How to beat addiction and encourage good habits

FailedNormieManlet

FailedNormieManlet

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In this guide I'll be explaining some basic neuroscience behind addiction and motivation. I feel as though most of this forum will know about dopamine, but I will be explaining it again and covering it in case you aren't aware - I'm not going to be quoting study after study, I've had to learn this shit at uni. I still recommend you to read the part on dopamine as it gives some interesting knowledge

Before I even cover dopamine, I have to give a little background on the anatomy of the dopamine pathway

Anatomy of the dopamine pathway​

1642592483037

As you can see within the human brain there are 4 dopaminergic pathways, ignore all pathways apart from the mesolimbic pathway (the blue one). Can you see how it start at the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ends at the nucleus accumbens (NA). Remember this as I'll be discussing it a little later on.

Dopamine - What is it?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain, it is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation. Dopamine can be stimulated via drugs, food, sex, etc. It's been seen that when rats eat food the amount of dopamine in the NA increases. Dopamine being the prime motivator can be evidenced by experiments done on rats, the setup of the experiment was like this:-
A rat is put in a cage, within the cage there is a lever. Once the lever is activated the rat is given something which will stimulate dopamine, researchers then had recorded the number of times the rat had pulled the lever (frequency of lever). Idea being that the more the rat pulls the lever, the more they are "motivated".

So what happened during this experiment? The researchers had made it so that once the lever is activated an intravenous injection of amphetamine or cocaine was given to the rats (amps and cocaine are dopaminergic drugs and basically increase the amount of dopamine you have. Amps are the strongest for dopamine production). For 4 days the rats were left to drug themselves up and take the dopamine hits. Each day the frequency of the lever went up, this showed that the rats had more motivation to press the lever (stay with me here), due to them being rewarded. Researchers then after day 4 switched out the injection, now saline solution (that's basically salt water guys) was to be injected. Within a day or two, the frequency of the lever decreased rapidly. Rats weren't getting their reward, there was no dopamine. Thus the rats had no motivation to pull the lever - sounds fairly obvious.

In another experiment the researchers had then setup the same sort of lever injection setup, but this time a dopamine antagonist (something which blocks dopamine) was used the rats again had no reward and thus lever frequency was low. This had essentially shown that the mesolimbic pathway was the thing responsible for motivation.

Reward vs reinforcement​

This question was raised during another experiment with rats. This time researchers had hooked up some electrodes to the brains of these rats, the electrode was in the reticular formation area, they would shock these rats via the rats pressing the lever and record the effects it had on their attention. However one rat enjoyed the electrical shocks, the rat would be compelled and come back to the researchers to get another shock. Researchers were baffled by this, it turns out the electrode in that particular rat was hooked to the VTA (look at dopaminergic diagram). This rat would press the lever on purpose to get electrical stimulation of the VTA.

This had again been another piece of evidence that the dopaminergic system was a huge driver in motivation and behaviour.

Now these findings raise the question, do the rats take pleasure in the dopamine? We only INFER that rats enjoy things like eating food (dopamine spikes) because humans do. We don't know for sure if they enjoy the food, we've tried to measure rat happiness by looking at stuff like facial expressions but again that measurement is highly subjective.

Thus we don't use the term "reward", a reward suggests there is pleasure as well as ambiguity if said reward will lead to an increased likelihood of repetitive behaviour e.g. pulling the lever .

Thus we use the term reinforcement, reinforcement is objective, it depends on the stimulus/situation to elicit a certain behaviour and does not imply pleasure.


Okay we've covered the basics, dopamine is the prime motivator and rats do shit to stimulate certain areas of their brain e.g. VTA. How does this link to addiction?​

An addiction is defined by COMPULSIVE substance taking - I.E. You aren't having fun, you're just doing the substance for the sake of it. As well as a few other characteristics. All illegal drugs which are addictive increase the concentration of dopamine found within the NA, things like alcohol, benzos, etc. They increase the dopamine in the NA despite being gabaergic drugs, they still stimulate the VTA which in turn will release dopamine from it's synaptic cleft into the NA. DOPAMINE IS THE PRIME MOTIVATOR BEHIND ADDICTION.

