamine, in light of all this. It's extremely common nowadays to see people texting and doing selfies, and communicating in various ways, listening to podcasts, listening to music, doing all sorts of things while they engage in other activities, or going to dinner and texting other people, or making plans, sharing information. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more--more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander.

Trevor Haynes is a research technician in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. For more information:

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From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something--anything--that's new. From this understanding--the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it--we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion - and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. Additionally, the subject matter is utterly germane to the issues of addiction, mental health, compulsory consumption and more fundamentally learning, motivation and ultimately well being. Well, it is great, except that by layering together all these things to try and achieve that dopamine release and by getting a big peak in dopamine, you're actually increasing the number of conditions required to achieve pleasure from that activity again. And so there is a form of this where sometimes you do all the things that you love to get the optimal workout. You listen to your favorite music. You go at your favorite time of day. You have your preworkout drink, if that's your thing. You do all the things that give you that best experience of the workout for you. But there's also a version of this where sometimes you don't do the dopamine-enhancing activities. You don't ingest anything to increase your dopamine. You just do the exercise. Now, what was interesting is after subjects got out of this cold water, that dopamine increase was sustained. And I know nowadays many people are interested in using cold water therapy as a way to increase metabolism and fat loss, but also to improve sense of well-being, improve cognition, improve clarity of mind. There's something really special about this very alert but calm state of mind that seems to be the one that's optimal for pretty much everything except sleep. But for all aspects of work and for social engagement and for sport, that highly alert but calm state of mind really is the sweet spot that I believe most of us would like to achieve. And this cold water exposure, done correctly, really can help people achieve that state of mind through these increases in dopamine that last a very long time.

I was in college when this whole MPTP thing happened, and I remember hearing this story. At the time, I had no understanding of what it is to have very high levels of dopamine or extremely depleted levels of dopamine. There was no reason why I should have that understanding. I mean, of course, I had experienced different pleasures of different kinds, and I've had lows in my life, but nothing to the extreme that I'm about to discuss. Both books really focus on these dopamine schedules and the relationship between these peaks and baselines of dopamine. In Dr. Lembke's book and when she was on the Huberman Lab podcast, and other podcasts, she's talked about this pleasure-pain balance, that when we seek something that we really like or we indulge in it, like eating a little piece of chocolate, if we really like chocolate, there's some pleasure, but then there's a little bit of pain that exceeds the amount of pleasure, and it's subtle, and we experience it as wanting more of that thing. If ever you've interacted with somebody who just doesn't seem to have any drive, they've given up, or if you've interacted with somebody who seems to have endless drive and energy, what you are looking at there in those two circumstances is without question a difference in the level of dopamine circulating in their system. There will be other factors too, but the level of dopamine is the primary determinant of how motivated we are, how excited we are, how outward facing we are, and how willing we are to lean into life and pursue things. Chocolate, they didn't look at milk versus dark chocolate, but chocolate will increase your baseline level of dopamine 1.5 times, okay? So it's a pretty substantial increase in dopamine. It's transient, it goes away after a few minutes or even a few seconds. I'll explain what determines the duration in a minute, but 1.5 times for chocolate. Sex, both the pursuit of sex and the act of sex increases dopamine two times. So it's a doubling above baseline. Now, of course, there's going to be variation there, but that's the average increase in baseline dopamine caused by sex. Later I will talk about how the different aspects of the so-called arousal arc, the different aspects of sex, believe it or not, have a differential impact on dopamine. But for now, as a general theme or activity, sex doubles the amount of dopamine circulating in your blood. If we get clarity on how our brain chemistry works, we can use that understanding to create a life full of healthy, sustainable and truly rewarding relationships and accomplishments, and more effectively avoid the traps of modern existence that are just about to kill us all.It’s very different from how life used to be, when we had to tolerate a lot more distress,” says Lembke. “We’re losing our capacity to delay gratification, solve problems and deal with frustration and pain in its many different forms.” Dopamine has been dubbed 'the Kim Kardashian of molecules' owing to its mainstream prominence

