Dopamine Quotes

“The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Beyond extreme examples of running from pain, we’ve lost the ability to
tolerate even minor forms of discomfort. We’re constantly seeking to distract
ourselves from the present moment, to be entertained.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“By protecting our children from adversity, have we made them deathly
afraid of it? By bolstering their self-esteem with false praise and a lack of
real-world consequences, have we made them less tolerant, more entitled,
and ignorant of their own character defects? By giving in to their every
desire, have we encouraged a new age of hedonism?”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard
to avoid being miserable.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“You can change dopamine and the dorsal striatum with exercise. You can boost serotonin with a massage. You can make decisions and set goals to activate the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. You can reduce amygdala activity with a hug and increase anterior cingulate activity with gratitude. You can enhance prefrontal norepinephrine with sleep.”
― Alex Korb, The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time

“With prolonged and repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity
to tolerate pain decreases, and our threshold for experiencing pleasure
increases.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“Mindfulness practices are especially important in the early days of abstinence. Many of us use high-dopamine substances and behaviors to distract ourselves from our own thoughts. When we first stop using dopamine to escape, those painful thoughts, emotions, and sensations come crashing down on us.
The trick is to stop running away from painful emotions, and instead allow ourselves to tolerate them. When we're able to do this, our experience takes on a new and unexpectedly rich texture. The pain is still there, but somehow transformed, seeming to encompass a vast landscape of communal suffering, rather than being wholly our own.”
― Anna Lembke, MD

“Human beings, the ultimate seekers, have
responded too well to the challenge of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.
As a result, we’ve transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place
of overwhelming abundance.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“…we use the dopaminergic power of the happiness of pursuit to motivate us to work for rewards that come -after we are dead- depending on your culture, this can be knowing that your nation is closer to winning a war because you’ve sacrificed yourself in battle, that your kids will inherit money because of your financial sacrifices, or that you will spend eternity in paradise. It is extraordinary neural circuitry that bucks temporal discounting enough to allow (some of) us to care about the temperature of the planet that our great-grandchildren will inherit. Basically, it’s unknown how we humans do this. We may merely be a type of animal, mammal, primate, and ape, but we’re a profoundly unique one.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“Often we’re more about the anticipation and pursuit of pleasure than about the experience of it.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“Serotonin helps with impulse control, willpower, and resilience. Dopamine is important in enjoyment and habits. Norepinephrine modulates focus and concentration. Oxytocin is essential to close relationships. Other neurotransmitters are important too, like GABA (antianxiety), endorphins (elation and pain relief), and endocannabinoids (appetite and peacefulness). Other chemicals, like BDNF, help grow new neurons, and even proteins in the immune system play a role.”
― Alex Korb, The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time

“What this suggests is that ‘widely used’ obstetric and infant drugs such as phenobarbital dysregulate the infant’s dopaminergic (dopamine-activating) system, permanently reducing his potential for pleasure and creating an imbalance he later seeks to redress through dopaminergic compulsions – substance-use disorders involving drugs such as cannabis, heroin, or LSD, say. Or sexual addiction. And, while the nature of pornography is determined by the culturally sanctioned birth abuses of mothers and babies, the impact of pornography is determined by the susceptibility created by drugs given to mothers and children.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine

“The neurobiological side of the hypothesis is proposed that a) the feats cause, at the brain level, a rise in dopamine b) delusions are feats of fantasy and fantasy shield feats that cause this same award, or relieve punishment c) the neuroleptics show efficacy in reducing delusions since they inhibit dopamine receptors and take away the prize for self-deception”
― Martín Ross, THE SHIELD FEATS THEORY: a different hypothesis concerning the etiology of delusions and other disorders.