This sounds horrible, why is our behaviour/motivation/compulsions based on dopamine?​

1642595541990

Here is a graph I've made outlining the reason why. Without dopamine we would not be motivated to do a lot of things which are actually beneficial for us.


How do I beat addictions/encourage correct reinforcement behaviour?​

This is where the science gets wonky, but should work. Firstly in the model I showed we had drugs such as coke or amps as the stimulus for increased dopamine. We can switch out drugs for something as simple as browsing looksmax. Reason being looksmax is addictive is due to the dopamine spikes, if you remember the rat study where when researchers swapped out the amps/coke for nothing, the rats lost motivation to engage in pulling the lever, the same principle can be applied to browsing looksmax. If for example you get dopamine spikes from reading posts, interacting with others etc. You essentially need to quit cold turkey, getting something like a website blocker would be a good idea. Remember how the rats felt 0 dopamine when pulling the lever and thus stopped, now with the website blocker you will get no dopamine from browsing looksmax. In theory curing you of your addiction, since you've made your brain realise that looksmax =/= dopamine.

To encourage good habits again using the rat model, e.g. encouraging studying more. I theorise using a combination of the Pomodoro technique and using a dopamine stimulant during your break. Your brain should in theory be able to realise the action (studying) will lead to a reward (dopamine stimulant e.g. a cig, a piece of food/chocolate). Obviously I am not encouraging smoking or anything, please ensure you pick a good dopamine stimulant when doing this technique.

I hope you enjoyed this post!
 
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good post
 
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In this guide I'll be explaining some basic neuroscience behind addiction and motivation. I feel as though most of this forum will know about dopamine, but I will be explaining it again and covering it in case you aren't aware - I'm not going to be quoting study after study, I've had to learn this shit at uni. I still recommend you to read the part on dopamine as it gives some interesting knowledge

Before I even cover dopamine, I have to give a little background on the anatomy of the dopamine pathway

Anatomy of the dopamine pathway​

View attachment 1501001
As you can see within the human brain there are 4 dopaminergic pathways, ignore all pathways apart from the mesolimbic pathway (the blue one). Can you see how it start at the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ends at the nucleus accumbens (NA). Remember this as I'll be discussing it a little later on.

Dopamine - What is it?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain, it is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation. Dopamine can be stimulated via drugs, food, sex, etc. It's been seen that when rats eat food the amount of dopamine in the NA increases. Dopamine being the prime motivator can be evidenced by experiments done on rats, the setup of the experiment was like this:-
A rat is put in a cage, within the cage there is a lever. Once the lever is activated the rat is given something which will stimulate dopamine, researchers then had recorded the number of times the rat had pulled the lever (frequency of lever). Idea being that the more the rat pulls the lever, the more they are "motivated".

So what happened during this experiment? The researchers had made it so that once the lever is activated an intravenous injection of amphetamine or cocaine was given to the rats (amps and cocaine are dopaminergic drugs and basically increase the amount of dopamine you have. Amps are the strongest for dopamine production). For 4 days the rats were left to drug themselves up and take the dopamine hits. Each day the frequency of the lever went up, this showed that the rats had more motivation to press the lever (stay with me here), due to them being rewarded. Researchers then after day 4 switched out the injection, now saline solution (that's basically salt water guys) was to be injected. Within a day or two, the frequency of the lever decreased rapidly. Rats weren't getting their reward, there was no dopamine. Thus the rats had no motivation to pull the lever - sounds fairly obvious.

In another experiment the researchers had then setup the same sort of lever injection setup, but this time a dopamine antagonist (something which blocks dopamine) was used the rats again had no reward and thus lever frequency was low. This had essentially shown that the mesolimbic pathway was the thing responsible for motivation.

