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August 28, 2022 - November 1, 2025
We enjoy the familiar not for what it could become, but for what it is. That is the only stable basis for a long-term, satisfying relationship.
when it comes to love, dopamine is a place to begin, not to finish. It can never be satisfied. Dopamine can only say, “More.”
At some point, everyone asks the question, why? Why do I do the things that I do? Why do I make the choices that I make?
Wanting, or desire, flows from an evolutionarily old part of the brain deep inside the skull called the ventral tegmental area. It is rich in dopamine; in fact, it is one of the two main dopamine-producing regions. Like most brain cells, the cells that grow there have long tails that wind through the brain until they reach a place called the nucleus accumbens. When these long-tailed cells are activated, they release dopamine into the nucleus accumbens, driving the feeling we know as motivation. The scientific term for this circuit is the mesolimbic pathway, although it’s easier to simply call
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This dopamine circuit evolved to promote behaviors that lead to survival and reproduction, or, to put it more plainly, to help us get food and sex, and to win competitions.
That’s the nature of dopamine. It’s always focused on acquiring more of everything with an eye toward providing for the future.
dopamine says, “Go ahead and eat the donut, even if you’re not hungry. It will increase your chance of staying alive in the future. Who knows when food will be available next?” That made sense for our evolutionary ancestors, who lived most of their lives on the brink of starvation.
the dopamine system is more or less obsessed with keeping us alive. It constantly scans the environment for new sources of food, shelter, mating opportunities, and other resources that will keep our DNA replicating. When it finds something that’s potentially valuable, dopamine switches on, sending the message Wake up. Pay attention. This is important. It sends this message by creating the feeling of desire, and often excitement. The sensation of wanting is not a choice you make. It is a reaction to the things you encounter.
In a broad sense, saying something is “important” is another way of saying it’s linked to dopamine. Why? Because among the many things it does, dopamine is an early-warning system for the appearance of anything that can help us survive. When something useful to our continued existence appears, we don’t have to think about it. Dopamine makes us want it, right now. It doesn’t matter if we’re going to like it, or if we even need it at the moment. Dopamine doesn’t care. Dopamine is like the little old lady who always buys toilet paper. It doesn’t matter if she has a thousand rolls stacked in the
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dopamine activation in the desire circuit triggers energy, enthusiasm, and hope. It feels good. In fact, some people spend the majority of their lives pursuing this feeling—a feeling of anticipation, a feeling that life is about to get better. You’re about to eat a delicious dinner, see an old friend, make a big sale, or receive a prestigious award. Dopamine turns on the imagination, producing visions of a rosy future.
Dopamine circuits don’t process experience in the real world, only imaginary future possibilities. For many people it’s a letdown. They’re so attached to dopaminergic stimulation that they flee the present and take refuge in the comfortable world of their own imagination. “What will we do tomorrow?” they ask themselves as they chew their food, oblivious to the fact that they’re not even noticing this meal they had so eagerly anticipated. To travel hopefully is better than to arrive is the motto of the dopamine enthusiast.
The future isn’t real. It’s made up of a bundle of possibilities that exist only in our minds. Those possibilities tend to be idealized—we
Dopamine makes us want things with a passion, but it’s the H&Ns that allow us to appreciate them:
The desire circuit often breaks its promises—which is bound to happen, because it plays no role in generating feelings of satisfaction. It is in no position to make dreams come true. The desire circuit is, so to speak, just a salesman.
Thus we see three possible solutions to buyer’s remorse: (1) chase the dopamine high by buying more, (2) avoid the dopamine crash by buying less, or (3) strengthen the ability to transition from dopamine desire to H&N liking. In no case, though, is there any guarantee that the things we so desperately want will be things that we will enjoy having.
For most people there is nothing more important than staying alive and keeping their children safe. These are the activities that produce the largest dopamine surges.
The goal of the dopamine system is to predict the future and, when an unexpected reward occurs, to send a signal that says, “Pay attention. It’s time to learn something new about the world.” In this way, circuits bathed in dopamine become malleable.
Drugs destroy the delicate balance that the brain needs to function normally. Drugs stimulate dopamine release no matter what kind of situation the user is in. That confuses the brain, and it begins to connect drug use to everything.
The ability to trigger dopamine in the desire circuit is what makes a drug addictive.
What’s so “great” about crack that allowed it to take over the cocaine market, and chemically enslave thousands of people? From a scientific perspective, the answer is simple: the rate of onset of action.
the faster the rise, the more dopamine release, the more euphoria, and the more craving down the road. That’s why smoking crack is more appealing than snorting powder cocaine: smoking produces a faster, larger dopamine rush.
Smoking cocaine as crack makes the process more efficient. Unlike the nasal mucosa, the surface area of the lungs is huge. Filled with hundreds of millions of tiny air sacs, the surface area is equal to one side of a tennis court. There’s plenty of room there, and when the vaporized cocaine hits the lungs, it goes right into the bloodstream and up to the brain. It’s a steep slope—a sudden burst—and a big hit to the dopamine system.
smoking gets the drug into the brain about as fast as intravenous injection. Smoking also lacks the stigma associated with needles.
