The desire to overconsume social media, to indulge in our favorite foods, and other unhealthy are sometimes harmful addictions often stem from this intrinsic need to be “stimulated.” When we are stimulated, we’re not thinking about that horrible test grade, the embarrassing thing we said earlier, or the deep fear and anxiety we have about the future and what it holds. Stimulation allows us to be “singleminded” or consumed with one specific thing, instead of sitting with our racing, complex minds. As I began to further research dopamine, I asked myself, is this why we, as the human race, are so addicted to dopamine?

So, what is dopamine really? Dopamine is something we all think we understand. It’s a well-known neurotransmitter, produced in our brain’s “reward center” that regulates pleasure and motivation. Dopamine can simply be translated into that reward feeling we experience when achieving something or doing something enjoyable. Because we feel that “reward,” we are motivated to repeat the behavior that evoked this emotion. Mckenzi Reiter (12) shares, “I think it is important to understand what dopamine is and how it drives us because it has huge effects on our behavior and what we spend our time doing. If we can become motivated to do things we dread, maybe we can get dopamine to work in our favor instead of letting it control or use us.”

I think it is important to understand how the human mind was designed to experience dopamine, from an evolutionary perspective. This is especially important in today’s day and age because the dopamine we experience comes from things we were physically not designed to experience. Social media and other unhealthy addictions trigger such large dopamine releases, without any productivity actually involved. We feel like we are experiencing something good, a behavior we should repeat. But in reality, we are wasting dopamine, letting it run out, and to no good use. This idea that doom scrolling or engaging in other extremely dopaminergic activities actually makes productivity ten times harder than it initially was before we engaged in them. Dopamine was designed to motivate us to survive. 

Through an evolutionary lens, if we did not release any dopamine from eating, drinking water, and reproducing, our species would have died out by now. It is dopamine that keeps humanity moving forward, by motivating individuals to strive to not just survive, but to thrive. It wasn’t designed to be a transmitter we become addicted to. It was simply designed to keep us alive. Mr. Walls (AP Psychology Teacher) shares: “Dopamine is not the enemy, it is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter that is central to learning and motivational signals. Essentially we give our brain a reward for avoiding effortful tasks. This makes it that much harder to avoid the behavior next time. Work by psychologists such as Edward Tolman have demonstrated a very basic fact of our brains and behaviors: we repeat what rewards us.” 

Is the key to happiness then just forcing ourselves to experience boredom? While the answer isn’t simply just yes, because happiness is not something operationalized or measurable, but allowing ourselves to experience boredom is shown to drastically increase “happiness.” Mr. Walls adds that being bored will “act like a reset button, driving motivation and goal setting. Experiencing boredom also enhances creativity and problem-solving, as shown in the 2014 Mann & Cadman study.” Humans will do almost anything to avoid feeling bored. We often view joy and sadness as polar opposites, when really, the opposite of joy is boredom. Feeling happy is experiencing, being aware of, and enjoying a one pointed thing. For example, on a roller coaster, the euphoric “joy” you feel is felt because your mind is as far removed as possible from reality. For a moment, on that roller coaster, while watching that movie, on that vacation, with your best friends, while eating that favorite meal, you aren’t thinking about reality because you have something specific and positive to think about. In the absence of this one thing to hold our attention, we become b

ored, and our mind goes from being “one-pointed” to full of thousands of drifting thoughts and real world issues we would rather not sit with in silence. Although being bored is uncomfortable and sometimes almost painful, feeling it will significantly increase mindfulness and overall appreciation for life’s highs and lows.

How can I implement this into my life? Aside from just sitting in boredom or in a state of meditation, some simple ways to start fixing your relationship with dopamine are getting natural sunlight early in the day, reducing constant “quick” low quality dopamine hits, and moving your body regularly. Specifically, one easy way to reset for dopamine setpoint is simply being aware of when you feel the urge to receive a hit of dopamine, and actively fighting this impulse instead of allowing it to control your actions. For example, when bored, many feel the need to instantly check their phone. Next time you feel this, allow yourself to feel it, but instead of reaching for your phone and getting that immediate dopaminergic hit, allow the feeling to pass. It usually will pass within two minutes, and each time you intentionally act stronger than your impulse is, the impulse becomes weaker, decreasing levels of dopamine addiction and allowing you to be present and mindful in the sometimes mundane beauty of real life.