Reward vs reinforcement​

This question was raised during another experiment with rats. This time researchers had hooked up some electrodes to the brains of these rats, the electrode was in the reticular formation area, they would shock these rats via the rats pressing the lever and record the effects it had on their attention. However one rat enjoyed the electrical shocks, the rat would be compelled and come back to the researchers to get another shock. Researchers were baffled by this, it turns out the electrode in that particular rat was hooked to the VTA (look at dopaminergic diagram). This rat would press the lever on purpose to get electrical stimulation of the VTA.

This had again been another piece of evidence that the dopaminergic system was a huge driver in motivation and behaviour.

Now these findings raise the question, do the rats take pleasure in the dopamine? We only INFER that rats enjoy things like eating food (dopamine spikes) because humans do. We don't know for sure if they enjoy the food, we've tried to measure rat happiness by looking at stuff like facial expressions but again that measurement is highly subjective.

Thus we don't use the term "reward", a reward suggests there is pleasure as well as ambiguity if said reward will lead to an increased likelihood of repetitive behaviour e.g. pulling the lever .

Thus we use the term reinforcement, reinforcement is objective, it depends on the stimulus/situation to elicit a certain behaviour and does not imply pleasure.


Okay we've covered the basics, dopamine is the prime motivator and rats do shit to stimulate certain areas of their brain e.g. VTA. How does this link to addiction?​

An addiction is defined by COMPULSIVE substance taking - I.E. You aren't having fun, you're just doing the substance for the sake of it. As well as a few other characteristics. All illegal drugs which are addictive increase the concentration of dopamine found within the NA, things like alcohol, benzos, etc. They increase the dopamine in the NA despite being gabaergic drugs, they still stimulate the VTA which in turn will release dopamine from it's synaptic cleft into the NA. DOPAMINE IS THE PRIME MOTIVATOR BEHIND ADDICTION.

This sounds horrible, why is our behaviour/motivation/compulsions based on dopamine?​

View attachment 1501065
Here is a graph I've made outlining the reason why. Without dopamine we would not be motivated to do a lot of things which are actually beneficial for us.


How do I beat addictions/encourage correct reinforcement behaviour?​

This is where the science gets wonky, but should work. Firstly in the model I showed we had drugs such as coke or amps as the stimulus for increased dopamine. We can switch out drugs for something as simple as browsing looksmax. Reason being looksmax is addictive is due to the dopamine spikes, if you remember the rat study where when researchers swapped out the amps/coke for nothing, the rats lost motivation to engage in pulling the lever, the same principle can be applied to browsing looksmax. If for example you get dopamine spikes from reading posts, interacting with others etc. You essentially need to quit cold turkey, getting something like a website blocker would be a good idea. Remember how the rats felt 0 dopamine when pulling the lever and thus stopped, now with the website blocker you will get no dopamine from browsing looksmax. In theory curing you of your addiction, since you've made your brain realise that looksmax =/= dopamine.

To encourage good habits again using the rat model, e.g. encouraging studying more. I theorise using a combination of the Pomodoro technique and using a dopamine stimulant during your break. Your brain should in theory be able to realise the action (studying) will lead to a reward (dopamine stimulant e.g. a cig, a piece of food/chocolate). Obviously I am not encouraging smoking or anything, please ensure you pick a good dopamine stimulant when doing this technique.

I hope you enjoyed this post!
Surprised by your IQ. Most curries are dumb.
 
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In this guide I'll be explaining some basic neuroscience behind addiction and motivation. I feel as though most of this forum will know about dopamine, but I will be explaining it again and covering it in case you aren't aware - I'm not going to be quoting study after study, I've had to learn this shit at uni. I still recommend you to read the part on dopamine as it gives some interesting knowledge

Before I even cover dopamine, I have to give a little background on the anatomy of the dopamine pathway

Anatomy of the dopamine pathway​

View attachment 1501001
As you can see within the human brain there are 4 dopaminergic pathways, ignore all pathways apart from the mesolimbic pathway (the blue one). Can you see how it start at the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ends at the nucleus accumbens (NA). Remember this as I'll be discussing it a little later on.

