Video Creator’s Channel Chris Williamson

We Bombard Our Brains With So Much Dopamine

that our brains have to compensate by way down regulating our own dopamine production and transmission. Then we end up in this chronic dopamine deficit state, where nothing else is enjoyable. We’re only focused on our drug of choice. We need to keep using not to feel good but just to restore a level balance and feel normal and when we’re not using our drug. We’re experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression and craving.

Its Like One Of Those Buzzwords.

At the moment, I’ve seen dopamine fasting and dopamine detoxes thrown around Youtube a lot and we’re talking about imbalances in the brain is it chemical is it environmental what’s your favorite framework for explaining what dopamine is and how it affects us well my framework for communicating the role that dopamine. has in our brain it really has to do with the fact that pleasure and pain are processed in the same part of the brain. It’s a part of the brain called the reward pathway and pleasure and pain effectively work like opposite sides of a balance. So when we do something pleasurable that balance tips to the side of pleasure and we get a little release of dopamine in our brain’s reward pathway, which is reinforcing and feels good.

But One Of The Overarching Rules Governing This

balance is that it wants to remain level. It doesn’t want to be tipped for very long to the side of pleasure or pain, and the brain will work very hard to restore a level balance or what’s called homeostasis. But importantly the way that the brain brings that balance back to a level resting state is first by tipping it an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain and that’s where when our brain down regulates our own dopamine production and our own dopamine transmission not just back to baseline levels, but actually below baseline levels to this dopamine deficit state. Now if we wait long enough you know that’s that feeling of wanting another piece of chocolate just one more video game another drink if we wait that passes and our balance is restored, but if we continue to repeatedly expose ourselves to highly reinforcing drugs and behaviors. Then over time that initial stimulus gets shorter and weaker, but that after response gets stronger and longer, which is why typically we need more of a drug or more potent forms over time to get the same.

Effect And Furthermore, What Can End

up happening is our our balances can kind of get stuck on the pain side where we end up I like to think of it as these neural adaptation, Gremlins hopping on the pain side of our balance kind of camping out there if we bombard our brains with so much dopamine that our brains have to compensate by way down regulating our own dopamine production and transmission. Then we end up in this chronic dopamine deficit state where nothing else is enjoyable. We’re only focused on our drug of choice. We need to keep using not to feel good, but just to restore a level balance and feel normal, and when we’re not using our drug. We’re experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression and craving? What is the sensation of dopamine? How would you describe what it feels like for someone to have it and not have it well? Dopamine fluctuates around this tonic baseline, so we’re always releasing dopamine at sort of a constant steady rate, and it’s really the way it fluctuates up and down below this baseline level that affects the way we feel typically when it rises above baseline levels and we have more dopamine in our reward pathway.

We Feel Good We Can Feel

really really good. We can feel even euphoric or sometimes. It’s just a sense of calm well-being or a sense of not being anxious. So it’s all of those things wrapped into one. Whereas when dopamine goes below baseline again we feel restless.

We Feel Anxious We Feel Like

something’s missing in our life, and we have a lot of incentive and motivation to use that drug again in order to not just recreate that good feeling, but also just bring us back to a normal homeostasis. Why do we have a dopamine balance is it adaptive well. It has been adapted for most of human existence if you think about it our brains were evolved to approach pleasure and avoid pain, and that’s been conserved over millions of years of evolution as we’ve lived in a world of scarcity and ever-present danger. But the problem is that now we no longer live in that world. We live in this world of overwhelming abundance and we’re very insulated from all kinds of painful experiences such that what was once adaptive is no longer so i think that we really need to rethink the way.

We Live In This Highly Dopamine Overloaded World

Why is it so if that’s the case? If it’s the case that we feel calm sometimes at a moderate increase of dopamine, and we feel comfortable does that not mean that trying to feel calm and comfortable. All of the time is inherently a wasted effort because you’re going to go back to baseline. Eventually, it is that something that we can’t chase. We can’t be in that sort of calm comfortable situation all the time. Yeah, I mean you’ve really intuited.

What Is Essentially The Bottom Line Of

the way that pleasure and pain are processed in our brain. That really any kind of for any kind of reward seeking There is a cost and that cost is the come down and the pain and that the harder. We try to be in that place of comfort and reward the larger the price that will pay the greater the dopamine deficit state such that ultimately, there is futility um in seeking out reward for its own sake? Is there a different dopamine set point for each person is that or tolerance or degrees and dopa the same level balance, but it’s probably not true. There are probably people who you know metaphorically start off with a balance that’s tilted slightly to the side of pain that could be because of people who live with chronic pain that could be people with depression. There are studies showing that people with depression probably have lower baseline dopamine levels or might be.

