Dopamine addiction is real

   Dopamine is a very important neurotransmitter compound in the brain.  It is the brain's "feel good" compound that gives us our natural "high" when something good happens to us.   It re-enforces our desire to repeat an action or activity that we perceive as good for us.   We don't often think about what internally drives us to do the things we do.   We like to think we give money to various charities because we are inherently "good people" but how much of it is from our own brains internal desire to get another shot of dopamine?

   We look down our noses at drug addicts for their weakness to turn away from dangerous chemicals but when it gets down to it, in some sense we are all drug addicts.  Dopamine is such a strong chemical that few of us can say no to its lure.   What is worse, we don't even know that we are addicted to it.   No needle needs to be injected.  No pill swallowed.   No bottle to drink.   Nothing needs to be snorted, or inhaled.   It's always available.  It's always in store and ready to be consumed.  All that is needed is the proper stimulus to activate it and the list of activators is almost endless:

• Shopping
• Exercising
• Skydiving 
• Mountain climbing
• Tricks on skateboards
• Racing cars
• Riding motorcycles
• Getting good grades at school
• Getting promotions at work
• Eating
• Sugars
• Carbs
• Doing charity work
• Social media
• submitting pictures to Instagram
• posting on Facebook
• tweeting on Twitter
• blogging on YouTube
• Cleaning the house
• Organizing
• etc. etc. etc.

   Dopamine is important.  It's what allows us to get good at various activities.  Let's face it.  We all have to start somewhere and usually it's at the bottom.  In order to get better at anything we need to repeat it over and over again.   But unless there is some internal "reward system" it's very difficult to find the energy to repeat a process.   Small rewards act as that reward system and encourage us to try again and again.

   The school system has long been the biggest source of dopamine pushers.  From little on, we were given bright GOLD STARS on our little works of art or assignments to reward us for our effort.   Seeing those gold stars on our paper would give us our first push of dopamine into our little 5 year old brains and BAM!! We were hooked.  We would do anything to get another one of those gold stars or see our name listed on a bulletin board for high achievement or honors.   Even if he we ourselves were not the recipient of the reward it would many times flow down to us as well.   I can still remember seeing my brother Jim who was 4 years older than me graduate from high school with a gold cord hanging over his shoulders for "Honor Roll".   I was going to be a freshmen the next year and thought to myself "If Jim can be Honor Roll then I know I can be too!"  I put a plan into place the next year to prove I could do it (before I was just a A/B student).   Four years later I walked down the aisle with the same gold cord over my shoulders and surpassing my brother with a 4.0 (he only had a 3.93).  That was probably my biggest push of dopamine I had ever experienced.

    Dopamine rules the world.  It's what drives us to build bigger, faster, stronger, cheaper, better.  It drives businessmen to expand their businesses.  It drives the wealthy to become wealthier.  It drives the Philanthropist to give away even more.  It drives the worker to work even harder.  It drives the athlete to play harder and practice more.  It drives the actor to take on more challenging roles.  It drives the musician to go on the road and perform on stage in front of thousands.

   But it also has it's downside as not every dopamine activator is beneficial over the long term.  Take for example the most common activator today:  Social Media.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pintrest are all built around a common theme.  Feedback.   Whether it's a re-post, re-tweet, a "like" or a comment, it all serves the same purpose: to give the user a dopamine shot.  How many of us post a comment or picture on Facebook and await our friends replies and comments.  We sit there anxiously waiting for their hopefully "positive" replies.   We might even hold off on a post in the evening because we know most of our friends might be asleep and not see it.   Like the old philosophical question goes: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sounds?  So likewise, if I make a great post and no one sees it, does it matter?   I think we are not so much interested in changing the world as we are in getting our little daily/hourly/minute injection of dopamine.  If we are so lucky to have a comment go viral or at least go into the double/triple digits we may be high for the rest of the day or week as we achieved a new level of gold stars.  Also, heaven forbid, if we get a "negative comment" we become like a heroin addict who must fight back against those are threatening to take away their drugs.   We unleash on these poor bastards all the furry of hell who dare to challenge our view and our source of self-pleasure and self-worth.