Dopamine - What is it?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain, it is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation. Dopamine can be stimulated via drugs, food, sex, etc. It's been seen that when rats eat food the amount of dopamine in the NA increases. Dopamine being the prime motivator can be evidenced by experiments done on rats, the setup of the experiment was like this:-
A rat is put in a cage, within the cage there is a lever. Once the lever is activated the rat is given something which will stimulate dopamine, researchers then had recorded the number of times the rat had pulled the lever (frequency of lever). Idea being that the more the rat pulls the lever, the more they are "motivated".

So what happened during this experiment? The researchers had made it so that once the lever is activated an intravenous injection of amphetamine or cocaine was given to the rats (amps and cocaine are dopaminergic drugs and basically increase the amount of dopamine you have. Amps are the strongest for dopamine production). For 4 days the rats were left to drug themselves up and take the dopamine hits. Each day the frequency of the lever went up, this showed that the rats had more motivation to press the lever (stay with me here), due to them being rewarded. Researchers then after day 4 switched out the injection, now saline solution (that's basically salt water guys) was to be injected. Within a day or two, the frequency of the lever decreased rapidly. Rats weren't getting their reward, there was no dopamine. Thus the rats had no motivation to pull the lever - sounds fairly obvious.

In another experiment the researchers had then setup the same sort of lever injection setup, but this time a dopamine antagonist (something which blocks dopamine) was used the rats again had no reward and thus lever frequency was low. This had essentially shown that the mesolimbic pathway was the thing responsible for motivation.

Reward vs reinforcement​

This question was raised during another experiment with rats. This time researchers had hooked up some electrodes to the brains of these rats, the electrode was in the reticular formation area, they would shock these rats via the rats pressing the lever and record the effects it had on their attention. However one rat enjoyed the electrical shocks, the rat would be compelled and come back to the researchers to get another shock. Researchers were baffled by this, it turns out the electrode in that particular rat was hooked to the VTA (look at dopaminergic diagram). This rat would press the lever on purpose to get electrical stimulation of the VTA.

This had again been another piece of evidence that the dopaminergic system was a huge driver in motivation and behaviour.

Now these findings raise the question, do the rats take pleasure in the dopamine? We only INFER that rats enjoy things like eating food (dopamine spikes) because humans do. We don't know for sure if they enjoy the food, we've tried to measure rat happiness by looking at stuff like facial expressions but again that measurement is highly subjective.

Thus we don't use the term "reward", a reward suggests there is pleasure as well as ambiguity if said reward will lead to an increased likelihood of repetitive behaviour e.g. pulling the lever .

Thus we use the term reinforcement, reinforcement is objective, it depends on the stimulus/situation to elicit a certain behaviour and does not imply pleasure.


Okay we've covered the basics, dopamine is the prime motivator and rats do shit to stimulate certain areas of their brain e.g. VTA. How does this link to addiction?​

An addiction is defined by COMPULSIVE substance taking - I.E. You aren't having fun, you're just doing the substance for the sake of it. As well as a few other characteristics. All illegal drugs which are addictive increase the concentration of dopamine found within the NA, things like alcohol, benzos, etc. They increase the dopamine in the NA despite being gabaergic drugs, they still stimulate the VTA which in turn will release dopamine from it's synaptic cleft into the NA. DOPAMINE IS THE PRIME MOTIVATOR BEHIND ADDICTION.

This sounds horrible, why is our behaviour/motivation/compulsions based on dopamine?​

View attachment 1501065
Here is a graph I've made outlining the reason why. Without dopamine we would not be motivated to do a lot of things which are actually beneficial for us.


