I have read this book because it was recommended as a next source in one episode of the Huberman lab podcast. This essay draws from both. This book is written by a psychologist specialised in treating addictions. She tells a story of her numerous patients and links their behaviour and conditions to scientific literature which I found very insightful.
The common opinion is that dopamine is the molecule of pleasure but that’s not completely right. It is responsible mainly for: motivation and desire. Secondly it plays a role in experiencing pleasure as well as pain.
Dopamin can be imagined as a small pool. The surface is the baselines and the waves are peaks and drops. If the peaks are high, the troughs will be large as well. That means when you are highly motivated or experience something pleasurable it creates a peak (usually for a few minutes) but then since it’s a pool, any peak will result in troughs (it won’t be as strong as the peak but it will last much longer usually for hours). And vice versa for experiencing troughs - when you experience a troughs (pain) for a few minutes it will be followed by a peak (motivation or pleasure) for few hours.
When experiencing many peaks in short amount of time, the water from the pool will splash out = your baseline of dopamine will be lower which means you will feel less motivated and get less pleasure overall.
The pool is slowly refilling (rest, boredom, sleep) but it can splash out pretty quickly.
To sum up your baseline - the surface of a pool is your default motivation. The peaks are pleasure and states of high motivation and the troughs are pain and lower states of motivations.
You can get addicted basically to anything that produces dopamine (masturbation, drugs, romantic novels, etc.) as well as anything that reduces dopamine (running, cold water, etc) because remember: creating a though is followed by a long-lasting peak so even if you feel pain initially for a few minutes you are then rewarded with pleasure that lasts for hours
You probably wonder, why being addicted is bad, especially when its on healthy activity? Well, being addicted messes with your dopamine baseline. It continuously lowers it as you become use the the substance or activity. Imagine it like emptying the pool of your dopamine - soon there will be little water to create peaks high enough to cause enjoyment or pleasure even from normal activities. When your dopamine baseline is low, you will feel less motivated to do anything - even move! Activities which you have previously enjoyed will stop make sense to you and you will end up in similar state as depression.
When we become addicted to something, the neurons that activate the addiction have their dendrites lengthened to make their firing stronger. When we get rid of the addiction, those dendrites and neurons stay in the brain, so if we activate those neurons after a year, they trigger the same strong reaction as when we were addicted → if I get rid of the addiction, I have to pay attention because I can very easily slip back in the same state I was before because the neurons causing the addictions are still in brain.
Meditation for treating mental disorders is effective in short-term but long-term (>1 month) it leads to more pain and worsen addiction.
When it came to treating addiction the author advised her patients 1 month of abstinence (except for cases of strong drug abuse where abstinence would worsen the condition or even lead to death). In the first two weaks of abstinece it was always hard for the patients because they were going through withdrawal period - their baseline dopamine was low since they were not creating peaks via the addiction. But then they got better and after 1 month their dopamine baseline was more or less reseted and they could again enjoy normal activities in their lives.
To make the abstinence easier the author advised patients to use so called self-binding strategies. We are training to remove substance and also all triggers of the substance from our lives (when we have a sexual addiction we shall remove porn, toys but also withdraw from watching sports with women, being home naked, etc.).
Here is a list of activities that normally release or decrease your dopamine: Good food, sex, nicotine, cocaine increase normal dopamine levels about 2x, meth 10x and amphetamine about 1000x. Also watch out for big peaks of dopamin - a big crash come afterwards extreme pornography, extremely sweet food, heavy drugs etc. Suprisingly viewing morning and evening sunlight also increases dopamine. Lastly cold showers are ideal way to increase your dopamine baseline - at first xou experience pain for few minutes but after that your baseline will slowly rise to around 2x of normal levels and will remain there for around 2 hours (in comparison cocaine will achieve these levels only for few minutes.
The number one reason people get addicted is they seek an escape from the reality. The best way to escape the reality is however according to the author to fully immerse in it. When we are truly present, we escape from every other tasks except from the one we have before.
When it comes to reward there is reward prediction error which you can experience after unmet expectations.
Thanks to dopamine we can experience the pleasure of the future already in the present moment - dopamine is released already when reward is expected
When you start expecting a reward dopamine will peak - shortly after that it will drop to small trough - this creates a motivation through pain of not having the thing
When the reward is as expected dopamine will level out to baseline
When the reward is higher as expected dopamine will stay elevated - baseline will increase and you will feel motivated for longer time
When the reward is lower than expected dopamine baseline will drop to troff and you will feel demotivated
→ The journey is the goal, thanks to dopamine
Dopamin rewards are often time or place dependent. Brain remembers context = enviroment and in combinarion of the fact that dopamin is released the most throughout anticipation, this creates addictions.
To the second idea I would add the fact that random reward > regular reward. When we build a habit of getting a reward for X event, over time we get so used to the reward that minimal dopamine is released (most of the dopamine is already flushed out in anticipation of the reward). That's why it's good, as Ondra writes, to break our routines now and then and not reward ourselves, for example. In the short term it will be negative, but in the long term we will be happier with the rewards.
I will leave you with guide on overcoming procrastination with the newly learned knowledge.
When you procrastinate you often lack motivation = dopamine.
Most often waiting a long time or having anxiety from a deadline will refill your dopamine pool and you will start working. But there are better ways.
→ when you feel demotivated select a short painful exercise from list below
