Dopamine disappoints whether you’ve linked it to a healthy or unhealthy way of meeting your needs. Like the juiced-up monkeys in Chapter 2, your brain takes the juice you have for granted instead of cranking out more happy chemicals. But if you lose the juice you took for granted, you’re darned unhappy. Managing such a brain is not easy, but it’s the responsibility that comes with the gift of life.
The Constant Search for the “First High”
Drug addicts say they are always “chasing the first high.” The first use of a drug triggers more pleasure than you could ever get from a natural source of happy chemicals. But the second time, it’s no longer the most intense experience ever—unless you take more than you did the first time. You constantly choose between disappointment and taking more.
Our brain chases the first high, whether it’s a natural high or an artificial high. Artificial highs build artificially big circuits and have big side effects, but even natural happiness stimulators have harmful side effects if repeated too often. People are tempted to repeat a happy habit despite the consequences because a droop in your happy chemicals leaves you face to face with your cortisol. Whether you are seeking the next margarita or the next career opportunity, your dopamine flows the moment you start seeking it, but when you get it, it’s not as thrilling as you expected.
The Thrill of the Chase
The act of seeking is more rewarding than you probably realize. If you decide that a doughnut is the way to feel good, your dopamine flows as you search for a parking spot near the doughnut shop. It’s the same mental activity as foraging: scanning the world for details leading to a reward. When you find a parking spot, your dopamine soars. But when you finally get the doughnut, dopamine droops quickly because it has already done its job.
Computer games are alluring because of this urge to seek. But disappointment quickly sets in if you seek the same reward over and over. That’s why computer games focus on getting to the next level. You feel excited because you are approaching a new reward, even though it doesn’t meet any real needs.
Museums and shopping malls are other popular ways to stimulate the pleasure of seeking. They would lose their appeal if they always looked the same, so new exhibits and new merchandise are always brought in. If you have ever lost interest in a shopping mall or museum or computer game, you might have said “it’s not as good as it used to be.” You didn’t realize the change was in you—you stopped releasing dopamine because there was no new information for your brain to process.
Collecting is a popular hobby because it overcomes dopamine disappointment. A collector always has something to seek. When he finds it, he avoids dopamine droop by starting the next quest. A collection gives you many “needs” to fill, and you have to process a lot of detail so your mind is always distracted from unhappy chemicals. You can also bond with other collectors to stimulate oxytocin. And if you one-up other collectors, you enjoy serotonin. You never hear collectors say, “I don’t need anything else. I’ll just enjoy my collection as it is.” You have to keep seeking to keep stimulating dopamine.
Planning a project triggers dopamine. A big project like a party, home remodel, or life transition stimulates excitement with each step because you’ve linked that goal to your needs. Dopamine gets you through the inevitable frustration of a long-term project. But once the party is over or the house is remodeled, your dopamine droops. You don’t know why you feel bad, and you think maybe something is wrong. If you start a new project, you feel better.
Travel is a great dopamine stimulator. It bombards your senses with new inputs that you have to process in order to reach your goal of being a worldly person, or just to do a simple task like get breakfast. Planning a trip stimulates dopamine as you anticipate the great feeling of being at your destination. And when you arrive at that tropical paradise with its perfect bands of blue and white, you get a rush of excitement. But in a few minutes, you are busy looking for your toothbrush. The next morning, you may feel excitement again when you wake up and see where you are. But as the day wears on, you become who you were before the vacation.
Dopamine has fueled human accomplishment. Thomas Edison stayed up late, seeking filament for a light bulb. Diseases were cured because researchers spent long hours sifting and sorting details in search of patterns. When they found what they were looking for, they typically set out in search of a new goal. Our brains were not designed for sitting around contemplating what we already have. They don’t release excitement for nothing. They were meant to dip after a spurt so we have to do something again.
Romantic love is perhaps the most familiar example of dopamine disappointment. When people are “in love,” they don’t realize they are riding high on the dopamine of a long quest. But the same old reward does not excite dopamine forever. It dips, and then unhappy chemicals get your attention. You may blame the bad feeling on your partner. You may think your partner is “not who she used to be.” You may even decide that a new partner would make you happy, because the last new partner triggered a surge that built a pathway. But if you seek the excitement of new love all the time, you may create a vicious cycle.
EXERCISE: WHEN DOES YOUR DOPAMINE DROOP?
If you bite into a brownie that’s the best you ever tasted, the second bite cannot be “the best you’ve ever tasted.” The first bite triggers a surge of dopamine, but the surge fades even as you polish off the brownie. Your brain saves dopamine for new information instead of wasting it on the same old rewards. The same is true when you get a smile from a special someone, or a nice career boost. Your dopamine surges at first, but continued rewards don’t trigger continued dopamine. When your dopamine droops, it feels like something is wrong with the world, or with you. That disappointment feels less threatening when you know your brain is making way for the new. Notice your dopamine droop when:
Something doesn’t thrill you the way it once did
Something doesn’t feel as good as you expected after you get it
Something new excites you after you reach a long-sought goal
Endorphin Disappointment
The great feeling of endorphin always droops in a short time because that promotes survival. Masking pain feels good, but you need to feel your pain in order to take action to relieve it. If you expect constant happiness from endorphin, you will be disappointed.
