
Dopamine is not addictive (2017) - vonmoltke
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201701/no-dopamine-is-not-addictive
======
skohan
In another life I was a research assistant in a lab studying drug addiction,
and our operating assumption was that - like any other system in the brain -
it's not as simple as saying "neurotransmitter X causes Y". But there does
seem to be an awful lot of evidence (or at least there was a lot of evidence
cerca 2008-2009) to suggest that dopamine is heavily involved in motivation
and habit formation, which are easily linked to addiction.

~~~
k__
Half-OT: I never understood this.

To me it seems random actions cause dopamin production.

Like, how does the body know that it should release more dopamin when I scroll
HN than when I learn Rust, or ride my bike?

~~~
IggleSniggle
I think many folks here didn't actually read the article, which addresses some
of these questions. Dopamine is a learning marker that is a precursor to
rewards. The first time you get the big reward, there is no dopamine, but you
also might not remember it particularly well. The next time you are engaged in
a behavior the previously gave you a reward, you get a hit of dopamine which
helps you pay extra attention to the details surrounding the reward hit.

That is, it _is_ the habit drug. It helps you remember the precise nature of
recurrent rewards, and presumably is "intended" to help you get better are
arriving at the reward.

~~~
jariel
So this is very insightful.

Is this why activities associated with bad 'dopamine habits' are so strongly
correlated with said the bad habits that involved dopamine?

After having quit smoking, I find myself desperately wanting to do the 'break
thing' whereby you stop what you're doing, take 5 minutes to just stand, relax
and and enjoy the moment for a second while ignoring the stress.

I honestly don't even think I want the cigarette, just everything else about
that experience.

~~~
giantrobot
I think that's adjacency rather than dopamine specifically. Unfortunately for
you the "break thing" is adjacent to "cigarette". For whatever time you did
the "break thing" with a cigarette you encoded a lot of behavioral and
environmental memories together. So even after the chemical addition to the
nicotine fades you're still associating the desirable "break thing" aspects
with a cigarette.

Parallel universe you (possibly with a goatee) that did the "break thing" but
never smoked during a break will want to take a break but has no association
with cigarettes or smoking. Their desire for a break remains, maybe with the
same strength, but with no desire for a cigarette.

~~~
buu700
On a related note, this just reminded me that back in college, whenever I felt
like taking a break from working, I would suggest to my smoker friends that we
take a "smoke break" despite that I've never smoked a cigarette in my life.

(In hindsight I probably shouldn't have been encouraging a harmful drug
addiction, but it was more tongue-in-cheek than anything.)

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hexxiiiz
I suppose more succinctly, claiming that dopamine causes addiction is like
claiming that the cam shaft is what makes a car go. Addiction is a phenomena
that involves what appears to be a lot of factors and components; dopamine
appears to be one of them. I think this is the misapprehension the article is
trying to rectify, but I am not sure that the way the article pursues the case
it makes really simplifies things.

In biological, let alone neurological systems, the notion of cause is far less
discrete than it is in a reductive area such as basic physics. Many of the
long term effects in these kinds of systems arise in circumstances where there
are clearly feedback loops and many of them overlapping. One component may be
involved in the dynamics of addiction, regulating motor functions, and
learning, and each of these phenomena involve many components. The neurotrash
that pushes the message that dopamine is somehow the causal component in the
process of addiction appeals to the reductive interest in seeing every effect
as the consequence of a straightforward cause.

This kind of thinking in public perception also might be the consequence of
the pharma industry pushing a narrative of "chemical imbalances" being at the
root of behavioral and psychological problems, discharging from this picture
factors on many other levels such as past experiences, mental associations,
social and familial conditions, economic circumstances, etc... all of which
can contribute to addiction as a phenomena.

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ShizzleNauts
The author tries to argue that dopamine is not addictive by talking about how
the absence of dopamine can affect critical bodily functions but never
sufficiently disproves the well researched claim that dopamine when given in
artificially large amounts, which is crucial point when talking about dopamine
addiction, is indeed addictive. At best the author is making a technical
distinction that for the most part is inconsequential.