How do I beat addictions/encourage correct reinforcement behaviour?​

This is where the science gets wonky, but should work. Firstly in the model I showed we had drugs such as coke or amps as the stimulus for increased dopamine. We can switch out drugs for something as simple as browsing looksmax. Reason being looksmax is addictive is due to the dopamine spikes, if you remember the rat study where when researchers swapped out the amps/coke for nothing, the rats lost motivation to engage in pulling the lever, the same principle can be applied to browsing looksmax. If for example you get dopamine spikes from reading posts, interacting with others etc. You essentially need to quit cold turkey, getting something like a website blocker would be a good idea. Remember how the rats felt 0 dopamine when pulling the lever and thus stopped, now with the website blocker you will get no dopamine from browsing looksmax. In theory curing you of your addiction, since you've made your brain realise that looksmax =/= dopamine.

To encourage good habits again using the rat model, e.g. encouraging studying more. I theorise using a combination of the Pomodoro technique and using a dopamine stimulant during your break. Your brain should in theory be able to realise the action (studying) will lead to a reward (dopamine stimulant e.g. a cig, a piece of food/chocolate). Obviously I am not encouraging smoking or anything, please ensure you pick a good dopamine stimulant when doing this technique.

I hope you enjoyed this post!
botb rn
 
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Good. The world needs more smart curries. Too many retarded ones out there these days.
most are just cringe and desperate, not necessary retarded. low IQ is associated with another continent in the Southern Hemisphere
 
most are just cringe and desperate, not necessary retarded. low IQ is associated with another continent in the Southern Hemisphere
According to most of the research, the average IQ of a curry is about 85. Thats borderline retarded.
 
Your brain should in theory be able to realise the action (studying) will lead to a reward
Watched a podcast about rewiring your brain and it talked about how effective using adderall and forcing yourself to study/ be productive is. Im guessing part of the reason it works is by the pathways you outlined, by associating studying with dopamine. Does this mean that on days you dont even use adderall, you will still find it easy to be productive? because that association has been made
 
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In this guide I'll be explaining some basic neuroscience behind addiction and motivation. I feel as though most of this forum will know about dopamine, but I will be explaining it again and covering it in case you aren't aware - I'm not going to be quoting study after study, I've had to learn this shit at uni. I still recommend you to read the part on dopamine as it gives some interesting knowledge

Before I even cover dopamine, I have to give a little background on the anatomy of the dopamine pathway

Anatomy of the dopamine pathway​

View attachment 1501001
As you can see within the human brain there are 4 dopaminergic pathways, ignore all pathways apart from the mesolimbic pathway (the blue one). Can you see how it start at the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ends at the nucleus accumbens (NA). Remember this as I'll be discussing it a little later on.

Dopamine - What is it?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain, it is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation. Dopamine can be stimulated via drugs, food, sex, etc. It's been seen that when rats eat food the amount of dopamine in the NA increases. Dopamine being the prime motivator can be evidenced by experiments done on rats, the setup of the experiment was like this:-
A rat is put in a cage, within the cage there is a lever. Once the lever is activated the rat is given something which will stimulate dopamine, researchers then had recorded the number of times the rat had pulled the lever (frequency of lever). Idea being that the more the rat pulls the lever, the more they are "motivated".

So what happened during this experiment? The researchers had made it so that once the lever is activated an intravenous injection of amphetamine or cocaine was given to the rats (amps and cocaine are dopaminergic drugs and basically increase the amount of dopamine you have. Amps are the strongest for dopamine production). For 4 days the rats were left to drug themselves up and take the dopamine hits. Each day the frequency of the lever went up, this showed that the rats had more motivation to press the lever (stay with me here), due to them being rewarded. Researchers then after day 4 switched out the injection, now saline solution (that's basically salt water guys) was to be injected. Within a day or two, the frequency of the lever decreased rapidly. Rats weren't getting their reward, there was no dopamine. Thus the rats had no motivation to pull the lever - sounds fairly obvious.

