Dopamine in Buy a Ticket, Take a Ride

My therapist recently went to a workshop on drug use. She told me that it focused on dopamine, a neurotransmitter targeted by typical ADHD treatments and the a-typical anti-depressant, Wellbutrin. Since so many new drugs are being invented all of the time, it is probably good to generalize the concept of addiction, rather than naming specific drugs like cocaine. Drugs that target dopamine tend to be very addictive, for example, every stimulant I know of (like cocaine) has a profound effect on dopamine. The most interesting thing I have ever read about dopamine is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry about pleasure. It's a long article, for my own reference, I have separated the section that discusses dopamine.

To do my best to summarize: The action of dopamine in the brain is sometimes referred to as a "reward center". Simply, dopamine is a motivating force in our lives, it defines our attachments to our goals. We want whatever releases dopamine, whether it is something like Adderall which has a direct effect on the brain, or an external stimulus, something like gambling. But Stanford portrays a more complex analysis of the role of rewards in goal-seeking behavior, specifically dopamine. Influenced by different philosophical ideas of pleasure throughout time, it draws parallels to neuroscience inspired conjecture on the biological source of pleasure.

The correlations drawn suggest that dopamine is an appetite, but the message of dopamine falls short of fulfillment. The article also brings up the neuroscientific fact that dopamine responds to adverse stimuli, albeit dopamine's response to good stimuli is something like 75% greater. As a motivation, it dopamine drives us to conquer the challenges of a journey. The biological response to the reaching a destination might be something entirely separate. What does this have to do with philosophy? For example, the Buddhist ideal of liberation from appetite and desire has an interesting implication on what the Buddhist attitude towards Adderall might be.

As an aside, extreme Buddhists mediators have been shown to consciously control neurotransmitters, I get the impression that in some cases meditation can compete with drugs.

Now, to diverge from the Stanford article, a relevant critic of Buddhism and Christianity is Neiztche, who described both of these religions as nihilistic in that they promoted the denial of self-fulfillment. In Christianity, we see this when we are told to ignore earthly rewards for rewards in heaven. Similarly, Buddhists alter the direction of fulfillment towards the goal of enlightenment, like heaven, less tangible than the earthly pleasures we are compelled to ignore as unhelpful distractions.

So, assuming that nihilists don't want adderall, as an atheist reacting to nihilism, I might think, dopamine is the only reward that actually exists. But, as someone who studies neuroscience, I know that there are other chemicals which might be implicated as part of the process that rewards resolution of a challenge. So I told my therapist that dopamine is not an eternally masturbatory pleasure chemical. Dopamine is one step of a process that should probably alternate between states of challenge and resolution.

During my acid trips, I had a profound epiphany surrounding a drug's effect on my relationship to challenge. I know that I must continue to challenge myself with drugs, challenge myself to understand the drugs, challenge myself under their influence as I experiment with them. This begs the question, if we alter our performance after taking a drug, is this avoiding challenge, or overcoming it? It seems like there is a general perception that using drugs is "cheating", but I do not think drugs are the answer, I think that when it comes to most of the drugs I do, their influence changes my perception of that challenge. For example, when I do not preform on a test, I might assume that I do not know the answers, but it is possible that although I do not understand the questions I do actually know the answers.

Then there are people like Armstrong, who has also used drugs to overcome challenges. If performance enhancing drugs can be used safely and responsibly, why are drugs not also a part of human athletic achievement? We tend to think of drugs as something that can only be used to help handicapped people catch up to the potential of a non-handicapped person, like when we ration Adderall to people with ADHD. But it does not seem wrong to use drugs to increase our maximum potential. Limiting modern medicine to damage control seems like a mistake.

Last updated January 30, 2014