How to Quit Video Game, Pornography & Social Media Addiction

00:00:00.000 | So let's talk about dopamine.

00:00:04.080 | Most people have heard of dopamine

00:00:05.660 | and we hear all the time now about dopamine hits,

00:00:08.340 | but actually there's no such thing as a dopamine hit.

00:00:12.360 | And actually the way that your body uses dopamine

00:00:16.300 | is to have a baseline level of dopamine,

00:00:19.640 | meaning an amount of dopamine that's circulating

00:00:21.980 | in your brain and body all the time.

00:00:24.420 | And that turns out to be important

00:00:25.940 | for how you feel generally,

00:00:27.660 | whether or not you're in a good mood, motivated, et cetera.

00:00:30.860 | And you also can experience peaks in dopamine

00:00:33.940 | above baseline.

00:00:35.340 | But if you remember nothing else from this episode,

00:00:38.220 | please remember this,

00:00:39.900 | that when you experience something

00:00:42.220 | or you crave something really desirable,

00:00:45.580 | really exciting to you, very pleasurable,

00:00:48.140 | what happens afterwards

00:00:50.580 | is your baseline level of dopamine drops, okay?

00:00:54.580 | So these peaks in dopamine,

00:00:57.160 | they influence how much dopamine

00:00:58.940 | will generally be circulating afterward.

00:01:01.220 | And you might think, "Oh, a big peak in dopamine.

00:01:03.180 | After that, I'm going to feel even better

00:01:05.160 | because I just had this great event."

00:01:07.220 | Not the case.

00:01:08.160 | What actually happens

00:01:09.540 | is that your baseline level of dopamine drops.

00:01:12.060 | And fortunately, most people do not experience

00:01:15.100 | or pursue enormous increases in dopamine

00:01:17.980 | leading to these severe drops in baseline.

00:01:20.200 | Many people do, however,

00:01:23.380 | and that's what we call addiction.

00:01:25.760 | When somebody pursues a drug or an activity

00:01:28.260 | that leads to huge increases in dopamine,

00:01:30.660 | and now you understand that afterward,

00:01:32.180 | the baseline of dopamine drops

00:01:34.640 | because of depletion of dopamine,

00:01:36.540 | the readily releasable pool,

00:01:38.380 | the dopamine is literally not around to be released.

00:01:41.180 | And so people feel pretty lousy.

00:01:43.500 | And many people make the mistake

00:01:45.380 | of then going and pursuing the dopamine-evoking,

00:01:48.920 | the dopamine-releasing activity or substance.

00:01:51.120 | Again, thinking mistakenly

00:01:54.180 | that it's going to bring up their baseline.

00:01:55.960 | It's going to give them that peak again.

00:01:58.200 | Not only does it not give them a peak,

00:01:59.880 | their baseline gets lower and lower

00:02:02.080 | because they're depleting dopamine more and more and more.

00:02:05.160 | And we've seen this over and over again.

00:02:07.340 | When people get addicted to something,

00:02:09.520 | then they're not achieving much pleasure at all.

00:02:12.720 | Dopamine is a universal currency in all mammals,

00:02:16.000 | but especially in humans for moving us toward goals

00:02:20.800 | and how much dopamine is in our system at any one time

00:02:24.760 | compared to how much dopamine was in our system

00:02:27.640 | a few minutes ago,

00:02:29.360 | and how much we remember enjoying

00:02:31.960 | a particular experience of the past.

00:02:34.020 | That dictates your so-called quality of life

00:02:37.860 | and your desire to pursue things.

00:02:40.380 | This is really important.

00:02:41.320 | Dopamine is a currency

00:02:43.400 | and it's the way that you track pleasure.

00:02:45.720 | It's the way that you track success.

00:02:47.480 | It's the way that you track

00:02:49.120 | whether or not you are doing well or doing poorly.

00:02:52.040 | And that is subjective.

00:02:54.120 | But if your dopamine is too low,

00:02:57.480 | you will not feel motivated.

00:02:59.120 | If your dopamine is really high,

00:03:01.280 | you will feel motivated.

00:03:02.480 | And if your dopamine is somewhere in the middle,

00:03:04.880 | how you feel depends on whether or not

00:03:06.800 | you had higher dopamine a few minutes ago

00:03:09.820 | or lower dopamine.

00:03:11.360 | This is important.