In another experiment the researchers had then setup the same sort of lever injection setup, but this time a dopamine antagonist (something which blocks dopamine) was used the rats again had no reward and thus lever frequency was low. This had essentially shown that the mesolimbic pathway was the thing responsible for motivation.

Reward vs reinforcement​

This question was raised during another experiment with rats. This time researchers had hooked up some electrodes to the brains of these rats, the electrode was in the reticular formation area, they would shock these rats via the rats pressing the lever and record the effects it had on their attention. However one rat enjoyed the electrical shocks, the rat would be compelled and come back to the researchers to get another shock. Researchers were baffled by this, it turns out the electrode in that particular rat was hooked to the VTA (look at dopaminergic diagram). This rat would press the lever on purpose to get electrical stimulation of the VTA.

This had again been another piece of evidence that the dopaminergic system was a huge driver in motivation and behaviour.

Now these findings raise the question, do the rats take pleasure in the dopamine? We only INFER that rats enjoy things like eating food (dopamine spikes) because humans do. We don't know for sure if they enjoy the food, we've tried to measure rat happiness by looking at stuff like facial expressions but again that measurement is highly subjective.

Thus we don't use the term "reward", a reward suggests there is pleasure as well as ambiguity if said reward will lead to an increased likelihood of repetitive behaviour e.g. pulling the lever .

Thus we use the term reinforcement, reinforcement is objective, it depends on the stimulus/situation to elicit a certain behaviour and does not imply pleasure.


Okay we've covered the basics, dopamine is the prime motivator and rats do shit to stimulate certain areas of their brain e.g. VTA. How does this link to addiction?​

An addiction is defined by COMPULSIVE substance taking - I.E. You aren't having fun, you're just doing the substance for the sake of it. As well as a few other characteristics. All illegal drugs which are addictive increase the concentration of dopamine found within the NA, things like alcohol, benzos, etc. They increase the dopamine in the NA despite being gabaergic drugs, they still stimulate the VTA which in turn will release dopamine from it's synaptic cleft into the NA. DOPAMINE IS THE PRIME MOTIVATOR BEHIND ADDICTION.

This sounds horrible, why is our behaviour/motivation/compulsions based on dopamine?​

View attachment 1501065
Here is a graph I've made outlining the reason why. Without dopamine we would not be motivated to do a lot of things which are actually beneficial for us.


How do I beat addictions/encourage correct reinforcement behaviour?​

This is where the science gets wonky, but should work. Firstly in the model I showed we had drugs such as coke or amps as the stimulus for increased dopamine. We can switch out drugs for something as simple as browsing looksmax. Reason being looksmax is addictive is due to the dopamine spikes, if you remember the rat study where when researchers swapped out the amps/coke for nothing, the rats lost motivation to engage in pulling the lever, the same principle can be applied to browsing looksmax. If for example you get dopamine spikes from reading posts, interacting with others etc. You essentially need to quit cold turkey, getting something like a website blocker would be a good idea. Remember how the rats felt 0 dopamine when pulling the lever and thus stopped, now with the website blocker you will get no dopamine from browsing looksmax. In theory curing you of your addiction, since you've made your brain realise that looksmax =/= dopamine.

To encourage good habits again using the rat model, e.g. encouraging studying more. I theorise using a combination of the Pomodoro technique and using a dopamine stimulant during your break. Your brain should in theory be able to realise the action (studying) will lead to a reward (dopamine stimulant e.g. a cig, a piece of food/chocolate). Obviously I am not encouraging smoking or anything, please ensure you pick a good dopamine stimulant when doing this technique.

