Are we "addicted" to life?

[tar]

Evginia,

I like your approach.  We have many ways to obtain dopamine, free and easy, or at least inexpensive, and readily available, legal, helpful to others or unobtrusive to others, ways.

So good approach.

However, I am mixed on providing dopamine, and blockers and reuptake inhibitors and such in a mechanical, chemical approach.  I don't think our consciousness is clever enough to out think our own subconscious, much less someone else's.  Consider the oxycodone problem came about because the medical profession wanted to lessen human pain and suffering.  We technically have the way to provide dopamine in a safe manner.  Except providing it too much makes it an unwise method.   Better not to fool with mother nature, and just feel bad when you are hurt. and feel good when you have healed.  In moderation of course.  Fentanyl was made for people in severe pain dying of cancer, to make their last moments of life bearable.  It might be highly inappropriate to apply this satisfaction mid stream, since you have not actually reached the other shore, there is no useful reason to feel that way ahead of time.

 

I learned that addicts in withdrawal feel like they are dying, feel like they are not surviving, feel that the only option, to stay alive is to get their drug of choice.  They will steal money from their mom's purse to buy another hit.   Not good to be able to buy happiness like this, to buy the feeling that you are alive.  Better to have good, clean fun. And MUCH better to actually engage in behaviors that help yourself and your family and your team and your company and your friends and your school and your church and your neighborhood and your county and your state and your country and your species survive.  Then the dopamine you get, for pleasing yourself and your loved ones is real and actually works toward survival, as its supposed to.

Regards, TAR

Karl Marx I think it was, called religion the opiate of the masses. Perhaps today opioids are the opiate of the masses.  Wrong I think to make others dependent on you for their survival/happiness, unless of course they are your loved ones.   Perhaps it was wrong to provide our inner cities with crack instead of jobs.  Two ways to provide happiness, or the feeling of, but one way slavery and the other is freedom.  

 

 

Edited July 27, 2017 by tar

[tar]

Ed Earl,

 

I agree people are nuanced and complex.  And nobody can tell somebody else what should or is going to make them happy, feel right, feel alive and OK. But in my readings and discussions, with professional in the field of addiction, through my association to both a town alliance and a county prevention organization, I know that dopamine plays a role, both in human happiness and motivation and purpose, and in addiction.  The common element goes directly to the OP.   No matter how you were brought up, educated, socialized and no matter who it is you wish to please in your actions and thoughts and plans, you are operating in order to obtain dopamine, and this fact is completely outside human planning.  That is it is built in, innate, instinctual stuff, that exists in Ed Earl, and Ten Oz and TAR and anybody and everybody else, and possibly to certain degrees in animals, and maybe even plants.

So through consciousness and thought and agreement and institutions we can decide which ways of surviving, of feeling right, of feeling victorious are preferable to others, but nobody can shake the need to survive, to want that feeling of dopamine existing in your synapses.  It is built in.

Regards, TAR

[tar]

dimreepr,

I started this topic to discuss consciousness and instinct from the dopamine perspective, as to not derail or hijack Ten Oz's thread.

But crucial to me is to gain understanding of our common addiction to dopamine, and to praise it for its value in terms of our enjoyment of life, our desire to fix things, to improve things, to create things, to complete things, to please others, etc. in terms of how we like to do these things, enjoy these things and aim to do them again, hence survive, but to be conscious as well of the downsides of dopamine, where we can overeat certain quickly metabolized wheat starches and watch too much TV and gain our dopamine rushes in dangerous. destructive and unsavory, expensive (unlawful) and harmful ways, to the detriment of our own selves and those around us.

Regards, TAR

Edited July 27, 2017 by tar

[Area54]

I have noted, over the years, that people identify problems and solutions on the basis of their experience and knowledge. That's hardly surprising, but it is rare that they then modify their conclusions in the light of this specific knowledge.

Shorter version: "Yes, but...."

[dimreepr]

22 minutes ago, tar said:

dimreepr,

I started this topic to discuss consciousness and instinct from the dopamine perspective, as to not derail or hijack Ten Oz's thread.

