02/09/2025
I hear a lot of people talking about dopamine and addiction and needing a “dopamine detox.” These ideas are not based in science and it just is not how dopamine works. We need dopamine to survive. National Geographic had a great article about this, here’s an excerpt:
“Dopamine doesn’t actually make you feel good—here's the science behind the 'happy hormone'
Dopamine rushes, withdrawals, and detoxes are trending among wellness gurus online. But experts say the science behind the trendy phrases doesn’t hold up.
Dopamine is widely known as a “feel-good” hormone, a major reason why we may feel happy after a shopping spree or eating pizza.
Thousands of TikTok videos reveal how interested people have become in boosting or lowering their daily doses of dopamine—whether through dopamine “rushes” and “withdrawals,” or dopamine “fasts” and “resets.”
But now that the chemical has become an obsession among wellness gurus, scientists who study it want to make it clear: Dopamine can do a lot of things, but making us “feel good” isn’t one of them.
Dopamine doesn’t work like that, and it’s certainly not a “catch-all term for happiness,” says Daniel Dombeck, a neurobiology professor at Northwestern University who studies the molecule.
(Why dopamine drives you to do hard things—even without a reward.)
Dopamine is a sophisticated neurotransmitter that also acts like a hormone and plays critical roles in learning, movement, memory, attention, mood, and motivation. While dopamine contributes to our feelings of pleasure, it doesn’t directly cause them—and it definitely doesn’t act alone.
There's a lot of ignorance about what dopamine does and how the brain functions,” says Anne-Noël Samaha, an associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at the University of Montreal who studies the science of rewards and motivation. But in a nutshell, “it’s one of the molecules that allows us to stay alive.”
…“It's not the molecule of pleasure,” Samaha says. “It's the molecule of the pursuit of pleasure.” “