An evening of drinking feels best at the start. The level of alcohol is rising rapidly, and that feels good—it’s dopaminergic euphoria, directly related to how fast the alcohol gets into the brain. As the night goes on, though, the rate of increase slows down, and dopamine turns off. Euphoria gives way to drunkenness.
a mixed drink delivers a lot of alcohol fast, a burst of dopaminergic stimulation, as opposed to an evening of slowly increasing intoxication. This woman wanted elation, not inebriation, so of course the mixed drinks let her have a better time.
When an expected reward fails to materialize, the dopamine system shuts down. In scientific terms, when the dopamine system is at rest, it fires at a leisurely three to five times per second. When it’s excited, it zooms up to twenty to thirty times per second. When an expected reward fails to materialize, the dopamine firing rate drops to zero, and that feels terrible. That’s why a dopamine shutdown makes you feel resentful and deprived. It’s how a recovering drug addict feels every day as he struggles to get clean and sober.
Giving in to craving doesn’t necessarily lead to pleasure because wanting is different from liking. Dopamine makes promises that it is in no position to keep.
the dopamine desire system is powerful and highly influential in the brain, whereas the liking circuit is tiny, fragile, and much harder to trigger. The difference between the two is the reason that “life’s intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desire.”
In particular, liking relies on the same chemicals that promote the long-term satisfaction of companionate love: endorphins and endocannabinoids.
Impulsive behavior occurs when too much value is placed on immediate pleasure and not enough on long-term consequences. Desire dopamine overpowers the more rational parts of the brain.
The only point of smoking cigarettes is to get addicted so one can experience the pleasure of relieving the unpleasant feeling of craving, like a man who carries around a rock all day because it feels so good when he puts it down.
The feeling of wanting becomes overwhelming and utterly detached from whether the object of desire is anything we really care for, is good for us, or might kill us.
Parkinson’s disease is an illness of dopamine deficiency in a pathway that’s responsible for controlling muscle movements.
British researchers gave a drug called L-dopa to fifteen healthy volunteers. L-dopa is made into dopamine inside the brain, and can be used to treat Parkinson’s disease.
The researchers found that the participants who took the dopamine-boosting pill placed larger and riskier bets than those who took the placebo.
The enhanced dopamine circuit boosted impulsive behavior, but not satisfaction—it boosted the wanting, but not the liking.
There are few things we encounter in daily life that are more unlikely than winning the lottery. A person is more likely to have identical quadruplets, or be killed by a vending machine tipping over. It’s over a hundred times more likely that a person will be struck by lightning than win the lottery.
At the end of the study they concluded that compulsive sexual behavior was fueled by easy access to sexual images on the internet. THE POWER OF EASY ACCESS When it comes to addiction, easy access matters.
Today, pornographic pictures and videos can be had in seconds and in complete privacy. There are no barriers of embarrassment or shame.
One young man gave up dating completely. He said that he’d rather look at pornography than go out with a real woman because the women in the pictures never demanded anything of him, and never said no.
The same thing happened to healthy males who were repeatedly shown the same pornographic video. When they were shown a new video, their dopamine systems revved up again.
In certain ways, video games are similar to casino games. Like slot machines, video games surprise players with unpredictable rewards.
The biggest difference in the adolescent brain is in the frontal lobes, which don’t completely develop until their early twenties. That’s a problem because it’s the frontal lobes that give adults good judgment. They act like a brake, warning us when we’re about to do something that might not be such a good idea.
Video games are all about imagination. They immerse us in a world where our fantasies can come true, where reality-shunning dopamine can bask in endless possibilities. We can explore environments that constantly change, ensuring that the surprises never end.
Video games are about progress. They’re about making the future better than the present. Gamers progress through levels while increasing their strength and abilities. It’s a dopamine dream come true.
Players’ expectations are constantly kept off balance because they never know where the next reward will be.
the biggest online games have accumulated billions of data points about their players. They know exactly what lights up dopamine, and what turns it off—though game designers are not thinking of these events as dopamine triggers, but simply as “what works.”
Americans spend more than $20 billion per year on video games; they spent only half that much on movie tickets in 2016, the biggest U.S. box office year in history.
It seems obvious that we would want the things that we will like having. That’s how it would work if we were rational creatures, and despite all evidence to the contrary, we persist in thinking that we are rational creatures. But we’re not. Frequently we want things that we don’t like.
The dopamine desire circuit is powerful. It focuses attention, motivates, and thrills. It has a profound influence over the choices we make. Yet it isn’t all-powerful. Addicts get clean. Dieters lose weight. Sometimes we switch off the TV, get off the couch, and go for a run. What kind of circuit in the brain is powerful enough to oppose dopamine? Dopamine is. Dopamine opposing dopamine. The circuit that opposes the desire circuit might be called the dopamine control circuit.
