Dopamine
BELOW will be a brief message about myself and the effects Dopamine had on me, Feel free to skip the paragraph if you wish to just read about the Science Behind Dopamine.
Hi, They call me BowTiedArcticFox, Before we talk about the Science Behind Dopamine, I wanted to throw in a little bit of info about my life, When I was younger. I didn’t really grow up with a father figure, seeing my mother only on weekends occasionally, I had been a child who’s life revolved around going to school and being given video games or an IPad as compensation for parenting. I was smart, but constantly stuck in a mental loophole and way too stressed to actually bring any action into my life, My real journey of becoming the truly creative individual I am today had only occurred when I decided to be mature enough and Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there. It was around the age 16, That I discovered what exactly dopamine was and I realized I had been obtaining WAY WAY WAY too much of it in the wrong areas and it just hit me, my world’s perspective changed completely. I realized if this dopamine actually does what it say’s it does by scientists then I’m not who I originally thought myself to be. I realized I had been compensating myself in a way that was forming bad-habits, That could eventually turn me into a mindless being as we see happens today to many people including some of my friends who are so lost in the sauce even if you laid down an exact road map and handed it to them. They would still fail, because they don’t have the fundamental understanding that what you consume can really affect you in countless ways. Nowadays, I spend more time alone than speaking with old high school friends, however I can really tell you now that the environment in high school/college reinforces these high-dopamine addicted freaks to try and make you into a dopamine freak as well. I know people who get mad if you don’t text them fast enough as if you should be on your phone 24/7, It’s something so normalized that you would be the “freak” if you don’t show off yourself on instagram, and text people all day staying up to date on funny tik tok videos, the real skill is realizing it shouldn’t be this way and science backs you up on that idea. I’m 18 now, I try to limit my phone usage to 30 minutes a day, and I tend to take long-breaks in general 5-7 days of just not using my phone. I realized that my true self is the creative being I am and that when I spend my time alone to think, Like Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." I cannot be a being that has any sense of imagination unless I control my dopamine levels and allow myself time to think and focus, I know many of my jungle animals have so many amazing thing’s they wish to do and I really do hope that this article of dopamine helps you.
Dopamine is metabolized from tyrosine and phenylalanine. Neurons that use dopamine as their primary neurotransmitter exist mostly in the midbrain, which plays a large role in controlling motor function and managing sensory input, among other things.
When you see difficulties with sensory processing / motor integration, you might also see difficulties with:
Attention and concentration: Sustained effort, doing activities without distraction and being able to hold that effort long enough to get the task done.
Expressive language (using language): The use of language through speech, sign or alternative forms of communication to communicate wants, needs, thoughts and ideas.
Play skills: Voluntary engagement in self motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment where the activities may be, but are not necessarily, goal oriented.
Self regulation: The ability to obtain, maintain and change one’s emotion, behavior, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation in a socially acceptable manner.
Having too much dopamine — or too much dopamine concentrated in some parts of the brain and not enough in other parts — is linked to being more competitive, aggressive and having poor impulse control. It can lead to conditions that include ADHD, binge eating, addiction and gambling.
WHEN IS DOPAMINE RELEASED?
Dopamine is released during situations in which people experience pleasure. The release of dopamine helps reinforce the pleasurable behavior, increasing the likelihood the individual will repeat that behavior to get the same feeling.
Now here is when it becomes truly fascinating because if you boil it down to the fundamental truth you realize, if you pause yourself from receiving high dopamine from certain events, and focus all that energy into a specific task such as sitting on your beach and working on Wifi Money you start to feel this release of dopamine on only this subject, then your brain will repeat such behavior.
My belief is that most mental blockades occur because of the wrong type of dopamine stimulation, you can read for yourself the negative outlooks. These “symptoms” that appear when you stop working are due to the fact that one side of your brain knows what it should be doing and the other absolutely refuses to do it, thus procrastination occurs.
Activities that stimulate the release of dopamine function as survival or coping strategies. The more times they are repeated, the more they may become reinforced. Behaviors and substances that may cause the release of dopamine include:
Eating
Alcohol
Caffeine
Recreational drugs
Painkillers
Listening to music
Exercise
Using Twitter, Netflix, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, Facebook, Tik Tok
Video Games
Dopamine plays an important role in physical and behavioral health. But while it can help reinforce behaviors that promote long-term health, such as physical activity and getting enough sleep, it can also help reinforce behaviors that are harmful to an individual’s health, from eating too much junk food to opioid misuse and addiction.
