Dopamine addiction - what is it? Dopamine is a natural hormone in the human body that is produced regularly. Many also call it the hormone of happiness. Despite its unusual name, it can threaten a person’s state of health, as it quickly leads to addiction and provokes harmful hobbies: drinking alcohol, smoking, and drug addiction. Under the influence of such a hormone, a person experiences a feeling of passion, love, joy, performs various acts that are unlikely to be done in the usual state. Often, under the influence of dopamine addiction, a person has new hobbies and hobbies, as well as bad habits.
Health value
Dopamine acts on the part of the brain that is responsible for the so-called reward system. With the help of such a system, a certain model of behavior is gradually formed in a person, which he adheres to and which is reinforced by various factors from the outside. Such factors can be both positive and negative:
- Pleasure, joy. A person experiences such feelings in that period of time when the hormone is actively produced and enters the human blood. Such feelings arise as a result of the fulfillment of natural needs (food, sleep, entertainment, work, sex).
- Memory and learning.
- Motivation. Dopamine stimulates a person to perform certain actions and actions, helps a person set goals. If an insufficient amount of such a hormone is produced in the human body, then anhedonia can be detected in which a person simply cannot enjoy the joys of life.
- Curiosity. Motivation that helps people not to sit still and achieve new successes, to learn something.
- Creation. Specialists were able to establish a connection between creative abilities and the production of dopamine in the body.
If dopamine is lacking in the human body, then he quickly becomes bored and bored with his own life, which as a result can lead to serious dopamine schizophrenia and various disorders of the nervous system.
He regularly has a bad mood, there is irritability, aggressiveness, nervousness, there is no interest in daily affairs. The human body at this time is very tense. How to get rid of dopamine addiction? Most often, to restore dopamine levels in the body, a person starts taking medications.
Also, the level of such a hormone is increased in the presence of mental illness (schizophrenia, polar personality disorder), which also negatively affects the state of human health and requires the immediate use of special medications that help reduce the number of dopamine bindings.
Causes of ailment
Many people are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Some simply cannot exist without a regular dose of hazardous substances. Toxic products such as alcohol and drugs and even plain coffee have the same effect on the condition of the body. They activate the dopamine production process.
Having received what is needed, a person feels a surge of energy, strength and vitality. His mood immediately becomes better, irritability, fatigue disappears, a feeling of pleasure from life appears. But it should be remembered that the feeling of euphoria with such an effect quickly disappears, and the body continues to require a new dose of the drugs taken. Under the influence of dopamine addiction, a person can feel both psychological and physical withdrawal, which will adversely affect his well-being and general behavior in society. It is on this principle that drug and alcohol addictions are formed.
Upon receiving satisfaction from food, video games, gambling, sex or shopping, a person independently binds himself to an artificial dependence on the hormone of pleasure. This is strongly expressed in people who eat a lot of fast food, are addicted to sex or computer games.
With this effect, a stable association is formed in the human brain between the sense of satisfaction and the factors that lead to it. Some people begin to do everything possible to find a new source of happiness for themselves.
Bad influence
With the emergence of persistent dopamine addiction, a person needs to increase the number of positive emotions received for a certain time cut. In terms of effects on the human body, this dependence is very similar to others. Not finding the source of satisfaction, a person feels depressed and upset, begins to get annoyed and shows aggression. Depression continues to persist over time, leading to serious problems.
The stronger the release of dopamine into the body, the more the sensitivity of the endings will be reduced. Such processes as a result lead to the fact that over time a person ceases to receive joy and positive emotions from dependence and is constantly in a bad mood.
In an attempt to enhance the effect of factors that bring a sense of pleasure, a person begins:
- eat more;
- play games longer;
- have a promiscuous sex life;
- drink more alcoholic drinks, get into binges, smoke;
- significantly increase the dose of narcotic drugs.
Such processes adversely affect all spheres of human life, often lead to the destruction of the family, career, normal lifestyle, not to mention health. It is important to start timely treatment of dopamine addiction and try to improve your condition.
Dopamine and narcotic drugs
Drugs irreversibly affect the structure of dopamine neurons, like any artificial pleasure that acts strongly and often. Many narcotic substances lead to increased production and release of this hormone in the brain 5-10 times, which helps the person who uses them to get a sense of artificial satisfaction.
Amphetamine, for example, directly affects the release of dopamine, acting on the mechanisms of its distribution. Other narcotic drugs, such as cocaine and some psychostimulants, do not allow the natural mechanisms in the human body to seize back the produced hormone, increasing its amount in the synoptic space. Morphine and nicotine mimic the effect of natural neurotransmitters, and alcoholic drinks do not allow dopamine antagonists to be activated.