Anna Lembke deeply understands an experience I hear about often in the therapy room at the nexus between our modern addictions and our primal brains. Her stories of guiding people to find a healthy balance between pleasure and pain have the power to transform your life. ” Nicotine, in particular nicotine that is smoked, like cigarettes, and so forth, increases dopamine two and a half times above baseline. So there's a peak that goes up above baseline two and a half times higher. It is very short-lived. Anyone who's ever been a chain smoker or observed a chain smoker understands that the increase in dopamine from nicotine is very short-lived. Cocaine will increase the level of dopamine in the bloodstream two and a half times above baseline, and amphetamine, another drug that increases dopamine, will increase the amount of dopamine in the bloodstream 10 times above baseline, a tremendous increase in dopamine. Exercise, now exercise will have a different impact on the levels of dopamine depending on how much somebody subjectively enjoys that exercise. So if you're somebody who loves running, chances are it's going to increase your levels of dopamine two times above your baseline, not unlike sex. He found that a slower form of information, books, was the antidote to his information overload. So he made them part of his routine again. According to McGuire, "Reading books again has given me more time to reflect, to think, and has increased both my focus and the creative mental space to solve work problems." Epinephrine, also called adrenaline, is the main chemical driver of energy. We can't do anything, anything at all, unless we have some level of epinephrine in our brain and body. It's released from the adrenal glands, which ride atop our kidneys. It's released from an area of the brain stem called locus coeruleus, and its release tends to wake up neural circuits in the brain and wake up various aspects of our body's physiology and give us a readiness. So it should come as no surprise that dopamine and epinephrine, aka adrenaline, hang out together. In fact, epinephrine and adrenaline are actually manufactured from dopamine. There's a biochemical pathway involving dopamine, which is a beautiful pathway — if ever you want to look it up, you could just look up biochemistry of dopamine, but what you'll find is that L-dopa is converted into dopamine. Dopamine is converted into noradrenaline, norepinephrine, it's also called, and noradrenaline, norepinephrine, is converted into adrenaline. Right now, I want to share with you two anecdotes, one from my own life and one from some fairly recent history, that illustrate some of the core biology of dopamine and how profoundly it can shape our experience.A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books: As I started learning more about this relationship between the peaks and the baselines in dopamine, what I realized was that some time ago I probably experienced an incredible increase in the amount of dopamine during one of my workouts, because I enjoy working out and I enjoy listening to music. I also enjoy listening to podcasts. I also enjoy communicating with people. Those are all wonderful pursuits, but I had layered in too many of them too many times, and then it essentially wasn't working for me anymore, much in the same way a drug wouldn't work for somebody who takes it repeatedly, because their baseline of dopamine is dropping. So at least for this calendar year, I've made a rule for myself, which is I don't allow my phone into my workouts at all. Our brain simply loves to get high and for a long time we couldn´t get good stuff from the outer world ( it must have been terrible) when we were still stonagey and before, but we had those fine centers for own opioids, own cannabinoids, but especially the other hormones that aren´t so fancy. No matter where we look, to the love in our beds, to the digital shopping card, enemies and frenemies at work, what we love and hate about political parties, we are wired to react like animals. want to understand your decisions better: Why did you fall out of love with your ex? Why is your diet plan not going well? Why did you decide to start a company? Why did you move to another country? Why aren't you feeling motivated at work? When we binge on pleasurable things, homeostasis means “our brain compensates by bringing us lower and lower and lower,” says Lembke. Each time the thing becomes less enjoyable, but we eventually become dependent on those stimuli to keep functioning. We spiral into a joy-seeking abyss. The digital world enables bingeing on a previously unseen scale because there are no practical limitations forcing us to pause. With substances, you eventually run out of money or lines of cocaine (even temporarily), but Netflix shows or TikTok feeds are indefatigable. Often you needn’t do anything: the next hit automatically loads on your screen.