Science | Psychology

Do I Really Need to Worry About Too Much Dopamine?

Dopamine Brain by Joe Duncan

This week, I saw three embarrassing articles about dopamine on NPR’s website.

1. Too much pleasure can lead to addiction. How to break the cycle and find balance.
2. Anti-dopamine parenting’ can curb a kid’s craving for screens or sweets.
3. In ‘Dopamine Nation,’ Overabundance Keeps Us Craving More, which was featured on Terry Gross’ show Fresh Air.

The premise?

Dopamine underpins all addictions.

So, the simple version is, if you don’t vigilantly monitor the things that could stimulate dopamine in your brain, you’ll end up overindulging in an array of everyday things, from sex to smartphones to sweets. That’s the soft version of the message.

The unalloyed version of the message says that these things are not only habit-forming but addictive “like a drug” and that we’re not actually addicted to heroin or alcohol. What we’re really addicted to is the dopamine “hit” we receive from the anticipation of these things.

Readers of my Substack, The Science of Sex, know that this claim sounds familiar. There, I’ve debunked the twin myths of “porn addiction” (here) and “sex addiction” (here) with prominent researchers Dr. Nicole Prause, Ph.D. and Dr. David Ley, Ph.D., respectively.

You should know right off the bat I’m extremely skeptical of such sweeping claims. They garner clicks and attention in the attention economy, but statements like these almost always rest on dubious science. The dopamine hypothesis of addiction is no exception.

3D rendering of a dopamine molecule, created in After Effects by Joe Duncan

The Replication Crisis in Psychology

I recently covered the replication crisis in psychology (here) and the fake news epidemic that’s spawned from it. According to a 2015 research paper, some researchers are inventing fake mental illnesses (the so-called “behavioral addictions”) to get their names out there.

Behavioral addiction is the idea that you can become addicted to something that isn’t a…