But crucial to me is to gain understanding of our common addiction to dopamine, and to praise it for its value in terms of our enjoyment of life, our desire to fix things, to improve things, to create things, to complete things, to please others, etc. in terms of how we like to do these things, enjoy these things and aim to do them again, hence survive, but to be conscious as well of the downsides of dopamine, where we can overeat certain quickly metabolized wheat starches and watch too much TV and gain our dopamine rushes in dangerous. destructive and unsavory, expensive (unlawful) and harmful ways, to the detriment of our own selves and those around us.

Regards, TAR

Just a little too much whisky on board to provide a reasonable answer tonight, tar, the irony is not lost on me though...

[dimreepr]

Expect a doozy on the morrow, maybe. 

[tar]

a doozy of a hangover, or a doozy of a response? (my dad taught me to drink a glass of water for every drink of alcohol.   Cuts down on the dehydration which is a major factor in the headache and blah feeling the morning after a good drinking.)

[tar]

But good to note that we all, have or do have a number of ways to enjoy life, and get our dopamine.  It seems to be quite natural a thing.  Although I gave up drinking while in the Army in Germany 36 or 37 years ago, I did consume my lifetime quota of alcohol beforehand.

[tar]

19 hours ago, Area54 said:

 have noted, over the years, that people identify problems and solutions on the basis of their experience and knowledge. That's hardly surprising, but it is rare that they then modify their conclusions in the light of this specific knowledge.

Shorter version: "Yes, but...." f

Area54,

Noted, but modifying your conclusions to suit yourself is done all the time.

Rationalization is something I became aware of, as a thing particularly self related.  That is we look for the silver lining or the way that the unfortunate situation could be framed to still wind up with us winning, and feeling good about the situation.  (getting some dopamine)  Like when my Yankees lose, I figure its only a game, and maybe we will win the next one.  Or when the squirrels get every one of my pears off the three trees we have, I figure, at least the squirrels got to enjoy the seeds.  And make a joke of it, after realizing they are not after the fruit, but the seeds, that if only they had come to me beforehand, I would gladly have arranged a spot where we would put all the cores after we enjoyed the fruit and everybody would win.  

And we are all good at accepting loss...eventually, that is we understand that life goes on, even after a failure and there will be another chance at victory.

And likewise, there is the sour grape thing, where if we fail to reach the goal, we rationalize that the goal was not a good one to begin with.

Or the addict, obviously knowing that doing the drug is not beneficial overall proceeds to acquire and use the drug anyway because it will "feel" like a victory.

When I quit smoking, with the support of people on this board several years ago, after smoking for 47 years, I went through several rationalizations.  The primary one, was that if I was sitting on a lung machine, confined to a bed, unable to take a deep full breath, I would be very unhappy with myself for putting myself in that quite unpleasant position.  So I took a delayed gratification type approach and told myself if I refrained from smoking I would be rewarded with deep breaths for a long time.  Turns out to have been the case, and I received some dopamine, some victory dopamine just by NOT smoking.  Another rationalization I was going through while deciding to quit was that I was going to suffer various maladies and losses if I did not smoke.  Couldn't take a break and go outside,  would smell things and jog my memory and lose concentration, would have no punctuation marks in my day, little interim rewards, interim victories, to get me through obnoxiously detailed procedures,  would get upset with people more easily and the biggest thought, the biggest problem as to why quitting might be detrimental, is that I thought I would never feel good, the way an after lunch cigarette made me feel, ever again.   Well it turned out another rationalization countered this thought, when I learned that nicotine receptors in your brain receive the nicotine and release dopamine.  Same exact dopamine that is released anytime you do this life thing right.  Hug a child, feed your family, pay the rent, look at your wife's beautiful face, take out the garbage, straighten the picture on the wall, solve a problem,  root your team to victory, play a tune on the violin, smell the butter and garlic frying up the onions, snuggle in the chair and close your eyes after successful completion of a project...100 ways to get dopamine, meant that it was not that I would never feel good again, it was that since I was taking Phi's advice, and was making smoking "not an option" and I was expanding that to making nicotine "not an option", it meant simply that I was not going to have "that way" of getting dopamine anymore, but I still had complete access to every other way of getting dopamine, that did not involve nicotine.  Same dopamine.  Just cut out the middle man. (the one I was dependent on for my dopamine)

Regards, TAR 

 

Edited July 28, 2017 by tar

[Area54]

I feel your lengthy response, for which I thank you, merits an appropriately lengthy reply. However, I can only offer a (probably) familiar aphorism. "When all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail."