“The pursuit of personal happiness has
become a modern maxim, crowding out other definitions of the “good life.”
Even acts of kindness toward others are framed as a strategy for personal happiness. Altruism, no longer merely a good in itself, has become a vehicle
for our own “well-being".”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“The more dopamine a drug releases in the brain’s reward
pathway (a brain circuit that links the ventral tegmental area, the nucleus
accumbens, and the prefrontal cortex), and the faster it releases dopamine,
the more addictive the drug.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“With repeated exposure to the same or similar pleasure stimulus, the initial
deviation to the side of pleasure gets weaker and shorter and the after-
response to the side of pain gets stronger and longer, a process scientists call
neuroadaptation.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“The phylogenetically uber-ancient neurological machinery for processing
pleasure and pain has remained largely intact throughout evolution and
across species. It is perfectly adapted for a world of scarcity. Without
pleasure we wouldn’t eat, drink, or reproduce. Without pain we wouldn’t
protect ourselves from injury and death. By raising our neural set point with repeated pleasures, we become endless strivers, never satisfied with what we have, always looking for more.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“Tell me the rest of the story. I can't wait. I just can't." And hadn't he known this was coming? Yes. If someone had delivered all twenty reels of the new Rocket Man chapter-play to Annie's house, would she have waited, parcelling out only one a week, or even one a day?
He looked at the half-demolished avalanche of her sundae, one cherry almost buried in whipped cream, another floating in chocolate syrup. He remembered the way the living room had looked, with sugar-glazed dishes everywhere.
No. Annie was not the waiting type. Annie would have watched all twenty episodes in one night, even if they gave her eyestrain and a splitting headache.
Because Annie loved sweet things.”
― Stephen King

“There's no need to feel like you're failing because you're not happy all the time. The absence of cheerfulness is not a disorder. Your goal is not to be constantly happy or revel day and night in the dopamine-coated candy of immediate gratification.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“Nowadays the usage of phones is so commonplace that to even question the teeny-tiny hit of vacuous, underserved and slow-dripped dopamine people get from their mindless, self-orientated filters and status updates is to mark yourself an out of the times philistine and backward threat to the groupthink mentality.”
― G.C. McKay, Chameleon

“The dopamine, the deceitful dopamine, gives them a false sense of value.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“If you are low status ten (...) Money will make you liable to the dangerous temptations of drugs and alcohol, which are much more rewarding if you have been deprived of pleasure for a long period.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“The music I was listening to on that particular day outside Small World triggered me and I got this insane influx of what I guess was dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and other neurochemicals that just made me feel so good. I think we call it fandom, and it’s a very addictive drug once you get it in the bloodstream.”
― Pete Trainor, Electrasy: Calling All The Dreamers

“The bonus cookies in the grocery basket could be considered -irrational- as they require extra cost and effort to purchase and do not align with goals for a balanced diet, yet eating the cookies will generate a positive reward.”
― Leighann R. Chaffee, A Guide to the Psychology of Eating

“Our body certainly learns from the signals associated with energy balance to adjust behavior: we respond to interoceptive cues to initiate eating when hungry, and food deprivation clearly increases food-seeking behavior in animals.”
― Leighann R. Chaffee, A Guide to the Psychology of Eating

“Humans have more dopamine receptors than any other animal by brain weight. It provides energy, aggressiveness, and maybe even optimism. It suited the physical, experiential nature of our ancestors.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“We are no longer in that primitive state of mind. We have an expectation of survival and have conquered most of the obvious predators that plagued us day to day with our superlative contemplation skills born of language. We sit in our comfy heated houses while the snow flutters like butterflies around us and we bask in a feeling of general contentment.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Infantilising yourself can often seem like a plea for diminished responsibility. Most of us will have encountered someone who, when criticised for behaving badly, appeals to their own vulnerability as a way of letting themselves off the hook. No matter what they do or the harm they cause, it’s never fair to criticise them, because there’s always some reason – often framed through therapy jargon or the language of social justice – why it isn’t their fault. Childishness grants them a perpetual innocence; they are constitutionally incapable of being in the wrong.

But we will never make the world better if we act like this. Thinking of yourself as a smol bean baby is a way of tapping out and expecting other people to fight on your behalf. It also makes you a more pliant consumer. Social media is awash with the idea that ‘it’s valid not to be productive’, as though productivity were the only manifestation of capitalism and streaming Disney+ all day is a form of resistance. It’s much rarer to encounter the idea that we have a responsibility about what we consume, or that satisfying our own desires whenever we want is not always a good thing: “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” has morphed into “there is no unethical consumption under capitalism”.”
― James Greig

“Pain releases the dopamine.”
― Dr. Poison king