Itchy and Scratchy

Turns out dopamine isn’t what I thought it was… I thought I was a simple lab rat seeking sugar solution with my many pastimes.

But it turns out dopamine is a motivator not a reward… Dopamine is the itch not the scratch; and that’s why it’s so motivating.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

In popular culture and media, dopamine is usually seen as the main chemical of pleasure, but the current opinion in pharmacology is that dopamine instead confers motivational salience; in other words, dopamine signals the perceived motivational prominence (i.e., the desirability or aversiveness) of an outcome, which in turn propels the organism’s behavior toward or away from achieving that outcome.

And thus dopamine doesn’t bring satisfaction. In fact, I’ve discovered, the opposite – the more you scratch the more it itches. Dopamine powers learning and curiosity; and seems to reward it. But once you’re in a dopamine cycle it just itches and itches and itches.

It’s dopamine which powers all addictions: drugs, gambling and alcohol most notably. But it also fuels any form of compulsive behaviour; wherever your subconscious tells you you need to “feed your need” from marathon running to marathon eating, dopamine is urging you on.

So now I’m starting to understand why my jockey is forever lost…

I’ve been chasing dopamine; instead of letting life be its own reward.