The neurotransmitter dopamine is eliciting a lot of panic these days. According to books, articles and social media posts, our urge for a quick
The neurotransmitter dopamine is eliciting a lot of panic these days. According to books, articles and social media posts, our urge for a quick dopamine hit is why we crave cookies and spend too much time on Instagram. If we keep giving in to these desires, the rationale goes, we'll never be able to stop ourselves. "We've transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance," Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford psychiatrist, wrote in her best-selling book "Dopamine Nation." Consequently, we're all at risk for "compulsive overconsumption." A self-improvement trend often called "dopamine fasting" that emerged in 2019 revolves around abstaining from anything that causes the release of the chemical. The premise is that modern-day entertainments rewire the brain so that slower-paced pastimes are no longer pleasurable. Videos tagged #dopamine, many claiming to teach viewers how to manipulate the brain chemical, have more than 700 million views on TikTok. One influencer offers a "free list of things that numb dopamine" so that you can "reclaim control over your life!" Parents are even advised to prevent children from experiencing spikes in dopamine (meaning not to let them play video games or eat junk food) lest the insatiable need for the neurotransmitter increase bad behavior. Scientists who study dopamine say these concerns have been blown out of proportion. They "are not necessarily based on actual science of what we know about dopamine," said Vijay Namboodiri, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Before you swear off dopamine — and the prospect of any joy in life — it's important to understand the biggest misconceptions about the neurotransmitter and what the research shows. Dopamine is not inherently good or bad. The idea that dopamine produces feelings of pleasure came from early experiments in rodents, and later humans, that found the dopamine system was activated when animals…