addiction

To call my response to aripiprazole every addiction rolled into one is not an overstatement. Addiction is dopamine-driven and aripiprazole bound directly to my receptors. I now believe that all addiction is the same thing, and certain types of trauma actually *are* addiction in themselves, on a biochemical level.

I killed many addictions over the years, or so I said, but I always knew it was just substitution. I quit alcohol and got hooked on work, then exercise, then weed, then art; there seemed to be no end.

Whatever I did, my life was just one addiction to the next, and my job was trying to ensure that these addictions stayed positive and productive.

But they were still addictions and they were still killing me on the inside, leaving me more empty the more I consumed. This counted for exercise, healthy eating, reading, computer games, spending time with my children, respect, trading bitcoin, everything. It is all the same mechanism. It is all dopamine, and dopamine does not discriminate between good or bad.

Addiction is essentially high phasic dopamine. It’s when the wave pool of motivation is choppy. The fluctuations are what keep you going back for more: you do something, you feel good, you stop it, you feel bad, you do it again but need more this time to feel good, and the cycle perpetuates.

I had a traumatic schoolhood with lots of peer-violence. Who won the fights is irrelevant (me!) but the fights themselves, and their repeated nature, are what made me so easily addicted over the years.

As mentioned, dopamine does not discriminate. These random acts of violence multiple times per week for years will have primed my dopamine system for action, and once primed this system does not just forget. Dopamine is how we learn; how we think.

So school cranks up phasic dopamine (I call it ‘dvar’ for dopamine variability) in the name of self-defence, and then this dopamine stays high. People for the rest of my life will ask me how I stay so motivated; low tonic dopamine and high phasic dopamine is how. I feel shit when I stop so keep pushing the volume higher and higher on the achievements and thrills.

But this dvar invariable grows as you feed it. This is addiction in itself. 

I can develop a dopamine latch to anything in a very short space of time. Many of these latches are to ideas: I want to be this kind of person. Others are to behaviours. Or people. Or drugs. You get the picture. The mechanism is all the same. It’s all because of low tonic dopamine (low baseline) and high phasic dopamine (high variability).

So while I was replacing harmful addictions with wholesome addictions, all I was really doing was increasing my level of ‘global addiction’ and making things worse. The emptiness inside only grew. These were wholesome things now like exercise, healthy food, family experiences, art. It was still making me worse.

Even yesterday I popped onto a forum to mention that the drugs they were using are probably not what they think. I kept it cordial and nice and only expressed concern, but afterward I could feel my dopamine variability was higher; I could feel my motivation spiking, and how it could start the same cycle again, like those twitter addicts. So I nipped it in the bud.

The thing is we are told to replace and to consume. We are told that to stop drinking we should start exercising and that’s fine, because the dopamine needs somewhere to go, but it is unsustainable over the course of a lifetime. Just like the monkey needing twice the bananas for the same dopamine response, we need to keep turning up the volume over and over.

And I think this is why childhood trauma, particularly of the violent or sexual type, can result in heavy addictions in later life. Being physically pushed into hyper-dopaminergic states at such an early age maybe starts you out at 60% of your dvar capacity, while those with a peaceful childhood start out around 20%. The 20%ers might survive a lifetime of flashing lights, but us 60%ers will not. We will start to feel empty, and when we find a corpse in our local park and the dopamine latch switches over to mental formations of suicide… that’s when it ends. Because dopamine is gravity; it’s inescapable.

So how to fix it?

There’s only one way I know: step back from the world.

Maybe this is why rehab works for a lot of people, if they take it seriously. They get away from all the bells and whistles, all the facebooks and newsfeeds and stock prices and internet shopping.

It gets you away from your friends, away from your family, away from your games and your bike and your controlled diet. Away from your meditation and yoga and striving for enlightenment.

The whole point is: addiction is dopamine variability. It’s all the same.

That dopamine variability can latch onto *anything* and will only grow if left unchecked.

This is one reason I am so concerned about the current usage of AI. When I built my company there were two sectors I swore never to work with: military and advertising. If you ask me, advertising is probably the more harmful of the two.

Military might mean extermination but will more likely mean an empire, and the proletariat are generally ok in an empire. It might be a bumpy ride but most of us would probably survive.

Advertising, though, with AI… that’s all about increasing people’s dopamine variability, increasing their craving, their dissatisfaction. And then this stronger dopamine latch will eventually flip over to something else, and you will get rage murders or suicide. This is what harms the proletariat.

So if you’ve been noticing that feeling of emptiness growing inside you, or an insatiable need for ‘something’, especially if you don’t know what that something is, it’s time to take a step back from the world for a while. Get away from everything; especially the exciting and unpredictable.

Because addiction is all the same.

It’s high phasic dopamine; high dopamine variability.

The dopamine hacking narrative is broken and will invariably lead to greater suffering.

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