What? 🙀

• Do you know why you're reading this? Why you reach out and grab your 📱 before you even open your eyes in the morning? Why you suddenly want your coffee as soon as you get near your favorite coffee store? Do you know how your Wants come about?
• I’ve got bad news for you - we're all enslaved. Most of us (myself included) don't have much control over what we want and do. And that's getting worse and worse. If you don't realize it - you're a blind man at the wheel. Sorry to sound cliché, but this is much truer than you might think. Our autopilot behavior, driven by System 1 (hello, Daniel Kahneman), uses automatic, intuitive, quick daily decisions and is often driven by a little chemical called Dopamine.
• Dopamine is a chemical with a very simple formula (which I'll tattoo on my shoulder if I'm ever brave enough to do so). It's released in certain areas of the brain and affects neurons in different areas of the brain.
• There are so many effects that I struggle to list them all - each one requires some explanation. But think of it this way: everything you do beyond your skin, outside of your body, and everything you feel that motivates you to do it, is directly controlled by Dopamine. The movement itself is impossible without Dopamine stimulation.
• It's at the heart of decision making and motivation. It determines the level of motivation, the desire and willingness to exert effort. It makes us want and strive for things outside of ourselves. It compels us to seek, explore and achieve new things.
• In other words, if for some reason you didn't have dopamine, you wouldn't even be motivated to move, let alone make an effort to achieve something. You wouldn't even reach for food, and you might starve even if the food was right in front of you. That's exactly what happened in the experiment with genetically modified mice, which wouldn't even move a few inches to reach the food and starved to death. But when food was put in their mouths, they ate and enjoyed it.
• The main misconception about dopamine is that it's considered a molecule of pleasure. That's not the case at all. Dopamine is a molecule of anticipation, desire, drive, motivation and excitement - sometimes these things can be experienced as pleasure. It makes us think we'll like something when we get it, but it's nothing to do with whether we'll actually like it. Therefore, it's quite normal to look forward to something and then be a little disappointed when we get it.
• The mechanism of how it works in the brain is quite complicated, but what you need to know for this article is that you feel excitement and joy when dopamine levels rise. When it drops, you feel discomfort, frustration, and a desire to resolve it.

Reward-Prediction Error 🎰

• But what does that have to do with buying ice cream at the same store or smoking an occasional cigarette when I see the same friend? How does it lead to learning behaviors that I want and don't want? How does it lead to people becoming addicted to substances, things, or behaviors?
• This is called Cue-dependent learning, Pavlovian conditioning, or Reward-Prediction Error (RPE). Different names - same approach to shaping any behavior - harmful or not.
• If you wander around and find something you like (food, drug, behavior), then try it and like it, it triggers the release of Dopamine. This is an unexpected reward. This release stimulates learning and forces you to remember what you did or saw just before the stimulus that gave you so much pleasure. In this way, the Cues (clues, triggers) are formed and memorized.

• The modern version of wandering is... Instagram (or TicToc, whichever you prefer). Our brains love uncertainty and look for surprises (to create that dopamine release), and social media is made for that. They use the same mechanisms as the gambling industry - keeping you constantly in suspense, hoping that the next Story or Reel will bring you joy and excitement.
• The next time you encounter that cue, it triggers a dopamine surge and you look forward to what's associated with that cue. The cue itself can be anything in the environment or people around you, and most often you don’t realize what it is. The cue triggers a small anticipatory dopamine release that motivates you to seek the reward (creates Craving).

• You go for the Reward and when you get it and it meets (or exceeds) your expectations, you get an even bigger dopamine boost. This boost stimulates the learning process and makes you remember that the Cue → Craving → Reward sequence feels good and that you should do it that way next time.
• However, if the reward doesn't meet your expectations (you don't like it), dopamine drops below baseline, which feels terrible. This triggers the opposite process, teaching your brain that this sequence of Cue → Craving → Reward isn't so good for you and you're less likely to perform this behavior next time.