Exercise triggers the euphoric feeling, but if you repeat the same exercise routine, you won’t feel the same response you did the first time. It takes an increase in exertion to the point of pain to stimulate endorphin. So if you took the drastic step of inflicting pain on yourself to get a rush of endorphin, it would take more and more pain to trigger the same good feeling.
Starving yourself stimulates endorphin, but you have to starve more and more to keep getting that feeling. Starving triggers endorphin because it helped our ancestors forage in lean times. The ability to seek on an empty stomach promotes survival. If you’ve ever missed a couple of meals, you may have started feeling a little high. The good feeling stopped as soon as you ate something, but you ate anyway because you know that nutrition is necessary for survival.
Self-Inflicted Pain Is Not the Way to Happiness
Hurting your body to enjoy the endorphin is a mistaken path to happiness. It can only lead to a tragic vicious cycle in which you continually need to experience more pain to get the same endorphin rush. This cycle of endorphin disappointment helps us understand why people who hurt themselves seem inclined to hurt themselves more. When the oblivion of endorphin is over, you are suddenly face to face with reality. You may not like your reality, but we are not meant to ignore pain except for a brief emergency window. We are meant to live with the droop.
If you don’t exercise, you should. But if you count on the endorphin joy you get at first, you may not continue. Exercise feels good even without endorphin because it fills your blood with oxygen that goes to your head. If you think you need to exercise to the point of an endorphin high, you will end up injured. We did not
evolve to inflict pain on ourselves intentionally to get an endorphin high. Pain warns you of an imminent survival threat. In the world before emergency rooms and anesthesia, a bad feeling was incentive enough to avoid pain-inflicting behaviors.
Synthetic Endorphin Highs
Opium derivatives (heroin, oxycodone, morphine, codeine) stimulate endorphin, but they have terrible side effects:
They undermine your natural happy-chemical mechanism.
They mask any pain you have while using them, resulting in dangerous neglect of personal care.
You habituate to them, so you need to use more to get the same effect. Harmful side effects accumulate quickly, leading to more unhappy chemicals, more urge to use, and a downward spiral.
Social pain does not trigger endorphin, but the euphoria of endorphin masks social pain. This is why it allures people to the point of enduring physical pain. Tragically, more pain results from this quest for oblivion.
EXERCISE: WHEN DOES YOUR ENDORPHIN DROOP?
Endorphin evolved for emergencies. The euphoria of endorphin doesn’t last because we need to feel pain to make good decisions. If you subject your body to pain just to get the endorphin, your body redefines what counts as an emergency. You have to keep subjecting yourself to more pain if you want to keep getting an endorphin high. When your endorphin droops, you suddenly notice the reality of your circumstances. Your brain is designed to notice reality because that promotes survival. It would be nice to laugh your way to constant endorphin highs, but it’s good to know that endorphin droop is natural and you are designed to manage the reality that comes with it. Notice your endorphin droop in these situations:
An exercise session that felt good but then you realized you overdid it
A joke that doesn’t make you laugh out loud anymore, even though you still like it
A light-headed feeling that ended with a delayed meal
A pain medication that doesn’t help as much as it once did
Oxytocin Disappointment
A good way to understand oxytocin disappointment is to imagine yourself getting a massage. The first few moments feel phenomenal. Then your mind drifts, and you can literally forget that you are receiving a massage. You enjoy it, of course, but the oxytocin explosion doesn’t last. You might blame your massage therapist, unless you know that your brain habituates to things, even great things.
Oxytocin is released at birth, easing the stress of coming into the world. But soon you need more. Animals lick their young and humans cuddle them to induce the release of oxytocin. The flow of oxytocin wires the child to trust the parent and to release oxytocin in similar circumstances. It would be nice to enjoy that feeling all the time, but if you think you can love everyone everywhere, you would take candy from strangers and eventually buy bridges from strangers. Your oxytocin must turn off after it turns on so you can respond to new information about your social environment.
Betrayed Trust and the Oxytocin Droop
Oxytocin protected your ancestors from leaving the tribe every time someone got on their nerves. It saved them from the dangers that befall lone individuals in the wilderness. Today, oxytocin protects you from quitting your job the minute a coworker wrinkles his forehead at you. It keeps you from running away from home the minute your relatives cluck their tongues at your latest adventure. When your oxytocin is flowing, it’s easier to overlook reminders of past disappointments and betrayals.
