Have you ever found yourself mindlessly doing something that you would normally find pleasurable? Whether that is scrolling through social media, eating, smoking, or anything else like that you have experienced the basis of addiction.

You see, dopamine isn’t an endless drug, it has its spikes troughs and a baseline depending on what we do throughout our days. In this blogpost I will go through, how dopamine is made, its functions, how its increased and decreased, how your dopamine baseline can be increased or decreased, and finally how to use this knowledge to utilize this important drug to your advantage to be better. If you are on a time crunch you can listen above.

How is dopamine made/released?

dopAMINE, Dopamine is a drug that has amino acid roots, Tyrosine, an amino acid is converted to another amino acid L-DOPA which is then converted to dopamine via another enzyme, in the presynaptic neuron. For this reward system(which is one of many dopamine uses) this pathway begins in the VTA(Ventral Tegmental Area) and ends in the Limbic system and the frontal cortex. Then, via vesicles(bubbles carrying dopamine) they take the molecule and release it into the presynaptic cleft where the neurotransmitters attach to G-protein receptors in the post-synaptic membrane, this excites the neuron and simply put, we receive the sensation of the “task completed” reward feeling.

What function does dopamine have?

Movement, reward, attention, motivation, sleep, memory and many others.

Does dopamine influx increase or decrease? If so, how and why?

To answer the question as to how we need to first look at the why. On the most primitive level, we feel good when we complete a task, get external validation for appearance, social credibility, eating, having sex, finding a mate, basically we are rewarded by our brain for short term pleasure and long term extension of species. Finding food, a mate, water, etc was all motivated and driven by dopamine.

When looking for food the idea of there being a possibility of finding food increases your dopamine from a baseline. We call this system an Intermittent Reward Schedule.

The idea of not knowing exactly if or how much dopamine will be attained is exactly what kept us searching, what keeps many gambling in Vegas, or scrolling through our phones.

Now there are ways in which we have learned to hack this primitive system through drugs and various other activities. Chocolate increases dopamine for a few seconds 2.5x, the pursuit and act of sex 2x, nicotine 2.5x, cocaine 2.5x, Amphetamine 10x, Exercise depending on how much you like it can increase 2x from baseline. You can also increase any marker by appreciating the act through thought or journaling.

What about coffee?

In a study published published in 2015 which I will cite at the bottom of the page, researchers found that Caffeine didn’t increase the dopamine neurotransmitter itself but rather increased the G-protein receptors on the postsynaptic membrane. This means that with the same amount of dopamine we will receive more pleasure. Hence, the famous synergistic effect of a cigarette and coffee.

When does dopamine decrease?

Dopamine works from a baseline and creates many peaks and troughs depending on the activity. It should however always return to a baseline that is fairly regular. The reason dopamine has troughs is because the amount of usable dopamine gets depleted, lets say after a great reward. For example, a graduation, completing a marathon, giving birth to a baby, all events that would increase dopamine significantly, so much so that it would make that same spike under your baseline for a few hours, days, weeks. I will illustrate this in the cartoon below, but this goes for almost any spike in dopamine. You eat a chocolate bar that gives you a 1.5x baseline surge in dopamine, but afterword you go down -1.5x before you come back to baseline. This is the reason for postpartum depression.

How does your baseline increase or decrease?