00:03:12.880 | Your experience of life

00:03:14.540 | and your level of motivation and drive

00:03:16.780 | depends on how much dopamine you have

00:03:20.580 | relative to your recent experience.

00:03:24.220 | This is, again, something that's just not accounted for

00:03:27.680 | in the simple language of dopamine hits, okay?

00:03:30.860 | A simple way to envision dopamine hits

00:03:33.980 | is every time you do something you like,

00:03:35.460 | you eat a piece of chocolate, dopamine hit.

00:03:37.020 | You look at your Instagram, dopamine hit.

00:03:38.740 | You see someone you like, dopamine hit.

00:03:41.020 | You know, all these things described as dopamine hits

00:03:44.660 | neglect the fact that if you scroll social media

00:03:47.740 | and you see something you really like, dopamine hit.

00:03:50.860 | Sure, there's an increase in dopamine.

00:03:52.920 | But then you get to something else and you go,

00:03:55.500 | hmm, not that interesting.

00:03:56.800 | However, had you arrived at that second thing first,

00:04:00.660 | you might think that it was really interesting.

00:04:03.900 | If you had arrived to that second Instagram post

00:04:06.660 | three days later or four days later,

00:04:08.660 | you might find it extremely interesting.

00:04:11.060 | Again, how much dopamine you experience from something

00:04:14.380 | depends on your baseline level of dopamine

00:04:16.420 | when you arrive there and your previous dopamine peaks, okay?

00:04:21.420 | That's super important to understand.

00:04:23.740 | And it's completely neglected

00:04:25.220 | by the general language of dopamine hits.

00:04:27.300 | This is why when you repeatedly engage in something

00:04:30.820 | that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment

00:04:34.260 | goes up and up and up.

00:04:36.060 | Dopamine is this universal currency.

00:04:38.500 | It establishes value based on

00:04:40.940 | not just what you're experiencing in the moment,

00:04:42.580 | but what you experienced in the days and minutes before.

00:04:45.980 | Now that you understand how your previous level of dopamine

00:04:49.780 | relates to your current level of dopamine

00:04:52.060 | and how your current level of dopamine

00:04:54.580 | will influence your future level of dopamine,

00:04:57.860 | it should become obvious why things like pornography,

00:05:01.940 | not just the accessibility of pornography,

00:05:04.020 | but the intensity of pornography

00:05:06.660 | can negatively shape real world

00:05:09.980 | romantic and sexual interactions.

00:05:12.060 | This is a serious concern.

00:05:13.400 | The discussion is happening now.

00:05:15.580 | The underlying neurobiological mechanisms,

00:05:17.640 | you now understand.

00:05:19.180 | And this isn't to pass judgment on whether or not

00:05:22.260 | people like or don't like pornography.

00:05:24.100 | That's an ethical discussion.

00:05:25.300 | It's a moral discussion that has to be decided

00:05:27.380 | for each individual by virtue of age, et cetera.

00:05:30.680 | But again, any activity that evokes a lot of dopamine release

00:05:36.860 | will make it harder to achieve the same level.

00:05:41.500 | And certainly the greater level of dopamine

00:05:43.940 | through a subsequent interaction.

00:05:46.220 | So yes, indeed, many people are addicted to pornography.

00:05:49.780 | And yes, indeed,

00:05:50.860 | many people who regularly indulge in pornography

00:05:55.220 | experience challenges in real world romantic interactions.

00:05:58.500 | You now understand the mechanisms

00:05:59.940 | behind what I'm telling you.

00:06:01.340 | You can even see this with video games.

00:06:04.780 | People will play a video game.

00:06:06.340 | They love it.

00:06:07.460 | It's super exciting to them.

00:06:09.180 | And then they'll keep playing and playing and playing.

00:06:11.740 | And either one of two things happens, typically both.

00:06:16.060 | First of all, we say addiction is a progressive narrowing

00:06:20.220 | of the things that bring you pleasure.

00:06:21.660 | So oftentimes what will happen is the person

00:06:23.620 | only has excitement and can achieve dopamine release

00:06:28.140 | to the same extent doing that behavior

00:06:30.220 | and not other behaviors.

00:06:31.660 | And so they start losing interest in school.

00:06:34.060 | They start losing interest in relationships.

00:06:36.420 | They start losing interest in fitness and wellbeing.

00:06:38.820 | And it depletes their life.

