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Frank Winstan's avatar

This is a really excellent synthesis and summary of the research literature, Frazer. So glad you highlighted Kent Berridge’s work. I thought that he and his collaborators had clearly shown that dopamine instantiated wanting vs liking through a brilliant body of research, but it took years for that to be widely accepted in the field. And even today, I come across many references to “dopamine highs” and dopamine as the pleasure chemical- not only in the press but in articles written by neuroscientists who surely ought to know better. (Sent an “oh come on, now!” comment in response to a post here on Substack written by a neuroscientist who had implied that dopamine underlies pleasure). Hope your post will be widely read. I will post a note pointing to it. Keep up the good work!

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Jeff  Kay's avatar

Really excellent post. Brings together a lot of what I have seen concerning the role of dopamine in substance addiction and reward. Very well presented and thought through as much of it has seemed contradictory to my amateur understanding. It does seem that the basic model currently incorporates the findings of Volkow, Koob, and Berridge/Robinson as ongoing processes contributing to the addiction cycle.

Sadly the recovery community is inundated by pop science promising to “boost your dopamine” with supplements and sunshine or dismissing neurobiology and the disease model altogether writing it off as normal adaptation to stressors and emotional pain.

I was wondering if it would be OK to post a link to this page on my website sobersynthesis.com it is non commercial and just a hobby I started with the goal of providing information to the recovery community.

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