How to Quit Video Game, Pornography & Social Media Addiction | Dr. Andrew Huberman

so let's talk about dopamine most people

have heard of dopamine and we hear all

the time now about dopamine hits but

actually there's no such thing of as a

dopamine hit and actually the way that

your body uses dopamine is to have a

baseline level of dopamine meaning an

amount of dopamine that's circulating in

your brain and body all the time and

that turns out to be important for how

you feel generally whether or not you're

in a good mood motivated Etc and you

also can experience peaks in dopamine

above Baseline but if you remember

nothing else from this episode please

remember this that when you experience

something or you crave something really

desirable really exciting to you very

pleasurable what happens afterwards is

your Baseline level of dopamine drops

okay so these peaks in dopamine they

influence how much dopamine will

generally be circulating afterward and

you might think oh a big peak in

dopamine after that I'm going to feel

even better because I just had this

great event not the case what actually

happens is that your Baseline level of

dopamine drops fortunately most people

do not experience or pursue enormous

increases in dopamine leading to these

severe drops in

Baseline many people do however and

that's what we call addiction when

somebody pursues a drug or an activity

that leads to huge increases in dopamine

and now you understand that afterward

the Baseline of dopamine drops because

of depletion of dopamine the readily

releasable pool the dopamine is

literally not around to be released and

so people feel pretty lousy and many

people make the mistake of then going

and pursuing the dopamine evoking the

dopamine releasing activity or substance

again thinking mistakenly that it's

going to bring up their Baseline it's

going to give them that Peak again not

only does it not give them a peak their

Baseline gets lower and lower because

they're depleting dopamine more and more

and more and we've seen this over and

over again when people get addicted to

something then they're not achieving

much pleasure at all dopamine is a

universal currency in all mammals but

especially in humans for moving us

toward goals and how much dopamine is in

our system at any one time compared to

how much dopamine was in our system a

few minutes ago and how much we remember

enjoying a particular experience of the

past that dictates your so-called

quality of life and your desire to

pursue things this is really important

dopamine is a currency and it's the way

that you track pleasure it's the way

that you track success it's the way that

you track whether or not you are doing

well or doing poorly and that is

subjective but if your dopamine is too

low you will not feel motivated if your

dopamine is is really high you will feel

motivated and if your dopamine is

somewhere in the middle how you feel

depends on whether or not you had higher

dopamine a few minutes ago or lower

dopamine this is important your

experience of life and your level of

motivation and drive depends on how much

dopamine you have relative to your

recent experience this is again

something that's just not accounted for

in the simple language of dopamine hits

okay a simple way to Envision dopamine

hits is every time you do something you

like eat a piece of chocolate dopamine

hit you look at your Instagram dopamine

hit you see someone you like dopamine

hit you know all these things described

as dopamine hits neglect the fact that

if you scroll social media and you see

something you really like dopamine hit

sure there's an increase in dopamine but

then you get to something else and you

go not that interesting however had you

arrived at that second thing first you

might think that it was really

interesting if you had arrived to that

second Instagram post 3 days later or 4

days later you might find it extremely

interesting again how much dopamine you

experience from something depends on

your Baseline level of dopamine when you

arrive there and your previous dopamine

Peaks okay that's super important to

understand and it's completely neglected

by the general language of dopamine hits

this is why when you repeatedly Eng

engage in something that you enjoy your

threshold for enjoyment goes up and up

and up dopamine is this universal

currency it establishes value based on

not just what you're experiencing in the

moment but what you experienced in the

days and minutes before now that you

understand how your previous level of

dopamine relates to your current level

of dopamine and how your current level

of dopamine will influence your future

level of dopamine it should become

obvious why things like pornography not

just the accessibility of pornography

but the intensity of pornography can

negatively shape real world romantic and

sexual interactions this is a serious

concern the discussion is happening now

the underlying neurobiological

mechanisms You Now understand and this

isn't to pass judgment on whether or not

people like or don't like pornography

that's an ethical discussion it's a

moral discussion that has to be decided

for each individual by virtue of age

Etc but again any activity that evokes a

lot of dopamine release will make it

harder to achieve the same level and

certainly the greater level of dopamine

through a subsequent interaction so yes

indeed many people are addicted to

pornography and yes indeed many people

who regularly indulge in pornography

experience challenges in real world

romantic interactions You Now understand

the mechanism M behind what I'm telling

you you can even see this with video

games people will play a video game they

love it it's super exciting to them and

then they'll keep playing and playing

and playing and either one of two things

happens typically both first of all I

always say addiction is a progressive

narrowing of the things that bring you

pleasure so oftentimes what will happen

is the person only has excitement and

can achieve dopamine release to the same

extent doing that behavior and not other

behaviors and so they start losing

interest in school they start losing

interest in relationships they start

losing interest in Fitness and

well-being and depletes their life and

eventually what typically happens is

they will stop getting dopamine release

from that activity as well and then they

drop into a pretty serious depression

and this can get very severe and people

have commit suicide from these sorts of

patterns of activity just very briefly

because it was also covered in the

interview episode I did with Anna

lmy about addiction some of you might be

asking what should I do if I experience

a drop in my Baseline level of dopamine

because of Engagement with some activity

or some substance that led to Big Peaks

uh just to put some color an example on

this a few episodes ago I talked about a

friend who I've known a long time this

is actually the child of a friend who

has basically become addicted to video

games he decided actually after seeing

that episode with Anna to do a 30-day

complete fast from phone from video

games and from social media of all kinds

he's now at day 29 he's really

accomplished this not incidentally his

levels of concentration his overall mood

are up he's doing far far better what he

did is hard in particular the first 14

days is really hard but the way that you

replenish the releasable pool of

dopamine is to not engage in these

dopamine urg

seeking behaviors because remember

typically people arrive at a place where

they want to stop engaging in these

behaviors or ingesting substances when

that dopamine is depleted when they're

not getting the same lift in his case he

was feeling depressed he thought he had

ADHD they were starting to treat it as

as ADHD and certainly there are people

out there who have ADHD but what he

found was that his levels of

concentration are back he does not need

to be treated for ADHD and actually the

psychiatrist wondered if he did prior to

this video game social Med media fast

he's feeling good he's exercising again

I'm not making this up this is really a

very specific but very relevant example

of how the dopamine system can replenish

itself of course if there's a clinical

need for ADHD treatment by all means

pursue that but I think a lot of ADHD

does go misdiagnosed because of this

depletion and dopamine that occurs

because of overindulgence and other

activities and the drop in Baseline so

for anyone that's experience a real drop

in Baseline who has addictive Tendencies

whether or not their behaviors or

substances that is always going to be

the path forward is going to be either

cold turkey or through some sort of

tapering to limit interactions with the

what would otherwise be the dopamine

evoking Behavior or substance so if I

were to just put a really

simple message around dopamine it would

be there's a molecule in your brain in

body that when released tends to make

you look outside yourself pursue things

outside yourself and to Crave things

outside

yourself the pleasure that arrives from

achieving things also involves dopamine

but is mainly the consequence of other

molecules

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