Do I Really Need to Worry About Too Much Dopamine?
<p>The premise?</p>
<p>Dopamine underpins all addictions.</p>
<p>So, the simple version is, if you don’t vigilantly monitor the things that could stimulate dopamine in your brain, you’ll end up overindulging in an array of everyday things, from sex to smartphones to sweets. That’s the soft version of the message.</p>
<p>The unalloyed version of the message says that these things are not only habit-forming but addictive “like a drug” and that we’re not <em>actually </em>addicted to heroin or alcohol. What we’re really addicted to is the dopamine “hit” we receive from the anticipation of these things.</p>
<p>Readers of my Substack, <a href="http://thescienceofsex.substack.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The Science of Sex</a>, know that this claim sounds familiar. There, I’ve debunked the twin myths of “porn addiction” (<a href="https://thescienceofsex.substack.com/p/debunking-myths-about-porn-addiction" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>) and “sex addiction” (<a href="https://thescienceofsex.substack.com/p/new-battles-in-the-modern-war-on-aec" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>) with prominent researchers Dr. </p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/u/f43cc0c22bce?source=post_page-----19f9ea015371--------------------------------" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Nicole Prause</a></p>
<p>, Ph.D. and Dr. David Ley, Ph.D., respectively.</p>
<p>You should know right off the bat I’m <em>extremely</em> skeptical of such sweeping claims. They garner clicks and attention in the attention economy, but statements like these almost always rest on dubious science. The dopamine hypothesis of addiction is no exception.</p>
<p><a href="https://joeduncan2.medium.com/do-i-really-need-to-worry-about-too-much-dopamine-19f9ea015371">Read More</a></p>