Cheers.

[tar]

Area54,

In the context of this thread I would translate the aphorism to mean if all you have is the ability to scratch, everything is an itch.

Regards, TAR

 

[tar]

the little itches we get to immediately, and it feels good to get to them, the itches that are a problem are the unsolved ones, the ones we can't reach

[tar]

Dimreepr,

My thoughts lately are all toward how neurotransmitters affect us, and how one can understand others, and oneself in terms of the human need for dopamine.

The human reward system is a complex of desire, motivation and reward that gives a need to move, an impulse to move, and a reward to move so we repeat the action when confronted with the same situation,  thereby surviving and feeling good about it, so we do it again and again, continuously.  So goes my dopamine theory.

This complex has been studied and identified as including various agents like GABA, adrenaline  and others, but can be simplified as to including norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine.  Enough to understand the situation as getting an itch, moving to scratch it, and having it feel good to have gotten the bloodsucking bug off, so-to-speak.

My concern, in the field of mental health and addiction treatment is that addiction is considered a disease, when I think it completely natural, and not only natural but at the basis of our survival instinct and seems to be associated with the survival instinct of other animals and many neurotransmitters are even found in plants which means the plants either produce them so animals feel good eating them so they eat them again to spread their seeds, or that the plants themselves use the chemicals to establish need to move (will to live), movement (living, growing, being) and reward for moving (survival).

Hence my concern.  If we mess with the reuptake of these chemicals, we don't know how that is going to work out.  Plenty of evidence in this article of causing depression and suicide and other unintended consequences, to consider that when you mess with these chemicals, you mess with our survival instinct, our life and consciousness itself and are "playing god" with another's consciousness in a way that no person, subject to the same norepinephrine-dopamine-serotonin complex themselves is really qualified to administer.

See our current mental health and drug addiction problem in the U.S. for evidence that we don't know what we are doing to ourselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin–norepinephrine–dopamine_reuptake_inhibitor

Serotonergic[edit]

5-Hydroxytryptamine (5-HT or serotonin) is an important cell-to-cell signaling molecule found in all animal phyla. In mammals, substantial concentrations of 5-HT are present in the central and peripheral nervous systems, gastrointestinal tract and cardiovascular system. 5-HT is capable of exerting a wide variety of biological effects by interacting with specific membrane-bound receptors, and at least 13 distinct 5-HT receptor subtypes have been cloned and characterized. With the exception of the 5-HT₃ receptor subtype, which is a transmitter-gated ion channel, 5-HT receptors are members of the 7-transmembrane G protein-coupled receptor superfamily. In humans, the serotonergic system is implicated in various physiological processes such as sleep-wake cycles, maintenance of mood, control of food intake and regulation of blood pressure. In accordance with this, drugs that affect 5-HT-containing cells or 5-HT receptors are effective treatments for numerous indications, including depression, anxiety, obesity, nausea, and migraine.

 

Regards, TAR

It is actually alright to feel good about living.   In fact it is required for survival.  It is not a disease.

 

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by tar

[dimreepr]

I think it's possible to get addicted to anything we find enjoyable, from exercise to people (friendship) obviously certain chemicals have an additional hook.

It's important to remember addiction is an unfillable cup and in order to enjoy life, we need to hit the reset cup size button once in a while.

[tar]

dimreepr,

Good way to look at it.   

I have this problem with my dopamine theory, that says you can replace your drug of choice with other natural good clean fun types of things, getting into a giggle fest with your kids or going to a concert with a multi-instrument orchestra, or even, for full cup recognition, having an orgasm, but the problem with drug addicts is they have busted the system, and the neurotransmitters don't flow, or don't replicate the "feeling" of being alive, naturally any more, and it takes 6 months or never to get the system back to where a giggle fest does the job.

But here my theory might be useful to recovering addicts in that it is probably better, in terms of getting your system back to gigglefest fighting weight, to not have your neurotransmitters balajnced by a doctor and pharmaceutical company, but to have your friends and family and friends and society, do the job.

I guess I am talking about dependency.  If you are relying on someone else to provide you with a reason to live, the ability to live and you are dependent on a drug to make you feel right, you have not actually succeeded in living, you are dependent on someone else to tell you how to live and are sort of a ward of the state.

