the connoisseur’s guide to doping
cheap vs. deep dopamine
i have a lot of compassion for dopamine.
why?
because it’s so misunderstood.
we call it the pleasure molecule. but that’s wrong.
it’s more like the motivation molecule.
a tiny cheerleader inside each of us, making us feel good and supporting us as we work towards achieving our goals.
enter: the dopamine wave pool
think of your supply of dopamine as a wave pool1.
peaks and troughs. the higher the peak, the lower the trough.
at the peak, you’re highly motivated, feeling good.
in the trough, you lack motivation, feel meh.
you can power the wave pool with two types of fuel:
deep dopamine
cheap dopamine
deep dopamine
is indirect. it comes as a byproduct of effort and challenge.
think: creating
learning a new skill
going for a run
facing a fear
achieving a goal
///
remember our cheerleader? she’s rooting for us, giving us encouragement with squirts of dopamine as we pursue our goals.
cheap dopamine
is direct. you can practically get it IV’d into our bloodstream. some do — it’s called shooting heroin.
think: consuming
tiktok
food
tv
porn
drugs
let’s check in with the wave pool
deep dopamine looks like this:
~balanced~
controlled waves
unfortunately, you won’t find any megahits of dopamine here.
but you also won’t have a gnarly comedown.
cheap dopamine is another story
it’s a wave pool gone wild
massive waves
even bigger crashes
as the wave comes crashing down, our dopamine cheerleader gets wiped out (she’s the one bouncing on the dolphin back there).
so you’re left without a cheerleader. your motivation hits rock bottom.
go to the gym? ya right.
you can hardly summon the courage to get out of bed.
but you manage to pick up your phone and open tiktok. boom, we’ve got the wild dopamine wave pool firing again.
high peaks of pleasure followed by bleak troughs.
the secret button
imagine you’re playing your favorite game. & the goal is to get the treasure at the end.
what if you found a secret button that gave you the treasure without playing the levels?
at first, it’s awesome. you hit the button and get the treasure right away.
but after a while, you start to feel bored. you’re not playing through the levels and facing the challenges that made getting the treasure so exciting in the first place.
cheap dopamine is like the secret button.
it feels good at first but leaves us feeling empty and bored because we didn’t do anything to earn it.
plus, it wipes out our cheerleader—leaving us without the motivation to do anything but consume more cheap dopamine.
it’s a vicious loop.
deep dopamine is choosing to play through all the levels, embracing the challenges along the way.
the game is hard, but that’s the reason we play it.
as kevin kelly says,
the reward for good work is more work.
put more simply,
the work is the win.
-billy oppenheimer
til next week,
-t
p.s. i wrote 11,042 words for this piece. then reduced it to 530 because i love and respect you.
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I like the breakdown between deep versus cheap domaine.
brilliant!