I hope you enjoyed this post!
Cope. Becoming chad equals fixing dopamine
 
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Is this something you discovered or just copy-pasted from somewhere else?
I’m doing a degree in biology, we had covered dopamine and addiction and from the knowledge I was given, I was able to produce some solutions
 
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Watched a podcast about rewiring your brain and it talked about how effective using adderall and forcing yourself to study/ be productive is. Im guessing part of the reason it works is by the pathways you outlined, by associating studying with dopamine. Does this mean that on days you dont even use adderall, you will still find it easy to be productive? because that association has been made
I studied on adderall yesterday. Adderall is an amp, it increases dopamine levels and hence makes you motivated.
 
Watched a podcast about rewiring your brain and it talked about how effective using adderall and forcing yourself to study/ be productive is. Im guessing part of the reason it works is by the pathways you outlined, by associating studying with dopamine. Does this mean that on days you dont even use adderall, you will still find it easy to be productive? because that association has been made
Okay just finished washing my dishes.

No if you get off addy it won't make studying easier. Remember the rat experiment, they stopped pulling the lever when there was no reward. When you don't have addy, you don't have dopamine, and studying doesn't produce any. Thus you will quit just like the rats did.

Hence I promote taking like a small snack and eating it (your dopamine reward) every 25 minutes in a systematic fashion so you produce that connection
 
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The kind of person you're giving this advice to isn't gonna read this entire post mate, but good thread regardless.
 
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Will give this a read later!
 
professor @FailedNormieManlet, i dont understand the reward vs reinforcement bit.
 
Im sorry broski but to me it seems you wrote a lot without saying anything. You cant fool your brains so easily. Just because you use a webblocker wont fool your brain that you dont want to browse websites, it will only make you want to disable the webblocker.

Neuroscience is in its infancy, it is a real mistake to use it to analyze complex behaviours such as addiction with it. Its like trying to explain rocket science with terms used by kids.
 
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i dont understand this sentence.
Its the very popular bullshit argument that just because we see a rat scream when it is burned(for example), doesnt mean it can feel pain, which to me is very foolish
 
Its the very popular bullshit argument that just because we see a rat scream when it is burned(for example), doesnt mean it can feel pain, which to me is very foolish
Poor understanding of biology right there, we know rats can feel pain due to them having A-delta and Beta fibres as well as being able to look at the pathway physical stimulus goes under.

It's human solipsism right there when you think other animals feel emotions like you do
 
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how do you know rats enjoy eating food? You can't, you only assume they do because humans do.
i didnt ask anything abt rats eating food.
i dont understand the sentence. can u explain with simpler words?
 
Im sorry broski but to me it seems you wrote a lot without saying anything. You cant fool your brains so easily. Just because you use a webblocker wont fool your brain that you dont want to browse websites, it will only make you want to disable the webblocker.

Neuroscience is in its infancy, it is a real mistake to use it to analyze complex behaviours such as addiction with it. Its like trying to explain rocket science with terms used by kids.
ofc it's at infancy however the webblocker thing can be explained again by the rat experiment. When a low dosage of dopamine antagonist was given, the lever frequency was increased. This was due to the rats being able to overcome the low dosage of antagonist with more amphetamines - hence they used a higher dosage.

In humans you get the web-blocker, and you feel tempted to try even harder to get onto looksmax (like how rats increase lever freq with low dosage), but if you remove all avenues of accessing looksmax, you realise there is no dopamine in your actions and thus you stop browsing
 
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i didnt ask anything abt rats eating food.
i dont understand the sentence. can u explain with simpler words?
wdym explain even simpler, what part do u not exactly understand
 
In this guide I'll be explaining some basic neuroscience behind addiction and motivation. I feel as though most of this forum will know about dopamine, but I will be explaining it again and covering it in case you aren't aware - I'm not going to be quoting study after study, I've had to learn this shit at uni. I still recommend you to read the part on dopamine as it gives some interesting knowledge

Before I even cover dopamine, I have to give a little background on the anatomy of the dopamine pathway

Anatomy of the dopamine pathway​

View attachment 1501001
As you can see within the human brain there are 4 dopaminergic pathways, ignore all pathways apart from the mesolimbic pathway (the blue one). Can you see how it start at the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ends at the nucleus accumbens (NA). Remember this as I'll be discussing it a little later on.

