I have had enough of the so-called “dopamine-based” theories of life and how it can influence everything from our emotions to our choices. The fact is, the most powerful of these theories, the one that underlies the majority of research on the topic, is based on the notion that dopamine is the “reward system” for the brain. It is the incentive to keep going with whatever you are doing and to keep thinking that you are succeeding.
The more we try to deny this, the more we deny it, the more we deny it, the more it gets denied and denied and denied…
The more we try to deny this, the more we deny it, the more it gets denied and denied and denied…
The theory of dopamine (a.k.a. the dopamine hypothesis) has a long and checkered history, so it’s important to know what you’re talking about. It goes something like this: when a person is being rewarded for doing something, they feel pleasure and they feel good. This is called a’reward’ because the reward is something of value, such as food or money, to the person doing the reward.
This is where the theory gets a bit convoluted, but the dopamine hypothesis says that the pleasure of food is increased when you eat it, when you see it you are rewarded, and that the pleasure of getting something can be increased when it is seen and is acknowledged.
There is a theory that when we feel pleasure, we also have a bit of a desire to have a reward in mind. This is because dopamine is released when you feel good, and having the desire to have a reward is how dopamine works. This theory is called the “pleasure hypothesis” and it has been used to demonstrate a link between pleasure and reward. It has also shown that pleasure is not limited to physical goods.
Dopamine is found in the same parts of the brain as the pleasure hypothesis and it seems that the pleasure hypothesis is especially good in explaining why certain kinds of activities seem addictive. When we have a particular goal or want, we are more likely to want to reward ourselves when we feel good. I’ve even heard that if you take a drug that makes you feel good, you may also be more likely to get addicted to that drug.
Another way to look at it is that when we feel good, we tend to have a certain kind of dopamine response. So, as long as we have dopamine in our brain, this makes it much easier to get hooked. Just like the dopamine hypothesis says, if you want to get addicted to something so much, you’ll find it much easier to get addicted to something that makes you feel good.
Yeah, that makes sense. But the dopamine hypothesis that you referred to doesn’t explain all the other things we know about addiction.
It is true that you CAN get addicted to drugs that make you feel good. But addiction is not just that. It is also a complex process. When we feel good, we tend to behave in certain ways that help us feel good. When we feel bad, we tend to behave in certain ways that make us feel bad. We know that by the way. So, it is not just that there is a addictive component to drug use. There is a lot more going on here.
