Are You Controlled By Dopamine? Here's What to Do
We’ve all heard of dopamine, it’s probably one of the most talked about feel-good chemicals in our brains.
What we don’t all know, however, is how much of a grip it can truly have on our lives.
“Dopamine is a type of monoamine neurotransmitter. It’s made in your brain and acts as a chemical messenger, communicating messages between nerve cells in your brain and the rest of your body.” - Cleveland Clinic
Dopamine is known for being the reward chemical, but it’s really about motivation and drive, you get more dopamine when thinking about doing the activity, than you get when actually doing it.
Low levels of dopamine are associated with mental health conditions like depression, it seriously plays a role in the mental well-being of human beings.
This isn’t an article about the scientific ins and outs of dopamine, instead, it’s a factual insight into how you can understand and harness dopamine for self-improvement.
If you want to understand yourself better, especially regarding pleasure and motivation, you’ve come to the right place.
So without further delay, here’s everything you need to know about dopamine to improve your life.
Short-Term Dopamine - The Problem
The biggest problem that people usually have with dopamine is that they’re hooked and addicted to the easy, quick, and accessible activities that release high volumes of it.
Things like social media, junk food, porn and video games.
These activities cause massive spikes of dopamine in the brain, making you feel extremely good in the moment, but leading to even bigger crashes in the aftermath.
Due to the speed of dopamine release during such events, the brain tries to regulate and compensate by bringing the dopamine levels back down at the same intensity. It does this so drastically that they often return to levels below baseline, leaving you feeling worse than before.
Regular use of these types of activities does two things, it increases your tolerance and decreases your baseline.
Increased tolerance means that you will need a higher level of stimulus to get the same kick, things like tastier or more junk food, or more extreme porn.
A lower baseline means you will get less dopamine from the more mundane aspects of life, like taking a walk or seeing friends.
As you can probably tell, this is a dangerous trap that can easily lead to a miserable life.
The reason people have trouble breaking the cycle is because they treat the cause as their solution. Regular use leads to low mood, and to help their low mood, they use more, a vicious loop.
So, let’s talk about breaking this cycle, and how you can experience the positives of dopamine without it leading to misery.
Dopamine Detox - The Reset
A popular and effective way of resetting the brain is to do what’s called a dopamine detox.
Detoxing from dopamine is not about avoiding dopamine altogether, it’s when a person essentially avoids indulging in problematic behaviours, giving the brain a chance to return to normal levels.
The problem with dopamine is being hooked to the negative aspects of it can be hard to notice. And due to the normality of social media and smartphone use, people often do not even know they have a problem.
A few signs are needing to listen to the best songs you can find to even enjoy music at all, or habitually picking your phone up the moment something gets difficult or boring, essentially, if mundane moments cause slight discomfort or frustration, you may need a dopamine detox.
The best way to perform a detox is to give yourself a timeframe, having a target in mind can help you keep focus and determination alive. Having nothing to aim for and having an infinite future as a goal can be quite overwhelming.
You can use this target to slowly decrease your tolerance over time, let's say your target is a month, you could increase your time away from the activities each week until the month is up, as an example.
You can use tools on your phone to help you stay away from them, tools that block specific apps on your phone for periods of time during the day are a great way to stick to your goal.
Time in silence is another great way to detox, sitting in silence, whether it be meditation or driving with nothing playing can help get the brain used to low stimulation. The harder you find this, the more you need it.
Whatever your method may be, just ensure you’re starving the brain from the activities that cause the quickest dopamine releases.
During the detox, you can start to introduce some more positive habits back into your life, which leads me to what to do next.
Long-Term Dopamine - The Solution
Once your brain has been regulated and is no longer hooked on damaging activities, it’s time to harness dopamine to your advantage and start reaping the benefits.
If short, easy and highly stimulating activities are the problem, then their opposites are our goal.
Like I said, dopamine is all about motivation and drive, without dopamine, we’d starve, no matter how hungry we are.
We can replace the short-term damaging dopamine with long-term positive dopamine, things like hard goals or exercise are great ways to do so.
The longer and harder the goal, the steadier the dopamine release.
They won’t give me the same levels of dopamine, the difference is the speed of the release. Without the quick spike, you don’t get the crash.
Once you get the brain used to this type of dopamine, it’ll be much easier to stay away from others, and you’ll live in a more steady and constant form of pleasure.
You can see it as taking the high spikes of dopamine and spreading them equally throughout the day, all while avoiding the miserable lows.
From here, it’s not about avoiding junk food or social media completely but continuing to manage your use. Frequent use is the problem.
From someone who has done exactly what is described, trust me when I say it’s worth doing. It was hard to figure out I was addicted to high stimulation, but when I got through the discomfort of reducing my use, I felt like a new person.
If you think you may have a slight problem, don’t be ashamed, I think we all do. Just try to sit in silence or be away from your phone for a while and notice how it feels.