Now, what your particular wiring that triggers dopamine hits that are unique to any of us, we only find out by exploring ourselves by exposing ourselves to the many experiences in life. For some of those things we’ll instantly connect to it (because of a dopamine hit) or identify some part of the activity which will lead us to refining the experience to get the better result.
My thought is if we replace the small dopamine hits we get from these genuine experiences or interests with easy chemical dopamine sources (drugs or alcohol) in excess, we would become bored with life. If we can get a 10x hit from simply drinking something rather than the 1x from a small personal improvement in a skill we have an interest in, that drink will nearly always win out.
This isn’t supposed to be preachy though. Each of us gets to decide for ourselves. This is just how I figured out how I work.
Dopamine.
Now, what your particular wiring that triggers dopamine hits that are unique to any of us, we only find out by exploring ourselves by exposing ourselves to the many experiences in life. For some of those things we’ll instantly connect to it (because of a dopamine hit) or identify some part of the activity which will lead us to refining the experience to get the better result.
My thought is if we replace the small dopamine hits we get from these genuine experiences or interests with easy chemical dopamine sources (drugs or alcohol) in excess, we would become bored with life. If we can get a 10x hit from simply drinking something rather than the 1x from a small personal improvement in a skill we have an interest in, that drink will nearly always win out.
This isn’t supposed to be preachy though. Each of us gets to decide for ourselves. This is just how I figured out how I work.