Dopamine "Harshly criticizing" dopamine as the addiction drug is a huge overstatement. The article simply points out an early misconception, when we thought dopamine was a "pleasure" chemical instead of a "wanting" chemical. But tell me this: How does finding out Dopamine drives wanting and desire make it less responsible for addiction? It seems to me like this is even stronger evidence for it being linked to addiction, so how you used that article to come to this conclusion needs some explaining to me.
Yes, the paper itself was measured, but a direct statement by David Nutt made elswhere included the term "patently daft" to assume that dopamine is the driver of all addictions.
One of dopamine’s major roles is in helping us learn from cues that predict outcomes, whether good or bad. In the context of addiction, much research shows that dopamine enables both the sensation of wanting drugs or alcohol—or incentive salience, as neuroscientists call it—and the motivation to pursue them.
In fact, the neural systems of wanting and liking operate distinctly from each other. This explains why, over time, many addicts don’t feel much pleasure from a drug yet still feel strongly motivated to keep pursuing it. A less dramatic comparison: Just think of the potato chips you keep eating in one sitting, long after they stopped tasting so good.
Dopamine is not even the key neurotransmitter involved in addiction to all drugs. “It’s inconceivable that there can be just a single chemical that mediates all the effects of what addictive drugs have in common. That is so patently daft,” David Nutt of Imperial College London told me. Nutt is an esteemed neuropsychopharmacologist who studies the effect of drugs on the mind and behavior.
As Nutt and three colleagues explained in their detailed critique a decade ago of the so-called “dopamine theory of addiction,” only stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine act intensely and directly on the dopamine system to increase dopamine levels. These levels, in turn, are associated with the user’s immediate experience of a pleasurable high.
To me it makes a lot of sense that the neurotransmitter involved with addiction wouldn’t create pleasure, exactly because of the fact that I can relate to the potato chip experience. If pleasure was the thing driving me to continue then I would stop long before I crush the family size bag of kettle chips. Same with the drug addicts seeking the drug without getting a high anymore
Dopamine "Harshly criticizing" dopamine as the addiction drug is a huge overstatement. The article simply points out an early misconception, when we thought dopamine was a "pleasure" chemical instead of a "wanting" chemical. But tell me this: How does finding out Dopamine drives wanting and desire make it less responsible for addiction? It seems to me like this is even stronger evidence for it being linked to addiction, so how you used that article to come to this conclusion needs some explaining to me.
Dear Darth Danzi
Yes, the paper itself was measured, but a direct statement by David Nutt made elswhere included the term "patently daft" to assume that dopamine is the driver of all addictions.
Some background from https://www.thefp.com/p/can-you-really-be-addicted-to-social
One of dopamine’s major roles is in helping us learn from cues that predict outcomes, whether good or bad. In the context of addiction, much research shows that dopamine enables both the sensation of wanting drugs or alcohol—or incentive salience, as neuroscientists call it—and the motivation to pursue them.
In fact, the neural systems of wanting and liking operate distinctly from each other. This explains why, over time, many addicts don’t feel much pleasure from a drug yet still feel strongly motivated to keep pursuing it. A less dramatic comparison: Just think of the potato chips you keep eating in one sitting, long after they stopped tasting so good.
Dopamine is not even the key neurotransmitter involved in addiction to all drugs. “It’s inconceivable that there can be just a single chemical that mediates all the effects of what addictive drugs have in common. That is so patently daft,” David Nutt of Imperial College London told me. Nutt is an esteemed neuropsychopharmacologist who studies the effect of drugs on the mind and behavior.
As Nutt and three colleagues explained in their detailed critique a decade ago of the so-called “dopamine theory of addiction,” only stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine act intensely and directly on the dopamine system to increase dopamine levels. These levels, in turn, are associated with the user’s immediate experience of a pleasurable high.
To me it makes a lot of sense that the neurotransmitter involved with addiction wouldn’t create pleasure, exactly because of the fact that I can relate to the potato chip experience. If pleasure was the thing driving me to continue then I would stop long before I crush the family size bag of kettle chips. Same with the drug addicts seeking the drug without getting a high anymore