00:06:41.500 | And eventually what typically happens

00:06:43.980 | is they will stop getting dopamine release

00:06:46.740 | from that activity as well.

00:06:48.740 | And then they drop into a pretty serious depression

00:06:51.620 | and this can get very severe.

00:06:53.180 | And people have committed suicide

00:06:55.140 | from these sorts of patterns of activity.

00:06:58.180 | Just very briefly,

00:06:59.020 | because it was also covered in the interview episode

00:07:01.620 | I did with Anna Lembke about addiction.

00:07:05.300 | Some of you might be asking,

00:07:06.980 | what should I do if I experience a drop

00:07:09.420 | in my baseline level of dopamine

00:07:11.620 | because of engagement with some activity

00:07:14.420 | or some substance that led to big peaks?

00:07:16.900 | Just to put some color and example on this,

00:07:20.900 | a few episodes ago,

00:07:21.900 | I talked about a friend who I've known a long time.

00:07:25.180 | This is actually the child of a friend

00:07:26.740 | who has basically become addicted to video games.

00:07:30.340 | He decided actually after seeing that episode with Anna

00:07:33.020 | to do a 30-day complete fast from phone,

00:07:37.220 | from video games and from social media of all kinds.

00:07:40.260 | He's now at day 29.

00:07:41.700 | He's really accomplished this.

00:07:43.820 | Not incidentally, his levels of concentration,

00:07:46.220 | his overall mood are up.

00:07:47.340 | He's doing far, far better.

00:07:49.700 | What he did is hard

00:07:50.900 | in particular the first 14 days is really hard.

00:07:53.420 | But the way that you replenish

00:07:55.580 | the releasable pool of dopamine

00:07:57.620 | is to not engage in these dopaminergic seeking behaviors.

00:08:01.900 | Because remember, typically people arrive at a place

00:08:04.660 | where they want to stop engaging in these behaviors

00:08:06.900 | or ingesting substances when that dopamine is depleted,

00:08:09.940 | when they're not getting the same lift.

00:08:11.460 | In his case, he was feeling depressed.

00:08:13.040 | He thought he had ADHD.

00:08:14.340 | They were starting to treat it as ADHD.

00:08:17.220 | And certainly there are people out there who have ADHD,

00:08:19.980 | but what he found was

00:08:20.900 | that his levels of concentration are back.

00:08:22.500 | He does not need to be treated for ADHD.

00:08:25.500 | And actually the psychiatrist wondered

00:08:26.860 | if he did prior to this video game, social media fast.

00:08:30.860 | He's feeling good.

00:08:31.700 | He's exercising again.

00:08:33.300 | I'm not making this up.

00:08:34.380 | This is really a very specific,

00:08:37.680 | but very relevant example

00:08:40.140 | of how the dopamine system can replenish itself.

00:08:43.460 | Of course, if there's a clinical need for ADHD treatment,

00:08:45.980 | by all means pursue that.

00:08:47.520 | But I think a lot of ADHD does go misdiagnosed

00:08:52.120 | because of this depletion in dopamine that occurs

00:08:54.700 | because of overindulgence and other activities

00:08:56.780 | in the drop in baseline.

00:08:58.460 | So for anyone that's experienced a real drop in baseline

00:09:01.500 | who has addictive tendencies,

00:09:03.980 | whether or not they're behaviors or substances,

00:09:05.640 | that is always going to be the path forward

00:09:09.780 | is going to be either cold turkey

00:09:11.700 | or through some sort of tapering to limit interactions

00:09:15.580 | with what would otherwise be the dopamine evoking behavior

00:09:19.180 | or substance.

00:09:20.180 | So if I were to just put a really simple message

00:09:23.860 | around dopamine, it would be,

00:09:25.620 | there's a molecule in your brain and body

00:09:27.680 | that when released tends to make you look outside yourself,

00:09:32.680 | pursue things outside yourself

00:09:35.440 | and to crave things outside yourself.

00:09:38.520 | The pleasure that arrives from achieving things

00:09:41.880 | also involves dopamine,

00:09:43.240 | but is mainly the consequence of other molecules.

00:09:46.500 | [upbeat music]

00:09:49.080 | [upbeat music]

00:09:51.660 | (upbeat music)

How to Quit Video Game, Pornography & Social Media Addiction | Dr. Andrew Huberman

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