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

So, let's talk about dopamine. Most people have heard of dopamine and we hear all the time now about dopamine hits. But actually, there's no such thing of as a dopamine hit. And actually, the way that your body uses dopamine is to have a baseline level of dopamine, meaning an amount of dopamine that's

circulating in your brain and body all the time. And that turns out to be important for how you feel generally, whether or not you're in a good mood, motivated, etc. And you also can experience peaks in dopamine above baseline. But if you remember nothing else from this episode, please remember this. That when you experience something or

you crave something really desirable, really exciting to you, very pleasurable, what happens afterwards is your baseline level of dopamine drops. Okay? So, these peaks in dopamine, they influence how much dopamine will generally be circulating afterward. And you might think, "Oh, a big peak in dopamine, after that, I'm going to feel even better because I just had this

great event." Not the case. What actually happens is that your baseline level of dopamine drops. Fortunately, most people do not experience or pursue enormous increases in dopamine leading to these severe drops in baseline. Many people do, however, and that's what we call addiction. When somebody pursues a drug or an activity that leads to huge increases in

dopamine, and now you understand that afterward the baseline of dopamine drops because of depletion of dopamine, the readily releasable pool, the dopamine is literally not around to be released, and so people feel pretty lousy. And many people make the mistake of then going and pursuing the dopamine-evoking, the dopamine-releasing activity or substance again,