Dopamine

Key Takeaways on Dopamine

• Power over Dopamine: You have the power to consciously influence your dopamine levels.
• Not constant: It is not designed to be on all the time; it evolved to reward specific survival actions.
• Survival Rewards: Dopamine sparks when you find new ways to meet survival needs.
• Early Pathways: Your brain defines these needs based on neural pathways built during your early years.
• Short Spurts: It is quickly metabolized, which motivates your brain to look for the next opportunity.
• Rewiring: You can build new pathways by repeatedly feeding your brain new ways to meet unmet needs.
• Predicting Rewards: Its natural job is to predict rewards, so the act of scanning for opportunity sparks the feeling.

What Is the Natural Job of Dopamine?

Dopamine is the good feeling that a reward is at hand. It’s your brain’s signal that a need is about to be met. Dopamine releases energy to help you step toward the reward. Each step closer stimulates more dopamine, but the good feeling stops once the need is met. To enjoy more, your brain scans for the next opportunity to meet a need. Dopamine motivates us to keep meeting needs by making it feel good.

In the state of nature, you had to forage constantly to survive, and dopamine motivated the quest. Once physical needs are met, dopamine motivates you to meet social needs. Natural selection built a brain that cares urgently about the survival of your genes. Dopamine rewards you for behaviors linked to what biologists call “reproductive success.” A good hair day sparks dopamine as you anticipate progress toward a social reward.

What Triggers Dopamine?

A newborn baby releases dopamine when milk relieves its hunger. Neurons connect when dopamine flows, wiring the baby to turn on dopamine when it hears its mother’s footsteps. Before it knows what a mother is, it knows how to anticipate relief from the cortisol of low blood sugar. No conscious thought is involved: dopamine turns on when we find a way to relieve the bad feeling of cortisol. The dopamine paves a pathway between all the neurons active at that moment, which wires us to turn it on fast when any of these cues appear. This helped our ancestors find food in contexts where it was found before.

Your dopamine is not controlled by your conscious verbal brain. It’s controlled by the limbic brain (the amygdala, hippocampus, etc.) we’ve inherited from earlier mammals. Animals can’t talk, and your mammal brain can’t tell you why it’s releasing dopamine. This is why your conscious verbal thoughts about happiness do not match the joy of dopamine that you actually experience. Our biggest dopamine pathways are built in youth when we have more of the brain’s road-building material, myelin. Whatever met a need in your youth sparks your dopamine today. Yikes! It’s not easy being a big-brained mammal.

How Does Dopamine Spark Bad Choices?

Anything that met a need in your past sparks your dopamine, even if it’s bad for you. Dopamine feels so good that you urgently want to move toward things that spark it. The conscious verbal brain is not aware of our chemicals or pathways, so it may feel like forces outside you caused the action. Your human cortex tries to help your mammal brain meet needs using the pathways you happen to have. We think it’s rational, but it rationalizes. It comes up with “evidence” to justify and faciliate your quest for things that spark your dopamine.

To make matters worse, dopamine comes in short spurts that are quickly metabolized, so we are always on the lookout for ways to spark more. This is natural. When our ancestors found food, the joy of dopamine soon passed, and that motivated them to go out and find water or firewood. Our brain quickly habituates to any reward it has, so it takes an un-met need to trigger dopamine. This is nature’s motivational system. You keep looking for the next way to meet a need because dopamine makes it feel good. Whatever met needs in your myelin years is what your brain looks for today.

How Can You Manage Your Dopamine?

You have power over your dopamine, but it’s hard to find. The electricity in your brain flows like water in a storm, finding the paths of least resistance. It flows into your old myelinated pathway before you realize you made a choice. You have the power to stop that flow and blaze a new trail through your jungle of neurons, but it’s hard. It’s like trying to divert a river into a soda straw.

It’s easier if you develop the new pathway first. But this is a chicken and egg problem: how do you develop the new pathway? Animal trainers give a treat when an animal takes a small step toward the new goal. Repeat this and the pathway builds. It takes more repetition than you would like, so you have to use treats carefully. You may not like the idea of training yourself like an animal, but this is what it takes to rewire your inner mammal. Humans have struggled to manage their mammal brain since the beginning of time. It’s the challenge that comes with the gift of life.

FREE Resources on Dopamine

Substack: You Have Power Over Your Dopamine

Video: Make Peace with Dopamine

Podcast: Urge Surfing

PDF: Why You Can’t Stop

Blog: Score! Dopamine! Repeat

National Geographic: How to get high on your own dopamine—naturally

Dopamine in 1 minute (as relevant to love). Credit: Convicts

Complete details on how to do this are in my book, below. A fast introduction to dopamine and 3 other happy chemicals is in my free 5-day Happy Chemical Jumpstart.