What did dopamine do to deserve this?

It’s become alarmingly common to invoke dopamine as the root cause of so many problems. But this demonisation of a vital and versatile neurotransmitter risks causing serious consequences for us all.

You wouldn’t think it was possible for a molecule to experience character assassination, but here we are anyway. But what exactly did dopamine do to deserve this?

Because a scant few years ago, dopamine was being referred to, regularly, as an all-round good thing. We weren’t just experiencing happiness or pleasure anymore. No, now we were ‘boosting dopamine’. Which apparently means the same thing, but it includes chemistry, so it’s more official. Or something.

Now, though? Things like phones and screens, technologies which have become indispensable for modern life, are regularly condemned on the grounds that they ‘induce dopamine’. Those that use such devices too much are chastised for chasing ‘dopamine hits’. They may even be ‘addicted to dopamine’. And to deal with or prevent these awful outcomes, you need to do a ‘dopamine detox’, or ‘dopamine fast’.

In an ideal world, any neuroscientist worthy of the title will readily point out that all of these labels and terms are misleading, oversimplifications, or just plain wrong. Nonsensical, even. The workings of the human brain are too complex for “nice important brain chemical is actually bad” to ever be a useful, or viable, framing.

How did we get to this point, where dopamine is getting blamed for any (often imaginary) problem and disorder that modern life can lead to?

There are many potential factors to consider.

The plot against pleasure

You could say that dopamine’s card was marked as soon as it became synonymous with ‘pleasure’ (it’s often referred to as ‘the pleasure chemical’).

In fairness, there are valid reasons for linking dopamine with pleasure, given how it’s the neurotransmitter that the brain’s reward pathway (the circuit deep within the brain that is responsible for producing the sensation of pleasure in the purest, most fundamental sense) depends on in order to function.

Objectively, this isn’t a good or a bad thing, it’s just… a thing. The brain has an impressive, but still ultimately limited, suite of neurotransmitters that it utilises for its myriad functions, so evolution had to give one of them (at least) the ‘allow pleasure to happen’ role. As it happens, dopamine got that gig.

And this isn’t because dopamine has unique pleasure-inducing traits at the molecular level, because it doesn’t. Any more than ‘o’ and ‘e’ are inherently romantic vowels, because they make up 50% of the word ‘love’.

However, dopamine’s association with pleasure has become a liability even so. Because we live in a society that, despite bombarding people with instructions to indulge themselves all day every day lest our economy collapse, regularly takes a dim view of anyone who pursues pleasure or enjoyment to a noticeable degree.

After all, pursuing too much pleasure¹ is gluttonous, decadent, sinful, and other words meaning “really bad”. There are, in fairness, many biological, evolutionary, historical and cultural factors behind this prevalent belief that overdoing pleasure is bad, and that self-discipline and abstinence are admirable traits. But nonetheless, it is the situation we find ourselves in.

The logic seems to be as follows; Pleasure = Bad, Dopamine = Pleasure, ipso facto, Dopamine = Bad.

Granted, it’s probably more complex than this. But I’d contend that’s the gist of it.

Perhaps dopamine’s reputation would have survived the association with pleasure, if it weren’t for the way in which it was consistently framed in the mainstream. Specifically, the media has long had a habit of linking anything shown to activate the brain’s reward pathway, and thus induce pleasure, with drugs.

If any study shows that something activates the brain’s reward pathway, it’ll invariably be pointed out that this is what drugs do. Whether it’s cheese, sugar, Facebook, or any other mundane thing, if it causes activity in the reward pathway, it’ll be compared to drugs when reported.

While this is technically true, it’s also a hugely misleading way of framing things. Yes, drugs of abuse activate the reward pathway. That’s why people like them. But this does not mean the reward pathway is the ‘drugs’ centre of the brain. That’s not what it’s for.

Saying enjoyable things “activate the same part of the brain as drugs”, that’s like reporting that someone took money out of account, and framing it as “They removed money from the bank, just like thieves do”. If you generalise an everyday process purely in terms of the worst, most nefarious way in which it’s used, then everything is going to be contaminated by negativity.

And so it is with dopamine. Our society has long been suspicious of pleasure, and dopamine being responsible for it means it's now being judged unfairly.

Science garnish and science substance.

The misuse of dopamine likely wouldn’t be as problematic if it wasn’t mentioned so often in everyday discourse. But it is.

In a sense, this is encouraging. It suggests neuroscience communicators, like me, must be doing something right.

On the other hand, when a scientific term enters everyday communication, it’s far more likely to be misused. Often for less-than-admirable ends.

Others likely have better and more astute ways of describing it, but I’d contend that dopamine is the latest term, along with “neuro”, “quantum”, “macro”, “bioactive”, “organic”, etc., to be hijacked and used to provide what I call “science garnish”.

We’ve all seen it. Whether it’s someone peddling some dubious ideology or theory, marketing a product based on less-than-scientific evidence, or just wanting to sound like they’re more knowledgeable than is the case, they can fall back on the tried and tested approach of sprinkling some recognisable scientific terms in among their blathering, to instantly seem more credible to those listening/reading. Science garnish.

It's the informational equivalent of sprinkling parsley on a lasagna that’s 90% horse offal. It may look nicer, but it isn’t.

Dopamine is often used in this manner. Most notably, when it comes to smartphones and social media. Because the actual evidence for such things being bad for mental health is weak to the point of non-existence. But older, more ‘outspoken’ adults are still deeply suspicious of them.

However, telling people “These devices that occupy a significant chunk of our lives should be banned, because we feel uneasy about them and the effects they have, for reasons that we cannot articulate and are almost entirely arbitrary” is a difficult sell. Not something you can build a campaign around.

But “These devices induce dopamine”, “These phones manipulate the dopamine system”, etc? That’s brain science. So it’s definitely cause for concern. And many seem to have agreed with this wholeheartedly.

What’s even worse is that the same thing has happened with ‘addiction’. Addiction and dopamine go hand in hand, for obvious reasons. There are even many people now referring to dopamine addiction as if it’s an actual thing. Which it isn’t. Saying you’re addicted to dopamine is like saying you’re looking at your own retina: you can’t do that, it’s too fundamental to the process.

But terms like “smartphone addiction”, “social media addiction”, “addicted to doomscrolling” etc. are very common in the discourse. But not in the diagnostic guidelines of mental healthcare, seeing as they aren’t recognised as actual disorders.

And addiction is a real and serious mental health issue with many key criteria, as well as a term loaded with history and stigma. But it now seems that when most people say ‘addiction’, they actually mean “someone doing something more than I am comfortable with according to my own arbitrary expectations”.

This isn’t good for anyone. People struggling with genuine addictions have their issues devalued by overuse and dismissal, like if papercuts were regularly described as ‘amputations’. Meanwhile, those who just have unhealthy habits and tendencies are labelled addicts, with all the stigma and weight behind the term, which can easily make matters worse.

These are just some of the ways in which the warping of the role of dopamine in wider culture does no good for anyone. In reality, dopamine is an important and versatile brain chemical, with numerous key roles in our everyday functioning.

It’s not a scapegoat or a punchbag, no matter how much certain quarters would like to use it as one.

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Dean Burnett writes The Neuroscience Of Everyday Life, and various books, including his latest, Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What To Do About It

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1. With “too much pleasure” usually being an entirely arbitrary measure.