After I read psychiatrist Anna Lembke ‘s book Dopamine Nation, a few quarters dropped. As a psychiatrist, Anna Lembke sees many addicted patients where the reckless search for pleasure under the influence of dopamine-driven behavior ultimately leads to a lot of pain. My behavior too is full of little self-created dopamine moments like a cup of (decaffeinated) coffee, a piece of chocolate or checking a sports news. All behaviors I taught myself with conditioning.
Dopamine-driven behavior
Dopamine acts as a neurotransmitter and sometimes as a hormone. It plays an important role in reward-motivated behavior. Simply put it is the “more” hormone. In prehistoric times, dopamine worked well in directing behavior toward food seeking. The craving for food kept us alive. For millions of years, our bodies and brains were optimized for living with scarcity. But over the last hundreds of years, we have slowly entered a time of excess. Too much good food, too much digital entertainment. The result is that our dopamine system works against us. We overeat and hang out on screens all day. Simple things that take resistance like eating healthy unprocessed foods or working focused on one thing become difficult.
Keeping Balance
The solution lies in maintaining a healthy balance with addictive behaviors. The hedonic wheel keeps turning if you always keep looking for more. It is precisely by taking on difficult and challenging things like going a month without coffee or kicking off social media that keeps the balance healthy. Getting rid of fast dopamine kicks makes you look for slow dopamine kicks.
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