Dopamine Nation - Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

P2. 

  In addition to the discovery of dopamine, one of the most remarkable neuroscientific findings in the past century is that the brain processes pleasure and pain in the same place. Further, pleasure and pain work like opposite sides of a balance. 

 

P16. 

  Addiction broadly defined is the continued and compulsive consumption of a substance or behavior (gambling, gaming, sex) despite its harm to self and/or others. 

 

P40. 

   "Boredom is not just boring. It can also be terrifying. It forces us to come face-to-face with bigger questions of meaning and purpose. But boredom is also an opportunity for discovery and invention. It creates the space necessary for a new thought to form, without which we're endlessly reacting to stimuli around us, rather than allowing ourselves to be within our lived experience."

 

P46. 

    The question is: Why, in a time of unprecedented wealth, freedom, technological progress, and medical advancement, do we appear to be unhappier and in more pain than ever?

    The reason we're all so miserable may be because we're working so hard to avoid being miserable. 

 

P47.

   By better understanding the mechanisms that govern pain and pleasure, we can gain new insight into why and how too much pleasure leads to pain.  

 

P50.

   Pleasure and Pain Are Co-Located

   In addition to the discovery of dopamine, neuroscientists have determined that pleasure and pain are processed in overlapping brain regions and work via an opponent-process mechanism. Another way to say this is that pleasure and pain work like a balance. 

   But here's the important thing about the balance: It wants to remain level, that is, in equilibrium.

 

P52. 

  Any prolonged or repeated departures from hedonic or affective neutrality ... have a cost. That cost is an "after-reaction" that is opposite in value to the stimulus. Or as the old saying goes, What goes up must come down. 

 

P61.

   We've all experienced the letdown of unmet expectations. An expected reward that fails to materialize is worse than a reward that was never anticipated in the first place. 

  ..... 

   Studies indicate that dopamine release as a result of gambling links to the unpredictability of the reward delivery, as much as to the final (often monetary) reward itself. The motivation to gamble is based largely on the inability to predict the reward occurrence, rather than on financial gain. 

 

P66. 

   Science teaches us that every pleasure exacts a price, and the pain that follows is longer lasting and more intense than the pleasure that gave rise to it. With prolonged and repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity to tolerate pain decreases, and our threshold for experiencing pleasure decreases. 

....

   The net effect is that we now need more reward to feel pleasure, and less injury to feel pain.

 

 

P77. 

   To put it in terms of the pleasure-pain balance, fasting from dopamine allows sufficient time for the gremlins to hop off the balance and for the balance to go back to the level position. 

 

P82. 

   Mindfulness is simply the ability to observe what our brain is doing while it's doing it, without judgment. 

 

P85.

   I have seen again and again in clinical care, and in my own life, how the simple exercise of abstaining from our drug of choice for at least four weeks gives clarifying insight into our behaviors. Insight that simply is not possible while we continue to use. 

 

P91. 

  The key to creating effective self-binding is first to acknowledge the loss of voluntariness we experience when under the spell of a powerful compulsion, and to bind ourselves while we still possess the capacity for voluntary choice. 

 

P.105

   Another variable contributing to the problem of compulsive overconsumption is the growing amount of leisure time we have today, and with it the ensuing boredom.