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Less Sensitive To Typical Rewards And Might

need more of certain types of rewards in order to get their dopamine to rise up above baseline levels. All of which potentially makes those people more vulnerable to the problem of addiction, as they seek out rewards to just feel normal. Not necessarily you know feel good why is it that people that are in chronic pain don’t find pleasure superbly easily, then if you’re saying that it’s one side of the same seesaw the people that are in chronic pain should be able to feel amazing off just a tiny little glimpse of something that’s nice is that not the way it works no remember one of the overarching rules governing this balance is that it wants to preserve homeostasis, so it wants to go back to whatever that baseline is and it will work very hard to do that I. Mean there are you know evolutionary just so stories for why that is but essentially a person with chronic pain who starts out in pain Their physiologic system will want to return to that baseline. So for example, if they take an opioid to try to get out of pain that will initially work, but over time they’ll need more and more of that opioid to get the same effect and ultimately the initial response to the opioid will get weaker and shorter in duration and the after effect and this is really probably the most fascinating aspect of this pleasure pain balance is that after effect gets stronger and longer so with repeated exposure to the same or similar pleasure stimulus we end up in a deeper dopamine deficit state it lasts longer it goes further down, so a person with chronic pain has to experience that pain below.

Even Beyond Their Baseline Pain Before Returning To

their baseline pain so in other words, there’s no free lunch what goes up must come down and if you start out in chronic pain. You’re also subject to the same problems of tolerance needing more and more to get the same effect and the dependence and withdrawal which are essentially this dopamine deficit state. It’s a vicious asymmetry. The fact that you need more and more to gain less and less pleasure, but the more and more will incur an even larger power law return of depression and feeling bad on the other side that’s exactly right. I love that I love your terminology of a vicious asymmetry and you know when we think about why on earth would mother nature do that to us.

It Seems So Cruel, But If

you think about it from the perspective of millions of years of evolution and that for most of humanity, We’ve lived in this very dangerous world with very limited resources, and we’ve had to work very hard to get those resources in order to survive. It makes perfect sense right if you have a pleasure pain balance which with a single exposure will give you just a little bit of pleasure. But then afterwards we’ll give you pain. Then you’re going to be very motivated to keep going and find that next oasis or find that next berry bush We you know it’s what has turned us into these constant seekers never happy with what we have always wanting more except that our ability to be constant seekers and always improve on our lives and on our circumstance has essentially allowed us to transform. the world this is really you know we’re living in the anthropocene in the sense that this is the first time in human history that we have used our brains and our technology to create more abundance than we could ever need or ever want and not just abundance.

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These Highly Addictive Highly Reinforcing Feel-Good Drugs And

behaviors essentially making us all vulnerable to addiction because our primitive wiring wasn’t adapted for the modern ecosystem Have you heard the quote After copulation the devil’s laughter can be heard. I haven’t but that’s good because a lot of men report how would you say acute post-coital depression is something after guys have sex. Sometimes you feel a bit existentially. Once you’ve finished up, I can’t remember it someone like far too important and impressive like young young said after after copulation the devil’s laughter can be heard it sounds so apocalyptic, but that was something that I thought that was interesting why after something that’s so enjoyable does something occur afterward that is a bit unenjoyable and it’s because if you only ever had sex once then you probably wouldn’t have very many grandkids and we are grand children optimizing machines so the sex just being a little bit more uncomfortable or dissatisfying than you thought that meal just being a little bit more unfulfilling than you’d anticipated those things they make you want to go again.

Yes, Although Lets Tease This Apart A

little bit because I think there might be. I would wonder when that qu when that quote was said because it does get to the issue of. Sex, addiction and pornography and kind of a nice segue which I think is important to talk about because I think it’s a huge and growing problem, and we don’t talk about it enough so as.

Summary

We bombard our brains with so much dopamine that our brains have to compensate by way down regulating our own dopamine production and transmission . Then we end up in this chronic dopamine deficit state, where nothing else is enjoyable . We need to keep using not to feel good but just to restore a level balance and feel normal and when we’re not using our drug, we’re experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression and craving . When we do something pleasurable that balance tips to the side of pleasure and we get a little release of dopamine in our brain’s reward pathway, which is reinforcing and feels good . But one of the overarching rules governing this balance is that it wants to remain level. It doesn’t want to be tipped for very long to the . side of pain, and the brain will work very hard to . restore a very short period of pleasure or pain, but if we wait long e.& Now if we waited long e…. Click here to read more and watch the full video