What is Dopamine? A Guide to Desire and Pursuit
Dopamine is the universal currency that drives us toward our goals, desires, and things that are considered pleasurable. Dopamine is the key neurotransmitter that controls how pleasurable something is, the pursuit to get a pleasurable thing, and the pain of not having that thing. It tracks our pleasure, success, and basically all things to define whether or not we are doing well.
What is Dopamine?
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has evolved in humans and animals alike to regulate pleasure and the pursuit of reward. Dopamine is the driving chemical involved in movement and without it we would be stranded, unable to move, even to keep ourselves alive. The body has a baseline level of dopamine that is constantly circulating throughout the brain. This baseline is constantly disrupted and the deviation we experience from our baseline is based on the activities we participate in. The challenge we face today is living in a world of abundance with a brain that has evolved for a world of scarcity.
How Dopamine Works in Your Brain
The Dopamine process is an incredible evolutionary system that allows us to pursue something and be intrinsically rewarded for it. Dopamine has two primary pathways it uses to drive desire and pursuit of that desire:
The Mesocortical Pathway: This pathway connects the Ventral Striatum with the prefrontal cortex and is the classic reward pathway used to understand which behaviors are more pleasurable.
The Nigrostriatal Pathway: This pathway is related to movement. It allows dopamine to impact our movement and creates the drive your body needs to pursue something. The movement to get a snack from the pantry, the pursuit of starting a business, the act of using a drug of choice, and the motion of pulling our phone out to check social media or a recent message are all controlled through this pathway.
These dopaminergic pathways work together to determine the relative pleasure a behavior or substance gives us and the movement required to pursue that pleasure.
Baseline Dopamine: Contentment
Throughout the day, our levels of dopamine change consistently. Our baseline is the level that this neurochemical consistently tries to return to. A higher level of baseline dopamine means a higher level of motivation and contentment. Our baseline is a measure of how consistently we can get excited and the amount that our daily lives can feel fulfilling. To live a life that is vivid and full, we should strive to protect our baseline and attempt to make it as high as possible.
Dopamine Spikes and Troughs: Pleasure, Pursuit, and Pain
Dopamine spikes and troughs can occur in multiple places. Spikes occur when we have the desire for something and as a reward when we obtain it. Troughs occur after spikes as either a driver for pursuing what caused the spike or to bring us back to our baseline levels.
This is best described with an example:
Say you would like a roast beef sandwich. When you have that thought, your dopamine spikes as you get excited to eat the sandwich. Next, your dopamine levels will drop, this creates the craving, your brain wants more dopamine so it can return back to the baseline.
You then go to the nearby cafe, get your roast beef sandwich, and take a bite out of that sandwich. Your dopamine then spikes in relation to how good you perceive the sandwich to be.
Big spike = Best roast beef sandwich ever.
Spike to baseline = Exactly what you expected
Small spike, still below baseline = Not a good sandwich.
Your brain will then categorize this experience and if it was a fantastic sandwich, there will likely be a craving to have it again soon.
This is a rather crude representation and between the thought and the eating of the sandwich, there will likely be multiple spikes and troughs of dopamine. However, the takeaway is the dopamine spikes and troughs. The spikes are the reward and the troughs are the driver for us to continue or repeat the behavior.
Dopamine Depletion: A Dull Existence
Dopamine depletion represents a state where we over consume products, drugs, or behaviors that lead to a powerful and short lived dopamine “hit”, lowering our baseline to a point where pursuit of anything else is difficult.
When we find a behavior with a high dopamine reward, we want to repeat it. When we repeat it before our dopamine has had time to recover to baseline, the reward for that behavior becomes less, and the dopamine trough becomes deeper. If someone were to continue the behavior, they would extract enough dopamine that nothing besides the “dopamine hit” behavior would provide any pleasure, and eventually not even that would make them feel good. This can lead to a dull and meaningless feeling, depression, and, in extreme cases, suicide.
Addiction and dopamine depletion can be described as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you joy.
Achieving Balance in a World of Over Stimulation
The challenge we are faced with today is living in a world of abundance with the neural circuitry meant for a world of scarcity. Dopamine “hits” are readily available to anyone who wants one. This short lived rewards can be found in multiple activities including:
High calorie foods Pornography
Social media Video Games
Memes Drugs
Alcohol Certain Pharmaceuticals
Marijuana
If left unchecked, these behaviors can lead to a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you joy. When most things in life no longer bring you joy, life becomes dull, boring, and gray. If you are feeling dull, boring, and gray, it is not time to panic. Dopamine depletion is reversible if properly addressed, typically by abstaining from high dopamine behaviors for extended periods of time.
Dopamine is Difficult to Manage Alone
Whether you want to forge habits to increase your baseline dopamine levels, learn how to manage your peaks and troughs, or change an overindulgent behavior, Dopamine Coaching is for you. Our highly trained professional coaches use a proven process to coach clients through their vision, goals, and pathways to achieve them. Our dopamine coaches are highly skilled, reliable, and know what it takes to form new habits. Working from personal experience, leading knowledge, and professional training, Mito Coaching is ready to empower you to be the powerhouse of your life.
