Notes from Dopamine Nation:
Iatrogenic = physician initiated. Like opiate addiction, often.
Technology enables addiction. What better way to deploy technology than in furthering addictive behaviors. It would not make economic sense not to use technology that way.
The internet promotes compulsive overconsumption not only by algorithmically feeding us things we like, but also by suggesting behaviors that otherwise may never have occurred to us.
“Seventy percent of world global deaths are attributable to modifiable behavioral risk factors like smoking, physical inactivity, and diet.”
Middle-aged white Americans without a college degree are dying younger than their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
Over 1/4 adults takes a psychiatric drug daily. Over 1/20 children do.
Pleasure and pain work like a balance.
There are other physiological processes that work like a balance. Including vision. Stare at a green image against a white background for a while, then look away at a blank white page. Your brain creates a red after-image.
Hedonism leads to anhedonia, the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.
Brain changes that occur in response to a stimulating and novel environment (traveling, learning) are similar to those seen with high-dopamine drugs.
Every pleasure exacts a price, and the pain that follows is longer lasting and more intense than the pleasure that gave rise to it.
We are “cacti in the rainforest” when in comes to stimulation and abundance.
When depressed alcoholics got treatment for alcohol, but not depression, for one month, 80 percent no longer met criteria for clinical depression.
Mindfulness helps abstinence, especially when first quitting. Tolerate pain, don’t run from it. Then the pain transforms and becomes a kind of communal suffering.
Some people who meet criteria for addiction can return to using their drug of choice in a controlled way.
Willpower is like a muscle in that it can be trained but can also get tired.
1/4 gastric bypass surgery recipients develops a new problem with alcohol addiction.
“The fact that we must resort to removing and reshaping internal organs to accommodate our food supply marks a turning point in the history of human consumption.” → No greater evidence of abundance.
Tracking consumption helps. Like screentime. Make it objective. Then you can’t deny it.
High-dopamine goods mess with our ability to delay gratification, a phenomenon called delay discounting. Cigarette smokers are more likely to discount future monetary rewards.
“Totemic beer”—alcoholic saved one beer, which she regarded as the symbol of her choice not to drink, a representation of her will and autonomy.
Opioid-induced hyperalgesia: people who take opioids for more than a month are at increased risk worsened pain.
Cold exposure: pressing on pain side of the balance can lead to its opposite—pleasure.
“With intermittent exposure to pain, our natural hedonic set point gets weighted to the side of pleasure, such that we become … more able to feel pleasure over time.”
Hormesis: study of beneficial effects of administering small to moderate doses of noxious and/or painful stimuli.
Japanese people living outside epicenter of 1945 nuclear attack with low-dose radiation exposure may have shown marginally longer lifespans and decreased rates of cancer.
Typical American today spends half their waking hours sitting, 50 percent more than fifty years ago. We evolved to traverse tens of kilometers daily to compete for food. So that’s bad.
Alex Honnold was not born different. He incrementally exposed himself to death-defying feats, which changed his brain.
Repeat skydivers are more likely to experience anhedonia.
Little lies create guilt and fear—guilt for the lying and fear that someone will find out.
People focus too much on childhood events. Events for which you actually have responsibility are more instructive.
Destructive shame: overconsumption → shame → lying → isolation → repeat.
Prosocial shame changes lying to radical honesty → acceptance.
Groups are wary of free riders, people who come along for the benefits without living the lifestyle or committing to the teachings. This can be handled in part by admittedly nonsensical behaviors: certain hairstyles, clothing, abstaining from certain foods or technologies, etc.