If a person continues to artificially stimulate his mood, then over time the brain gets used to artificially increasing the amount of dopamine in the body, which provokes a decrease in hormone production and a decrease in certain receptors. As a result, a person has to increase their dosage in order to achieve the former pleasure of the drugs taken. Then a chemical dependence begins to develop, which leads to problems with metabolic processes in the human brain, and in the future it can provoke serious problems with his work. In this case, it is important to begin treatment of dopamine dependence with drugs. If this is not done, then a person alone is unlikely to be able to return to normal life.
Stages of dopamine addiction to alcohol:
- At the neurotic stage, a person has a persistent mental dependence on alcoholic beverages, tolerance to alcohol increases, and problems with sleep and appetite appear.
- With the drug stage, the craving for alcohol production is significantly increased, and withdrawal symptoms (alcoholic polyneuritis, psychoses and more) occur.
- The encephalopathic stage is accompanied by a decrease in the level of tolerance to alcoholic beverages, which leads to the appearance of strong personality changes with the development of an intellectual-mnestic effect (alcoholic encephalopathy).
All the described stages of breaking with dopamine addiction are very dangerous for humans, and the sooner they begin to be treated, the better the effect.
Pornography and the hormone of happiness
Particular attention should be paid to the effect of sexual images on the reinforcement system. Throughout human history, people took sexual poses only in front of real partners. But in the modern world, porn on the Internet is a thing accessible to absolutely everyone, not to mention the impact of sexual images in advertising and the entertainment industry.
Such processes have led some people, trying to enjoy themselves, spend a lot of time on porn sites, become victims of advertising companies that exploit sex to sell their best. It is for this reason that porn can also burn dopamine receptors in humans.
Internet and dopamine addiction
A search on the Internet and social networks are elements that accidentally exploit dopamine in humans, but computer game developers use this to their own advantage when trying to hook a player on their product. Some people approach games wisely, taking them for entertainment and entertainment. The rest gradually become dependent on video games and eventually cease to imagine life without them.
The study found that a computer game leads to a surge in dopamine, which can be compared with the use of amphetamine. Dopamine fever can occur in both drug and game addiction in humans.
Stages of addiction
This dependence is characterized by certain stages of development. It is important to know exactly about them in order to timely help yourself or your family. The main stages:
- Periodic search for ways to increase dopamine levels in the body.
- Regular use of an artificial dopamine boosting stimulator.
- Abuse (using a hormone to improve your mood).
- A person cannot imagine life without a daily dose of artificial dopamine.
Treatment
How to deal with dopamine addiction? To stop the negative effects of hormone on your body, it is important:
- Not satisfy the needs completely.
- Continue to defectively satisfy the need for a hormone for several weeks, start taking dopamine drugs.
- After some time, a person will be able to consciously do what he wants, and not what his body requires.
People with strong attachment are constantly looking for a way to supplement dopamine levels, which leads to serious risk. But there are the right methods of inflammation of the hormone that will not adversely affect the state of the human body:
- Improving nutrition. Regularly eat foods high in antioxidants, tyrosine. These include: seafood, strawberries, bananas, nuts, eggs, low-fat dairy products, rabbit meat, poultry.
- Start leading an active lifestyle, move more. Physical activity helps to produce the right amount of hormone. Scientists have been able to prove that sport helps stimulate the production of the hormone of joy.
- Full sleep. It will help restore the human body and improve hormone production.
Drug treatment
If a healthy lifestyle and a properly composed diet have not yielded results, then treatment with medications should be started. Treatment with dopamine drugs:
- Mukuna. A culture that increases the amount of hormones responsible for mood. The tool should be used for people with apathy and depressive disorder.
- Ginko Biloba. Taking the drug helps to increase the level of the hormone, accelerate metabolic processes, and ensure a normal flow of oxygen to the brain. It should be used by people with dopamine schizophrenia, a lack of hormones in the body, and mental disorders.
Features of functioning
The dopamine system can control not only rewards, but also punishments, by blocking the production of dopamine. In this case, the amount of hormone produced in the body decreases sharply, which forces a person to take some action. As a result, the reward system for some time restores the level of dopamine in the body, and the person becomes well for some time. The same mechanisms work, for example, when winning a competition, when praising a person. A drop in the amount of dopamine helps us achieve our goals, which can result in severe stress and overstrain.
With an artificial increase in the amount of dopamine in the body, the brain ceases to function normally and independently distinguish good from bad. The resulting sensations bring much more happiness than usual, the surrounding colors become brighter, the voices are loud, any associations seem real. Any thought that appears in a person’s head in such a state seems correct and feasible. It becomes difficult for the brain to turn its attention to the true impressions of what is happening around, since everything is so interesting and unusual in the human body at this time.
When a small amount of the drug is used, the brain can still function somehow, monitor the sensations received from the outside, but as the dose increases, dopamine rises to a critical level and it becomes simply impossible to stop the thoughts that occur in the head, which leads to an acute stage of psychosis.