Gemma Speck

People who have a lot of dopamine, on the other hand, are the types who you meet who are forever planning.

They have a new business, a new scheme, a new partner.

They've always got something that they want to do.

They're never at rest.

They're always seeking the next thing.

They are living from one dopamine high to the next.

Now, are those people necessarily happier than most people, though?

No, even though they have more dopamine per se, or we assume they do, the studies would say they do, it's serotonin that gives us that stable mood and it's dopamine that pushes us to achieve and gain and have things that we think will give us happiness, that we think will give us stability, but are probably quite shallow because they only work to make us want more and more and more and

And to get slight reward and to experience the high of anticipation followed by the crash I think a lot of us are familiar with.

When we obtain the thing, when we obtain the object of our desire and we find that it's actually not that satisfying.

The best way I like to describe this or at least imagine this for myself is shopping, particularly people who really covet an item, who are like really pursuing a specific piece or a specific watch or they're always buying clothes, thinking this will be the thing that makes them happy, only to find that when they have it,

in their possession, they've bought it, they've got it, nothing much about their baseline happiness changes because they're confusing a dopamine hit, which is meant to be motivational, with long-term contentment.

Dopamine is short-term, not long-term.

This is why dopamine is heavily implicated in literature and in research around addiction.

It drives us to fulfill an immediate desire only, to fulfill our expectations, meaning that it will keep leading us back to drugs, back to gambling, back to nicotine, sugary food, poor financial decisions, whatever your vice is, because it knows these are the fastest pathways to anticipation,

fulfillment.

There's an amazing 2005 study that discusses this, and it talks about how dopamine actually also has a secondary role in attention, meaning people with disrupted dopamine levels or systems find it hard to

to physically look away, physically ignore or avoid what they desire.

Hence why this neurochemical is so powerful in addiction and getting hooked to things because the things that it's leading us back to are the things that are going to give us immediate reward, meaning that the anticipation is going to be greater, meaning that this object is going to be more motivational.

So that's really what's happening.