What? 🙀
Do you know why you're reading this? Why you reach out and grab your 📱 before you even open your eyes in the morning? Why you suddenly want your coffee as soon as you get near your favorite coffee store? Do you know how your Wants come about?
I’ve got bad news for you - we're all enslaved. Most of us (myself included) don't have much control over what we want and do. And that's getting worse and worse. If you don't realize it - you're a blind man at the wheel. Sorry to sound cliché, but this is much truer than you might think. Our autopilot behavior, driven by System 1 (hello, Daniel Kahneman), uses automatic, intuitive, quick daily decisions and is often driven by a little chemical called Dopamine.
Dopamine is a chemical with a very simple formula (which I'll tattoo on my shoulder if I'm ever brave enough to do so). It's released in certain areas of the brain and affects neurons in different areas of the brain.
There are so many effects that I struggle to list them all - each one requires some explanation. But think of it this way: everything you do beyond your skin, outside of your body, and everything you feel that motivates you to do it, is directly controlled by Dopamine. The movement itself is impossible without Dopamine stimulation.
It's at the heart of decision-making and motivation. It determines the level of motivation, the desire and willingness to exert effort. It makes us want and strive for things outside of ourselves. It compels us to seek, explore and achieve new things.
In other words, if for some reason you didn't have dopamine, you wouldn't even be motivated to move, let alone make an effort to achieve something. You wouldn't even reach for food, and you might starve even if the food was right in front of you. That's exactly what happened in the experiment with genetically modified mice, which wouldn't even move a few inches to reach the food and starved to death. But when food was put in their mouths, they ate and enjoyed it.
The main misconception about dopamine is that it's considered a molecule of pleasure. That's not the case at all. Dopamine is a molecule of anticipation, desire, drive, motivation and excitement - sometimes, these things can be experienced as pleasure. It makes us think we'll like something when we get it, but it's nothing to do with whether we'll actually like it. Therefore, it's quite normal to look forward to something and then be a little disappointed when we get it.
The mechanism of how it works in the brain is quite complicated, but what you need to know for this article is that you feel excitement and joy when dopamine levels rise. When it drops, you feel discomfort, frustration, and a desire to resolve it.
Reward-Prediction Error 🎰
But what does that have to do with buying ice cream at the same store or smoking an occasional cigarette when I see the same friend? How does it lead to learning behaviors that I want and don't want? How does it lead to people becoming addicted to substances, things, or behaviors?
This is called Cue-dependent learning, Pavlovian conditioning, or Reward-Prediction Error (RPE). Different names - same approach to shaping any behavior - harmful or not.
If you wander around and find something you like (food, drug, behavior), then try it and like it, it triggers the release of Dopamine. This is an unexpected reward. This release stimulates learning and forces you to remember what you did or saw just before the stimulus that gave you so much pleasure. In this way, the Cues (clues, triggers) are formed and memorized.
The modern version of wandering is... Instagram (or TicToc, whichever you prefer). Our brains love uncertainty and look for surprises (to create that dopamine release), and social media is made for that. They use the same mechanisms as the gambling industry - keeping you constantly in suspense, hoping that the next Story or Reel will bring you joy and excitement.
The next time you encounter that cue, it triggers a dopamine surge and you look forward to what's associated with that cue. The cue itself can be anything in the environment or people around you, and most often, you don’t realize what it is. The cue triggers a small anticipatory dopamine release that motivates you to seek the reward (creates Craving).
You go for the Reward and when you get it and it meets (or exceeds) your expectations, you get an even bigger dopamine boost. This boost stimulates the learning process and makes you remember that the Cue → Craving → Reward sequence feels good and that you should do it that way next time.
However, if the reward doesn't meet your expectations (you don't like it), dopamine drops below baseline, which feels terrible. This triggers the opposite process, teaching your brain that this sequence of Cue → Craving → Reward isn't so good for you and you're less likely to perform this behavior next time.
This simple algorithm creates a chain of behaviors and habits that follow the basic logic of Cue → Craving → Reward → Reinforcement. It's the same cycle described in dozens of books on habits.
These books suggest various ways to break this cycle and get rid of the habit, but the only way that works for me is to change my environment and thus eliminate the triggers for the behavior. In most cases, we don't know what the triggers are that make us perform certain behaviors, and therefore we've a hard time changing a harmful behavior.
Dopamine spikes in the case if Reward or a drop in the case of a punishment are tools of Learning. Research suggests that dopamine spikes trigger neuroplasticity - the brain forms new connections between neurons and also strengthens the ones it had before. In this way, Cues that could bring you a reward are more likely to be perceived, and the behavior is more likely to be carried out.
So what’s the big deal❓
It’s all good and fine, but there are a few problems with this mechanism that contribute to the development of addictions:
1️⃣ Using the same stimulus (drug, chocolate, alcohol, behavior) builds tolerance so that more and more of that stimulus (in greater quantity or frequency) is needed to achieve the same level of pleasure. This is actually good, because with moderate amounts of stimuli (like food and sex) it leads us to not do it as often - until the tolerance wears off and we can enjoy it again. But not with hard drugs.
2️⃣ When this moderate stimulation is frequent (causing frequent dopamine spikes), the dopamine baseline becomes depleted. When the dopamine baseline is depleted, we suffer psychological and sometimes physical pain. And the only way to relieve that pain is to find new dopamine releases. And often we turn to the thing (the behavioral substance) that gives us the most dopamine. And then the cycle repeats itself. This part is crucial, because gradually any kind of addiction makes us repeat the behavior, not because we WANT to do it now, but because without that stimulus we're at PAIN. So "I'm taking it because it makes me feel good" becomes "I literally can't function without it."
3️⃣ When dopamine is stimulated by a highly stimulant drug, the dopamine drops far below baseline and it takes too much time and effort to recover. Furthermore, after experiencing this high level of dopamine, the brain develops a tolerance to less powerful stimuli and everything else except the drug becomes far less desirable.
As a result, all of your default behavior - that in which you don't make conscious choices - is driven by dopamine and the reward prediction error. You're like a machine that scans its environment for cues and responds by performing the actions that trigger a reward.
The good news is that this can be "intercepted" by conscious thought, willpower, and control of the environment (to remove harmful cues and schedule the useful ones). But it's hard to do, and most people don't do it.
That's just the tip of the iceberg on the fascinating topic of dopamine. If you want to learn more about how dopamine can be regulated, how it works biologically, its sociopolitical implications, how it creates your daily fears, and more, I recommend the following:
Huberman Lab Podcasts on dopamine
Book The Molecule of More
Book Dopamine Nation
The Google
Summary 🦥
🔸 Dopamine is a chemical in your brain that's responsible for motivation, excitement, desire, and pleasure. It makes us want things and chase after them.
🔸 Reward-Prediction Error is a mechanism in our brain that uses dopamine to make us find and stick to the sequence of behaviors Cue → Craving → Reward.
🔸 RPE and dopamine are at the core of learning and the most harmful additives (to drugs and behaviors).
🔸 If left unchecked, RPE and dopamine dictate most of the decisions we make automatically using System 1 and really rule our lives
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