Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

If others respond by rejecting, condemning, or shunning us, we enter the cycle of what I call destructive shame. Destructive shame deepens the emotional experience of shame and sets us up to perpetuate the behavior that led to feeling shame in the first place. If others respond by holding us closer and providing clear guidance for redemption/recove

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.

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.

The opioid receptor blocker naltrexone is currently being explored as a medical treatment for chronic pain. The idea is that by blocking the effects of opioids, including the ones we make (endorphins), we trick our bodies into making more opioids as an adaptive response.

“The world is sensory rich and causal poor.” That is to say, we know the doughnut tastes good in the moment, but we are less aware that eating a doughnut every day for a month adds five pounds to our waistline.

Seventy percent of world global deaths are attributable to modifiable behavioral risk factors like smoking, physical inactivity, and diet. The leading global risks for mortality are high blood pressure (13 percent), tobacco use (9 percent), high blood sugar (6 percent), physical inactivity (6 percent), and obesity (5 percent).

The evolution of the gluten-free diet illustrates how attempts to control consumption are swiftly countered by modern market forces, just one more example of the challenges inherent in our dopamine economy.

“The world is sensory rich and causal poor.” That is to say, we know the doughnut tastes good in the moment, but we are less aware that eating a doughnut every day for a month adds five pounds to our waistline.

Hormesis is a branch of science that studies the beneficial effects of administering small to moderate doses of noxious and/or painful stimuli, such as cold, heat, gravitational changes, radiation, food restriction, and exercise. Hormesis comes from the ancient Greek hormáein: to set in motion, impel, urge on.