There are people who have genetic predispositions to depression and problems hormonally that contribute to a low dopamine baseline. However, there are many that don’t have any predispositions but rather have a lifestyle that is to blame. Your baseline of dopamine will decrease and the influx of dopamine from an activity you once found pleasure in will decrease as well. One such activity is called layering, this is when the person who for example, once found pleasure in running itself but now to get that same amount of dopamine he once got he pairs running with music, every time. The problem isn’t running with music, the problem is the consistency of running with music. Ironically, the same way that we scroll through our phones using the Intermittent Reward Schedule we need to apply to healthy habits as well. Learning to appreciate the simple things and then randomly rewarding yourself with the occasional layer of two dopamine activities combined. Your baseline will slowly decrease with a heavy dependency on high reward/high dopamine activities such as scrolling through social media, eating, drugs, porn, and layering some of these behaviors. By learning to once again appreciate walking in nature without music, going to the gym without your phone, going to the movies by yourself, and occasionally checking your social feed you can rewire your dopamine stimulus to once again give you that same rush you once got before you started to layer these activities. This is one way to increase your baseline, the other is cold exposure. This is one way, if you are not cold adapted which if you aren’t spending an hour a day in freezing water you are probably not, can up your dopamine baseline 2.5x for at least 3 hours with no trough following the peak. The study was conducted using an immersion pool but a cold enough shower can have an effect as well. The way in which you will know a physiological change is occurring is by catching yourself breathing heavily, and shivering which are signs of an Epinephrine increase. If you didn’t know Epinephrine and dopamine work in congruency, a rise in Epinephrine or adrenaline(which are the same thing) equals a rise in dopamine.

How to optimally indulge in dopamine releasing behaviors?

As briefly mentioned above the key here is to apply the Intermittent Reward System. By doing so, you are basically reteaching your body the natural way it was meant to function in terms of anticipation -> work -> reward. I will give you examples and a solution to how to change them using this principle;

1) You live in the second floor of an apartment, you are more than capable of walking up stairs however, you still choose to wait for the elevator and take it whenever you have the chance. Do you get any enjoyment from using the elevator everyday? No. How can you change this behavior in order to make it healthy again is this. Tell yourself if the elevator is on any other floor other than the one you are on you have to take the stairs. By changing this you are not only saving time but also every time you approach the elevator you anticipate a good result thus a dopamine increase. Realize its on your floor and a tiny burst of dopamine is released. This might be a simple and awkward analogy but one that can be applied to anything.

2) Everyday you wake up and the first thing you grab is your phone. Yes maybe the first few seconds scrolling through your feed brings you some enjoyment, however you find yourself spending an extra 20-30 minutes each day in the morning on your phone most of which is unnecessary. Now if you have a job which requires being in touch all day you might have to resort to another solution, but one is this. Before you even touch your phone, get up brush your teeth, wash your face, grab the newspaper or a book and sit in the sun for 15 minutes. Do something else productive. Appreciate the book, the sun on your face, and the joy that can come from simple things such as this. Now if you have completed this healthy morning flip a coin, once side will be checking any important messages and the other is important messages plus a social media application for a few minutes. What you’ll find is that spending that morning already doing something productive will make your phone less attractive.

3) Layering, this might be the most important and most used dopamine increaser. A jog and music, food and tv, movie and friend, phone and (fill in activity) this list can go on forever and ever. Everyone reading this does layering. It’s not necessarily bad, however it is bad when you begin to lose value in one of those paired activities. Unfortunately this is quite inevitable, when was the last time you enjoyed going to a movie theatre alone? Or listening to just music by yourself and not doing anything else? I know these examples are extreme but I just want to exemplify the fact that we are all guilty of this. Now to make layering healthy is by doing it every-so-often. You don’t need to flip a coin but if you can go to the store with just your thoughts, do it. When you are eating, learn to sometimes just eat, enjoy your meal, look at it, and take your time.

How to rewire your brain to not look for the reward after a job done but rather find that the reward is in the activity itself?

First, as explained in point three above you need to learn to enjoy every activity on its own. Layer on an occasional basis. Your effort and friction needs to be taught to be associated with an internally generated reward system.

You have to teach yourself that the “effort part” is the “good” rewarding part.

Learning that during intense hardship or friction associate that with knowing that action will evoke a dopamine release later.

Tell yourself, you are doing this by choice and because you love it. You have to learn to want whatever it is to feel better.

Practice gratification, journal, be present, look for the beauty in simple things.

Sources:

Caffeine increases striatal dopamine D2/D3 receptor availability in the human brain

Human physiological responses to immersion into water of different temperatures

Physiology, Thermal Regulation

Dopaminergic reward system: a short integrative review

Huberman Lab Podcast