WHAT DOES DOPAMINE DO?
Dopamine is implicated in feelings of pleasure and plays a prominent role in addiction. People with substance dependencies may grow dependent partially because of the activation of dopamine. You have to note that these addictions all compound, from just scrolling on twitter you can start an addiction with biting your nails, picking your skin, starting to grow frustrated etc. Some other ways dopamine affects the body include:
Mood regulation: Insufficient dopamine can contribute to depression. Meanwhile, some research has found that too much dopamine could cause mania.
Slows the production of prolactin: Prolactin is involved in both lactation and sexual gratification.
Regulates sleep: Dopamine helps inhibit the production of melatonin toward the end of a night’s sleep, contributing to wakefulness.
Regulates attention and memory: Many studies have demonstrated dopamine’s link to attention, memory, and cognition. Disruptions in dopamine have been connected to attention-deficit hyperactivity (ADHD) and schizophrenia, for example.
Increases goal-oriented behavior: In addition to promoting reward and goal-driven behavior, dopamine may decrease inhibition.
This is a big one here “Increases goal-oriented behavior” Now you may say, “Well Fox this seems like a great thing” However you’d be wrong, You see most humans are short term thinkers I’ll expand on that momentarily. In today’s world you have many short-term goals that can easily be fulfilled, such as playing video games which constantly activates the idea of achieving certain goals if it’s placing 1st, or obtaining a kill. You’re constantly reaching a short-term goal letting your brain dive into this focus on the fact that quick-stimulation is better than awaited simulation. Video game’s was just one example, you have Instagram that rewards you for posting with likes and comments, including views. You have tik tok constantly throwing junk-information at your face making your brain believe it’s actually doing something good and your goal of a human to obtain information is being fulfilled.
Irregular dopamine levels can cause a variety of psychological problems. For instance, Most humans nowadays are constantly distracted, they always have to be doing, thinking, being stimulated with something. Tell me how many people you know that actually take the time to get away from all the distractions the world is bringing, do you ever just sit down and have yourself and your thoughts for hours on end? The ability to sit down and have time to yourself is an actual skill many do not have.
Dopamine plays a role in how we feel pleasure. It's a big part of our unique human ability to think and plan. It helps us strive, focus, and find things interesting.
Your body spreads it along four major pathways in the brain. Like most other systems in the body, you don’t notice it (or maybe even know about it) until there’s a problem.
Health and Mental Health Disorders
When you have a dopamine disorder, you may experience a decline in neurocognitive functions, which relates to your memory, attention, and problem-solving abilities.
Like the neurotransmitter serotonin, which helps regulate mood, dopamine is involved in many psychological illnesses. Abnormally functioning dopamine receptors play a role in some health and mental health disorders.
Action that you can take to reset your Dopamine Levels
After 90 days of avoiding your usual dopamine in-take, You can see a reset that happens in your brain where your dopamine levels return to normal. After this 90 days, You start seeing never before seen flow that starts to occur as you start forming habits with yourself. This is where the famous quote really comes to play “ You are what you repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act but a habit.”
Now what exactly should you be doing to try and return your dopamine levels to normal?
Well it all depends on what it is that you currently already do, I presume none of my jungle animals are on the idea that netflix, youtube, tik tok, instagram, twitter is Ok to just be looking at daily for several hours.
So we should focus on the concept that hopefully you have one current major addiction or two such as maybe watching too much youtube because it’s “good” to consume certain information
OR scrolling through twitter because it’s “good” to stay up-to date on trends and information.
Here is where I want you to focus, Both of these apps you are mainly just consuming. NO action is being brought, so firstly you already should be realizing you need to chill out with that because the BTB understanding is action, actions trumps all. To get ahead, You have to be the one that actually takes action and not the one that takes forever to think about something. I also want to mention that most of these high-dopamine activities are easy for your brain to negotiate with itself by saying it’s “good” you realize, that it’s not excellent. You want to pursue excellence, not this temporary good that you will feel, Like honestly you’'ll scroll and watch, and I bet you’ll forget the next day, some people forget the next hour.
At the end of the day what I want you to take from this article is to spend less time consuming as most of that consumption anyway is actually making thing’s worse in terms of you developing high-dopamine from the wrong task including the fact that you aren’t even actually putting much action at all into building this so called empire you wish to build haha.
Try to minimize yourself to a timer, stick to that timer. That’s currently the best method of watching yourself avoid these problems.
This is not medical advice, I am a fox.