Dopamine & Addiction

People with severe addictions are among those contemporary prophets that we ignore to our own demise, for they show us who we truly are.

– Kent Dunnington

What can an addict with addictions teach us? Can we find balance in an age of overindulgence? To begin to understand how dopamine impacts each of us in our daily life, we need to look at how the brain balances pleasure and pain. Dopamine can simply be understood as a hormone and neurotransmitter in the brain’s reward center that influences pleasure, motivation, and the desire to take action. We are going to look at the pros and cons of the pleasure process.

The Pleasure Pain Balance. Think of a childhood playground teeter-totter or the idea of a balance with a lever and fulcrum. The brain will balance the lever to keep homeostasis. The left side represents the pleasure side. When you indulge in pleasurable things, such as social scrolling, watching television, eating chips, sugar, carbs, smoking pot, vaping, viewing porn, using drugs, or alcohol, etc., the left side lowers and the right side raises. Dopamine will create pleasurable feelings or a positive stimuli. The more the teeter-totter or balance tips, and the faster it tips, the more pleasure you will feel.
Homeostasis is the brain’s ability to rebalance the teeter-totter to create equilibrium with “weights” on the pain side of the lever. It now starts to balance again to return to a level of homeostasis.
Operant Process Theory developed by Richard Solomon and John Corbit in the 1970s discovered that the brain deals with the “after-reaction” to bring balance back as “what goes up, must come down.” Peaks become valleys. These dips / valleys are a part of the cycle in which the person will feel unmotivated, lazy, irritable, disinterested or bored. This can last for 30 minutes up to 3 hours.
Neuroadaptation happens when the stimulus that was initially very fun and rewarding, such as eating chips, watching Netflix, doom-scrolling, porn, alcohol, or shopping are now no longer as rewarding. The initial high pleasure once experienced is now weaker and shorter. Now, the after-reaction response to balance the lever gets even stronger and longer. More of the drug, behavior, or stimulus is needed to get the same effect.
Tolerance develops subsequently. Meaning the person needs more of the drug of choice more often. The past smaller amount is not enough to get the same positive reward. This develops into an addiction that can cause problems in the person’s personal and professional relationships.
Opioid-induced hyperalgesia The brain has no other option but to overwhelm the side of pain on the teeter-totter to raise up the pleasure side and bring balance back. The brain will magnify pain sensitivity; algesia meaning a sensitivity to physical and emotional pain in the individual in an attempt to reset or rebalance the pleasure-pain equilibrium. The person is now in a dopamine-deficient state, in which nothing is pleasurable, good, or exciting anymore. It’s as if “team dopamine” gives up, takes their ball, gloves and bats, leaving the field and goes home.
Anhedonia has now been reached, the inability to feel or enjoy pleasure of any kind. No high, or pleasure, is attainable any longer. The person will experience grief, anxiety, irritability, insomnia or dysphoria. The person is now in so deep they will use the drug just to feel “normal.” This is known as dysphoria-driven relapse not to receive pleasure but to alleviate pain and suffering. The person now needs more reward to feel small amounts of pleasure and small amounts of injury or stress to feel large amounts of pain. It is this very overindulgence humans across the planet are experiencing. The world has changed since the ability to experience pleasurable dopamine is at our fingertips at any time, which has created new problems. I tell my clients all the time, “If you are human, you are an addict.” The human body and brain have not evolved, if you will, to adapt to this overabundance of pleasure.
Cue-dependent learning also known as classical conditioning, best known as Pavlov’s dog with the ringing of the bell triggering the dog to salivate. It is the anticipation of the food before being fed. The idea that the dog received dopamine knowing good things are coming. If the food is given, the dopamine goes even higher. However, if the reward or food is not received, the dopamine can plummet well below the original baseline.

When one’s expectations go unmet, the letdown chemically can be devastating. This is to say that an expected reward that does not deliver is far worse than a reward that was not expected or anticipated.

In our next blog, we are going to look at how all this impacts personal relationships.

-Sources: Dopamine Nation -Anna Lembke

Cory Schortzman Executive Director

Cory Schortzman is an author, speaker, teacher and licensed mental health professional. Since 2008, he has served as the Executive Director of Transformed Hearts Counseling Center in Colorado Springs, CO. He is the founder of SARA, the Sexual Addiction Recovery Association. Cory is passionate about helping couples and individuals overcome sex addiction. He is also passionate about bringing awareness to the public and supporting the elimination of sex and human trafficking. Cory has been married since 1998 to his beautiful wife, Kerry, and lives in Colorado with their four daughters. He and Kerry have been seen on the CBS Early Show, Inside Edition, and ABC Good Morning America, Fox 21 News, and TLC/Discovery discussing the harm of sex addiction and the joys of recovery. He has also been heard on numerous radio programs.

Cory’s books include: Out of the Darkness, Into the Light the Workbook, Into the Light the Steps, Ashes to Beauty the Steps, 301 Dating Ideas, 301 Conversational Ideas, 301 Ways to Say I Love You, 301 Ways to Love Your Children & 301 Recovery Tools & Tips.