   Another problem I think social-media has also had on our world is that it allows people to escape from the problems in their life.   Remember the list of things I said dopamine drives us to do?   Build bigger, faster ... work harder?  What if I am already getting all the dopamine I need through social-media?   What if my life is full enough by getting re-tweeted or "liked"?   Do I need to work hard at work?   Do I need to get promoted?   Do I need to hear praise from my boss or co-worker?  Maybe not.   Some people have labelled Millennials as "lazy".   I really don't think that is the case at all.   I think that, for many, they are getting their dopamine from social-media and so their brain's need for more dopamine is all tapped out.  At the same time, social-media can serve as surrogate supplier in bad times as well.  For example, in previous generations if you didn't get a great review from your boss you would work hard to fix it the next year to get a better review (a gold star).  But today, many can retreat their their other world of social media to pump them up and restore their lost dopamine supply.   The problem with this alternate source of dopamine, however, is that it's not a longer term supplier of what we need as a society.  Tweets or Posts, for the most of us, are not going to pay for a house, raise a family or provide a retirement income.  Escapism, whether with drugs, alcohol or social media, never works out in the end.

   As with any drug, it's the misuse of the drug that leads to problems rather than the what the drug is trying to do.   Pain killers, for example, are meant to dampen the pain receptors.  In the right context they allow the body to relax and the area that is causing the pain (maybe post surgery stitches) to heal. The problem becomes when the person only feels normal when they are taking the pain medicine and do other terrible things to fill that addition such as: lying to doctors, embezzlement, robbery and even murder. Likewise, dopamine addiction too causes the user to do things that are harmful to them or others.   The skydiver must take riskier jumps.   The sugar addict becomes obese.  The work addict ignores their family needs.   The social-media addict spends much of their time re-checking their account to check for responses and thinking of better ways to increase their positive feedback.  The texting addict drives with their knees on the steering wheel or with one hand firmly on the phone and their vision down and away from the on coming traffic unaware they have slowly drifted into the opposite lane. In all of these cases dopamine addiction was the root cause for their destruction.

   So next time you post another Facebook comment or tweet another snarky comment on Twitter, or sending another funny text message to a friend, maybe you should first ask yourself this:

Am I a dopamine addict?

Internet resonance can be destructive

     Even though I am using the Internet right now as I write the blog and even though as a computer engineer I owe much of my living because of it,  I can say without a doubt that I absolutely detest it.   It reminds me of a famous video I had to watch in college in an "Introduction to Engineering" course where we watched how bad engineering can have disastrous effects.   Take for example the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse

     This famous video shows the destructive force wind gusts and "standing waves" can have on a steel and concrete bridge structure.  This happens when the gusts of wind happens to match the natural resonance of the bridge and the wave grows bigger with every little gust of wind.   This resonance builds and builds until finally the bridge cannot take it anymore and it rips apart and collapses into a pile of rubble.

    This is how I feel our world is being ripped apart by the internet and those who think that there little pushing and shoving doesn't do much but when combined with thousands of others pushing and shoving at the same time it can have a disastrous affect on our country and societies foundations.  Every little sarcastic tweet, every little nasty comment in a comment section of a blog or news article, every little hurtful comment on a pizza restaurants Yelp page, every little lie about a person or group of people on Facebook or other social media outlets.   All of these build and build on each other an will eventually lead to our own downfall. Take for example the case of the pizza restaurant under siege because their teenage daughter answered a hypothetical question about if they would cater a gay wedding.  Her answer was sincere and it launched a tirade of hateful comments on Twitter, Yelp and Facebook.   The restaurant has had to close because they could not answer the phone anymore for orders.  Their Yelp page was loaded with bogus ratings and comments.  Even a person from Wisconsin tweeted out if anyone was interested in going down to Indiana to burn the place down.  All this over one innocent comment on a hypothetical situation that would never occur (Really?  Pizza for a gay wedding???)

    In the case of the bridge, the answer to the problem was to design the bridge to interrupt the wind gusts and change its natural resonance frequency to a frequency that was highly unlikely to ever occur in nature.    Maybe such an answer is needed here as well.  Maybe what we need is to have Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools randomly delay our messages to when they are posted so that they do not immediately affect society in destructive manners.   This allows your message to still be posted, but it removes the instant gratification we get that can be so harmful because it feeds our egos to post again and again ... and again!   It will also serve to interrupt our posts destructive effect on others who may see our post and be emboldened to either retaliate or say something even worse. 

    But maybe a better answer is to just turn off social media altogether and live our lives like the world DOESN'T depend on me.   After all isn't that the feeling you get when you are plugged into the internet?   That it all depends on me?   We develop a god-like persona when we flip it on.   I am instantly heard by thousands or even millions.   I can see everything going on in the world.   I am prayed to by thousands of "followers".  I am loved (or at least "liked") by many people.   I can make myself into an expert on any subject with a simple click into Wikipedia and a quick perusal of the first paragraph without needing to dig to deep into the content.  Along with this god-like feeling of omnipotence, I have the added feeling of superiority over all who disagree with me because I am not alone either for there are many other gods like myself who also agree with me because we all read the same websites that reinforce our views.

    Maybe we just need to chill and be nice to one another again before this bridge falls apart.