Consider as proof of this, how people under treatment with inhibitors and dopamine enhancers and serotine blockers and such have to be constantly monitored and the chemical balance has to be adjusted to where they are not too high or two low.  Seems to me to be better to try and work away from the drugs entirely and let the body and brain operate.  Feel pain when tissue damage is imminent or real, so that your body reacts to the situation.  Gets you out of there, and puts you in a more comfortable place, or provided the healing chemicals to repair the damage inflicted.  Not to take on a silly approach as to say no chemicals are good, just to use the great chemicals we have where indicated, and NOT use them to fool the system into a response that is possibly not completely accurate for the situation.   For example, Chantax to help quit smoking makes many people "feel weird". And some have thoughts of suicide or find they do not enjoy other things they used to enjoy, as much.   Why not just don't let nicotine into your body for a bit, and see that you don't actually die, and you can still laugh and smile and hug and kiss your mate and family and find enjoyment in life, as it was before you smoked

So, as you say, reset the cup full line, but do it by filling the cup with dopamine achieved through victory and completion and scratching the itch, not dopamine achieved through ingesting nicotine (opioid).

Regards, TAR

[tar]

of course though you SHOULD be dependent on people you love for pleasure and to please

[Ten oz]

What is the dopamine reward for siuicide? If I understand the concept here correctly it is that we all pursue dopamine. Our choices, lifestyles, and etc are constructed in a manner based on dopamine reward. While I agree we all want to be happy/comfortable I don't believe it is in the drives seat of all our choices in life. People make painful choices all the time be it to unp[lug and allow a loved one to die, various forms of self sacrifice, suicide, or etc. Meanwhile some in society seem to require much higher levels of reward. Surely the dopamine reward for a narcissist and depressed person are different?

[Evgenia]

The possibility of suicide itself is a proof humans are not addicted to life. 

People choose not to live. Suicide is a rational decision as it needs a lot of efforts to overcome the surviving instinct. The reasons to do it can be very different. Some people don't want to stay invalid, some do not see another way to escape of problems, some are in depression and don't have enough of essential chemical components in blood to feel themselves happy.

But still it's a rational decision , sometimes under emotional disctructive lack of feeling happy. It's not an addiction,in my mind, but it is a lack of some components.

So if we had effective anti-depressants, we can solve the one of the problems leading to suicides.

But if a person decides he does not want to live without legs as he does not want to be a problem for his family, giving such pills to him will not help. In this case, we need to solve a problem of social adaptation of invalids.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

I think the dopamine reward for suicide can be understood in the same manner as one handles delayed gratification, and in the same manner as one gets pleasure from pleasing an unseen other, or themselves.

Consider the situation is not only what dopamine is flowing in your head, but what dopamine is flowing in the head of a loved one.  As a survival thing, it is important for tribal members, extended family type tribes, to pass on their genes, protect their genes, please the others in the group.  Dopamine here is not isolated to one brain.  We seek the happiness of the clan.

In terms of where you get dopamine by committing suicide, I think it has to do partly with control.   If you kill yourself you are exercising control over your own condition.  Usually I think suicide is committed in cases where the subject has lost control.  Lost a fortune, or a wife, or made some control ending mistake, as in on their way to a life in prison (after severely NOT pleasing society).  Or consider to Evgenia's point my dad's desire to not be a financial burden on his family and society when he is bedridden and failing. Not that he is going to commit suicide, but he has a directive to not extend his life artificially.  This gives him a certain control over a situation, life, that he is rapidly losing control of.  He can still actually get some dopamine considering leaving others in better shape than sucking up resources for little gain.

Or consider suicide bombers, they are pleasing Allah, and those that are fighting for  Allah.   Or consider the millions waiting for rapture.  There is something built into us, that seeks pleasure for others, even if we rationally can not take part.   Like on purpose dropping a dollar, knowing that someone else's eyes will light up when they see it lost on the ground.   Or the people you hear of that leave gifts anonymously.  The pleasure is in the plan.

Regards, TAR 

[Ten oz]

4 minutes ago, tar said:

Consider the situation is not only what dopamine is flowing in your head, but what dopamine is flowing in the head of a loved one.  As a survival thing, it is important for tribal members, extended family type tribes, to pass on their genes, protect their genes, please the others in the group.  Dopamine here is not isolated to one brain.  We seek the happiness of the clan.