~~~
adrianmonk
The article's point is not that dopamine isn't involved in addiction. It's
that knowing that dopamine is involved isn't enlightening. What's enlightening
is to understand why you get addicted to things that are bad for you. And for
that you have to look at the specifics of the situation, not just at the
chemical.

It's a little bit like saying, hey, I took a road and I went to the wrong
destination. Let me look at the road and understand this process. It is paved
with asphalt, so maybe asphalt is the problem. Maybe the road surface is too
good and easily drivable. Which doesn't make sense, because (a) roads that
take you to good destinations are also paved with asphalt and (b) you ended up
at a bad destination because of a wrong turn rather than because of the road
conditions.

~~~
perl4ever
I wonder if this can be generalized along the lines of: problems with
processes tend to be dynamic issues, but people want to look for static
issues.

Like, if something is wrong with your car, it would be nice if there was some
magic elixir you can add to fix it, and indeed any auto parts store has
dozens. They have fuel injector cleaner, engine stabilizer, stop leak, no
smoke additive... But if there is a real problem, it probably requires doing
something to fix the way moving parts are interacting, not just adding a
little fluid.

Which seems to me suggestive of an analogy with how people* talking about
adjusting the levels of brain chemicals, when surely it's got to be a dynamic
process that isn't working right.

*as in, the people who write the patient info pamphlets for psychotropic drugs

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gregwebs
It's really important for everyone to understand the point of the middle of
this article which can be summarized as: "dopamine is not a reward, it is the
expectation of a reward".

However, this doesn't mean that one cannot be addicted to dopamine. Lab rats
will submit themselves to physical harm to get more dopamine and humans given
a dopamine button keep pressing it for more. This is explained in the book
"The Willpower Instinct".

It's probably the case though that you would only see a psychologist like the
author of this article for an addiction to a true reward chemical (like
opioids). A dopamine addiction is more likely to be something like checking
your phone for messages every few minutes.

The usefulness of dopamine is to provide motivation. So unfortunately the
solution to a perceived dopamine problem isn't to broadly have less dopamine
(then you won't want to get off the couch), but to somehow have less
associated with the activity you don't want to do and more associated with the
activity you do want to do.

~~~
keenmaster
If someone has what is ostensibly a "dopamine problem," they should consider
changing one or more of the following, depending on the situation:

\- their environment (residence, city, state, country)

\- their job, career, or academic pursuit

\- their romantic life

\- their friends

People have completely transformed as a result of one move, with an example
being someone from a small town in the Midwest moving to New York City. I
think everyday productivity hacks, motivation hacks, anti-habits, etc...are
marginally overrated. They could even be damaging if they keep you in an
environment or circumstance that you are fundamentally incompatible with.
Conversely, big structural life changes are underrated.

If someone reading this found the above to be true (or not) in their personal
life, please weigh in.

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DubiousPusher
> mentioning neuroscience is a great way to convince people you are more
> knowledgeable about something, and to make your arguments more convincing.
> This effect was recently demonstrated by researchers from the University of
> Pennsylvania, who showed that use of irrelevant references to brain science
> was an effective way to lure people into thinking that complex phenomena are
> simple,

