If I were to ask 100 people what the most addictive drug on the street right now is, I'd probably get 100 different answers, ranging from caffeine to crack. While there are arguments to be made that even sugar can be considered a top contender for "most addictive drug," I have a different view.
In a lot of my articles, I talk about humanity as a species and how it deals with the modern world of technology. Oftentimes, I talk about how addictive modern tech can be, and as I wrote in my recent article on Tuesday, social media is designed to be addictive to the degree that it hijacks your brain. As I note, the chemical involved in this addiction is called dopamine.
Read: Social Media Is Killing Us and We Don't Even Notice It
The way I talk about dopamine, both in my articles and in my videos, you'd think that dopamine is an evil chemical bent on shackling you to the most mundane, insubstantial life you can have. In a way, it can be exactly that. Dopamine can have you doom-scrolling on your phone, reliant on pornography for sexual gratification, hyper-focused on a video game, and constantly seeking out distraction when you should be trying to focus on peace.
But dopamine is a lot like a gun. In the wrong hands, it can destroy a life, but used properly, it can sustain and empower civilizations. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that. Dopamine is a powerful chemical, but let's start with what it actually is.
Dopamine is often sold as the "pleasure chemical," and in a way, it can sort of qualify as that, but more accurately, it's the chemical that makes you pursue what your brain thinks will make you happy. It's a neurotransmitter in your brain that gets you to do things. It's the "get up and go" chemical that is so powerful that it motivates you to do things. You get out of bed every morning because the dopamine in your system practically commands you to.
You get a hit of dopamine upon accomplishing something, and what your brain considers accomplishment can have a vast range. You can get a hit of dopamine just by learning something new, for instance. Novelty is a big factor in dopamine delivery, and this is one of the primary reasons humans are so innovative and prone to advancement. Dopamine can be delivered through completing tasks like cleaning your house, completing a puzzle, or winning at a game of any kind. It also plays a big part in the continuation of our species, as you get a massive hit of dopamine from sex.
In these instances, dopamine is actually a helpful chemical. It drives individualism and advancement. It helps you build self-esteem and perfect skills. It can even help create life.
When you have a lot of people with healthy dopamine receptors creating healthy dopamine hits, you get civilization and all the comforts that come with it.
But then there are the major issues with dopamine, and those issues have really reared their ugly heads in the modern era. With every advancement of technology, a new way to trigger dopamine has come along with it. As I noted in my Tuesday VIP piece (link above), social media is one such invention that has literally seized our dopamine systems and uses them against us by constantly injecting novelty and tapping into our pleasure systems.
If you're a male on Instagram, for instance, you may find yourself being served various things that interest men. Sometimes it's steak, sometimes it's machines, sometimes it's a beautiful woman in a state of undress. For women, it might be gossip, celebrity news, or a hunky man swinging an axe. Even the most innocent Instagram feeds are designed to activate your dopamine receptors, as Christians can be served pro-Christian content designed to keep you scrolling. No one is safe, because everyone has dopamine.
Pornography works the same way. It hijacks one of your deepest, most ingrained instincts and introduces novelty. Since your dopamine receptors are dumb, they can't tell if you're watching porn or actually reproducing. You get a fix no matter what. Over time, you can actually train your brain to prefer pornography over real sex because your dopamine receptors have learned it's the easiest way to get a shot.
Junk food can also give you a pretty decent dopamine hit. Junk food is high in calories, which pleases your dopamine system because the more calories you consume, the more likely it is you'll stay alive. So that Chick-fil-A sandwich tastes so good, partly because of the recipe, and partly because your body thinks you've just bought yourself a few more days on Earth.
Here's a fun, but scary fact: Yale University found that brain scans of people who are addicted to junk food look pretty similar to those addicted to drugs.
As you can tell, our dopamine systems are still locked in a lizard-brain state of arrested development.
Dopamine is a big part of addiction, and when you addict yourself to something to get that dopamine fix, it can seriously damage your mental health. Dopamine burnout can cause you to take less pleasure in the ordinary or mundane. It can cause you to pursue cheap fixes instead of long-term improvement. It can result in stagnation, which can, in turn, result in depression and anxiety.
Healthy dopamine habits can be cultivated, usually through accomplishing big, long-term goals, healthy sex, meaningful advancement, and even boredom. In fact, as I wrote in my Tuesday article, boredom is actually your dopamine system resetting itself.
Knowing this about dopamine, you can actually begin identifying where you're getting healthy dopamine hits vs unhealthy dopamine hits and adjust your life accordingly.