 

This of course isn't always true however. Some mothers kill their children, some fathers kill their spouses, some children kill their parents, some sibilings kill each other, and etc. On a larger scale some wars throughout history have pitted members of the same genealogy (all humans have the same ancestors of course but in this case I mean within a couple generations) agaist each other. Many people have died at the hands of a member of their own "tribal members".

 

Moreover as it relates to suicide some people kill their whole families and then themselves.

[dimreepr]

On 7/29/2017 at 3:46 PM, tar said:

So, as you say, reset the cup full line, but do it by filling the cup with dopamine achieved through victory and completion and scratching the itch, not dopamine achieved through ingesting nicotine (opioid).

 

How the bloody hell can you fill an unfillable cup; let alone with the very thing that makes it unfillable?

My point is, you reset the cup size through abstinence, not excess. Our reward system naturally wants more of the same because it's enjoyable, but how much more enjoyable is food when one is starving or how much sweeter is water when one is thirsty?

 

[tar]

Dimreepr,

Well you are right, the best way, and perhaps the only way to reset the line, is to stop doing the thing that you are obsessed with, that destructive thing, that gives you a good feeling, but for the wrong reasons.   Nicotine, for instance makes you feel good (provides dopamine) and makes you feel alive, but you are training your system to have you feel like you are surviving, and feeling good in a general, not for any particular reason, way.   Where enjoying life for its own rewards, is the way evolution has set the table, and things that feel right, that feel good, that give pleasure and make you smile and laugh and swell your heart with pride and accomplishment, actually ARE good things to promote and engage in.

Survival of the fittest also includes actually fitting.  Feeling right, belonging, and feeling ownership and responsibility for the place, for your self and for those things included in your feeling of self.  I am thinking that the idea of self, is crucial to survival.  It is what delineates you from everything else and is the thing that is maintained when you survive.  Consider how good it feels to win.   And consider the food chain, where the winner is the eater and the loser is the eaten.  The one that wins is the one that survives, and every living thing tries to win.   

The same chemicals that exist in the brain of a gambler when he wins, exist in the brain when using certain addictive drugs.

And I have felt since I had an epiphany on a hilltop in Germany 40 years ago, that life is a victory over a universe that is otherwise heading toward entropy.   

If living things did not want to survive, to be separate from and in opposition to general existence, they would not be.

Regards, TAR

Edited July 31, 2017 by tar

[Area54]

39 minutes ago, tar said:

And I have felt since I had an epiphany on a hilltop in Germany 40 years ago, that life is a victory over a universe that is otherwise heading toward entropy.  

Life accelerates the increase in entropy. The victory is short term. Life brings the end nearer.

[tar]

Area54,

That was another part of my epiphany.  Treeness, from the first member of the species I was looking at, until and including the individual I was looking at was but a fleeting moment within the expanse of space and time that is reality.  That is why, especially why being alive is a victory.

We are securely insolated from the beginning and the end by immense amounts of time, and likewise are insulated and protected from having to worry about the rest of the universe, by immense stretches of space.   Even the Sun, with us every day, is 7 minutes away at the speed of light.  A super nova could be happening right now in the Milky Way and we will not see the light or feel the gamma rays for up to 100,000 yrs, the place is so immense.

So I would not worry about life speeding up the eventual heat spread of the universe.  

Not an issue.

Regards, TAR

 

Edited July 31, 2017 by tar

[tar]

'Area54, 

 

But your worrying about the demise of the universe, I think, is something that is also built in to our brain chemistry.  Consider how badly we would feel if the Earth was about to be destroyed by an asteroid.  Consider the joy and relief we would feel if we constructed a system to repel the thing away from collision.   I think we consider our lives precious.  And our families, and the life around us, which has also claimed fleeting victory over the tendencies of the universe.  And I know I do, and I expect you as well, consider the Milky Way "our" galaxy.   We care about it's future...even billions of years from now, when we won't be around and any precautions we might take against its demise would be inconsequential.

Thing is, we feel this is our universe, because it is. 

And we want to live forever.    'Cause we are addicted to life.

Regards, TAR

Edited July 31, 2017 by tar