Choice quote IMO.

~~~
abvdasker
Because the vocabulary and aesthetics of science have become very popular, I
keep seeing public figures and people on social media using things that look
or sound scientific to advance their own agenda, usually political or
commercial. Charlatans like Simon Sinek rely on the audience's uncritical
acceptance of their expertise and ignorance of the underlying field or the
scientific process as a whole.

Whenever I see this sort of thing it makes me want to scream.

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EdgarVerona
Ultimately, much of this argument feels pedantic. Yes, people are giving
oversimplified descriptions of what's going on when they say dopamine is
"addictive." That's because it's easier to describe than incentive salience -
but ultimately, the end result is what they care about. It's the behavioral
conditioning that people are upset about, which is experimentally proven to be
both effective and intentionally leveraged by many industries with great
"success."

I do agree with his statement that we need to talk more about the complex
reasons for that behavior on top of behavioral conditioning, and that people
caught in those cycles can and should leverage the means that we have at our
disposal to undo that conditioning when it is harmful to them (with
professional help as needed). But I think it is absolutely valid to talk about
how behavioral conditioning is intentionally leveraged in the design of many
products we use, in casinos, etc. And that it is _not_ something that people
can or do consciously notice.

Before people can help themselves, they need to even realize there is a
problem in the first place, and that is one of the dangerous things about
behavioral conditioning. Conditioning is the very mechanism by which we learn
new behaviors that become integrated into our life: and as such, it is very
easy for a person to fall prey to operant conditioning and for it to just feel
like "life as normal," even when the patterns in your life have actually
changed dramatically.

In particular, I think it's important for us to be aware of behavioral
conditioning _as_ an intentional design choice of the products we use and the
entertainment we engage in. The more we are consciously aware of it, the more
we can develop the sort of meta-cognition that allows us to notice when we
fall into patterns of conditioning that are harming us more than helping us.
(note that you can also be conditioned to engage in behaviors that are helpful
too! So being aware of _what_ you are conditioning yourself for is as
important as whether/when you are being conditioned)

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entropyneur
This popularization of neuroscience dumbed down to the point of losing the
grain of truth is really upsetting.

90 billion neurons in our brain, interconnected in some combinatorial number
of ways, but all our behavior and inner world boils down to the interaction of
a few dozen neurotransmitters. Yup, sounds about right.

~~~
GuB-42
Why not? Psychoactive drugs are small molecules that can completely change
your behavior by doing what your natural neurotransmitters do. You can call
them the global variables of your brain, on which the billions of neurons
rely.

Our brain "code" is messier than anything mad programmers could have produced.
Global variables are generally not a good practice, so of course our brain has
global variables. And of course they are reused for completely unrelated
things, for example lactation and the immune system, because life is like
that. Life never read about pure functions and design patterns and will
happily use floating point numbers as pointers and jump between two
instructions.

Back to the subject, I think it is just a case of circular reasoning. Dopamine
is part of the reward system, and addictive stuff cause dopamine to be
released. To limit addiction, limit things that cause dopamine to be released.
So, to limit addiction, you have to limit things that are addictive.

~~~
nmfisher
> they are reused for completely unrelated things, for example lactation and
> the immune system

Can you expand on this a bit more?

~~~
GuB-42
It is just from the Wikipedia article on dopamine, but it is not uncommon for
neurotransmitters to have many unrelated purposes, both in the body and the
brain.

Serotonin, the other "pleasurable" neurotransmitter does pretty much
everything.

It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. It is easier to repurpose a
molecule we can already produce than to build an entirely new pathway.

------
api
Nearly all popular science journalism is either vastly oversimplified or
outright trash. If you want the real story you have to study the actual
science, which means reading papers or at least reading articles like this one
written by actual practicing scientists or other professionals (doctors,
engineers) very familiar with the science. Even then you should cross-
reference and gather multiple opinions from the field.

Same goes for pop understandings of science. My favorite is "survival of the
fittest" for Darwinian evolutionary theory, which is basically wrong as it's
vastly oversimplified and prone to enormous misunderstandings. A more accurate
and modern version would be "differential rates of reproduction of patterns of
genetic information that influence the formation of phenotypes in proportion
to those phenotypes' performance of said reproduction." Not as catchy, and
much harder to use to rationalize popular cultural and political fads.

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Ace17
The article talks about addiction, but doesn't talk about withdrawal. Is
"dopamine withdrawal" a thing in medical science?

~~~
Wohlf
I don't know about that, but dopamine deficiency is certainly a thing.

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wtf_is_up
>No, X Is Not Y

This template seems like an extension of Betteridge's law of headlines

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seemslegit
It's basically a longform "guns don't kill people" argument for dopamine and
addiction.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
normally the X doesn't do Y (bad thing) argument is being made to push the
cause of getting more X out there, or at least keeping the supply of X from
getting limited.

Is there a movement to increase dopamine access in middle America I'm unaware
of?

~~~
seemslegit
He's arguing that colloquial demonization of dopamine as the cause of
addiction isn't fair because dopamine is necessary for normal cognitive
functioning and isn't accurate because dopamine is not itself the feel-good
hormone, then proceeds to tell that dopamine helps attribute reward to
behaviour.