But when an oxytocin spurt fades, your past disappointments are suddenly more accessible. You can be so alert for threats that you feel attacked by a slight change in tone. Social threats seem to expand when the bubble of oxytocin is gone.
Children on a playground learn about social trust. When they get support, the good feeling wires them to expect more where that came from. When their cortisol is triggered, they learn not to expect support in certain quarters. If a classmate helps you with homework, you feel good and a path to your oxytocin is paved. But if a trusted companion insists on copying your homework, you have a dilemma.
Unhealthy Alliances and Oxytocin Disappointment
Oxytocin creates the bonds that lead to gangs, wars, battered spouse syndrome, and perjuring yourself to protect allies from the consequences of their actions. People do drastic things to sustain their oxytocin bonds because an oxytocin droop feels like a survival threat.
My grandparents came from Sicily, where the Mafia builds social bonds with the threat of violence. Mafias offer the illusion of safety by promising protection from violence if you cooperate. You’re not safe for long, alas, because the predators will see you as prey rather than an ally when it meets their needs. You learn that you cannot trust anyone. This sense of isolation leaves you feeling so endangered that you’re eager to trust those who offer protection and goodwill gestures. A vicious oxytocin cycle results.
No one mentioned the Mafia when I was growing up, and I presumed it was an invention of Hollywood. But when I researched my cultural heritage, I was horrified to discover the wretched lives of my ancestors. Surviving in a culture of violence means choosing at every moment between the survival threat of not cooperating and the survival threat of cooperating. Trust sounds like a virtue, but trusting a predator who expects complete submission may not promote survival . . . or it may. The uncertainty is staggering.
Gangs are an especially tragic example of oxytocin disappointment, because young brains are involved. Young people join gangs for protection from aggression, yet end up subjected to more aggression. The impulse is easy to understand in animals because common enemies keep a mammal group together despite internal aggression:
A zebra is often bitten by a herd mate, but it sticks with the herd because a lion quickly eats it if it leaves.
Monkeys and elephants stick with their groups despite harsh domination because their young are eaten alive if they leave.
Even lions and wolves stick with their groups because their meals are stolen by rival packs if they go it alone.
Gangs, like herds, stick together despite enormous internal agression because they fear external aggression even more. A gang needs the aggression of rival gangs to keep up the safe feeling associated with membership. Oxytocin makes it feel good to be “one of the gang” until the next betrayal, and the conflict keeps cycling.
Battered spouse syndrome and battered child syndrome are similar tragedies of oxytocin disappointment. Abused individuals sometimes cover up for their abusers instead of promoting their own survival. They blame themselves for the betrayal of trust and desperately seek ways to rekindle it. Instead of building new trust with new people, they keep trying to build it with the abuser because they’re wired to expect good feelings from them.
An alcoholic looking for someone to drink with is another example of oxytocin disappointment. People seek trust from those they expect to give it to them. Eaters bond with eaters, drug users bond with drug users, shoppers bond with shoppers, and angry ragers bond with angry ragers. These bonds help you feel good about yourself despite your drinking or shopping or raging. But when you decide to get control of your habit, you may be shocked to find that these allies do not support you. They may even undermine your efforts to conquer your habit. Many people end up continuing an unhealthy habit rather than risk their friendships. They tell themselves their “friends” make them feel good. The nice, safe feeling of trust doesn’t last, of course, so they keep seeking the safety of social alliances in the ways that worked before.
The pain of disappointed trust enters every life. We all seek safety from social bonds and occasionally discover that we are less safe than we thought. That’s why it’s important to keep updating your information about your social alliances. You may find that you have a lot more choices than you realized. If you try to sustain your oxytocin at any price, you might overlook real threats. Oxytocin disappointment feels bad, but it frees you to make good survival decisions about the world around you.
The Big Happy Family
You may think good parenting could
wire a brain for endless oxytocin. Or that you’d enjoy an endless flow if you were accepted by a particular group. It would be nice to have a safe sense of belonging all the time, and it’s tempting to dream of a world that makes this happen for you. But reality keeps falling short of this dream because people are mammals.
If your parents put your needs first when you were young, disappointment strikes when you learn that the rest of the world doesn’t treat you this way. And if your parents were not worthy of your trust, then you learned about disappointment even earlier. Either way, oxytocin droop is distressing, but it enables young mammals to transfer their attachment from their mother to their peers, and thus to reproduce.
Fitting In
You may have dreamed of joining a group that would make you feel good forever, and then felt disillusioned when you were finally accepted by it. It’s easy to idealize people from afar, especially people whose protection you seek. Once you gain admission, you see that these people are, well, mammals. You might start thinking that another group or organization would make you happy forever. A vicious cycle can result. Making new pathways to turn on your oxytocin will help break that cycle.
Habits of a Happy Brain Page 8