Dopamine - What is it?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain, it is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation. Dopamine can be stimulated via drugs, food, sex, etc. It's been seen that when rats eat food the amount of dopamine in the NA increases. Dopamine being the prime motivator can be evidenced by experiments done on rats, the setup of the experiment was like this:-
A rat is put in a cage, within the cage there is a lever. Once the lever is activated the rat is given something which will stimulate dopamine, researchers then had recorded the number of times the rat had pulled the lever (frequency of lever). Idea being that the more the rat pulls the lever, the more they are "motivated".

So what happened during this experiment? The researchers had made it so that once the lever is activated an intravenous injection of amphetamine or cocaine was given to the rats (amps and cocaine are dopaminergic drugs and basically increase the amount of dopamine you have. Amps are the strongest for dopamine production). For 4 days the rats were left to drug themselves up and take the dopamine hits. Each day the frequency of the lever went up, this showed that the rats had more motivation to press the lever (stay with me here), due to them being rewarded. Researchers then after day 4 switched out the injection, now saline solution (that's basically salt water guys) was to be injected. Within a day or two, the frequency of the lever decreased rapidly. Rats weren't getting their reward, there was no dopamine. Thus the rats had no motivation to pull the lever - sounds fairly obvious.

In another experiment the researchers had then setup the same sort of lever injection setup, but this time a dopamine antagonist (something which blocks dopamine) was used the rats again had no reward and thus lever frequency was low. This had essentially shown that the mesolimbic pathway was the thing responsible for motivation.

Reward vs reinforcement​

This question was raised during another experiment with rats. This time researchers had hooked up some electrodes to the brains of these rats, the electrode was in the reticular formation area, they would shock these rats via the rats pressing the lever and record the effects it had on their attention. However one rat enjoyed the electrical shocks, the rat would be compelled and come back to the researchers to get another shock. Researchers were baffled by this, it turns out the electrode in that particular rat was hooked to the VTA (look at dopaminergic diagram). This rat would press the lever on purpose to get electrical stimulation of the VTA.

This had again been another piece of evidence that the dopaminergic system was a huge driver in motivation and behaviour.

Now these findings raise the question, do the rats take pleasure in the dopamine? We only INFER that rats enjoy things like eating food (dopamine spikes) because humans do. We don't know for sure if they enjoy the food, we've tried to measure rat happiness by looking at stuff like facial expressions but again that measurement is highly subjective.

Thus we don't use the term "reward", a reward suggests there is pleasure as well as ambiguity if said reward will lead to an increased likelihood of repetitive behaviour e.g. pulling the lever .

Thus we use the term reinforcement, reinforcement is objective, it depends on the stimulus/situation to elicit a certain behaviour and does not imply pleasure.


Okay we've covered the basics, dopamine is the prime motivator and rats do shit to stimulate certain areas of their brain e.g. VTA. How does this link to addiction?​

An addiction is defined by COMPULSIVE substance taking - I.E. You aren't having fun, you're just doing the substance for the sake of it. As well as a few other characteristics. All illegal drugs which are addictive increase the concentration of dopamine found within the NA, things like alcohol, benzos, etc. They increase the dopamine in the NA despite being gabaergic drugs, they still stimulate the VTA which in turn will release dopamine from it's synaptic cleft into the NA. DOPAMINE IS THE PRIME MOTIVATOR BEHIND ADDICTION.

This sounds horrible, why is our behaviour/motivation/compulsions based on dopamine?​

View attachment 1501065
Here is a graph I've made outlining the reason why. Without dopamine we would not be motivated to do a lot of things which are actually beneficial for us.


How do I beat addictions/encourage correct reinforcement behaviour?​

This is where the science gets wonky, but should work. Firstly in the model I showed we had drugs such as coke or amps as the stimulus for increased dopamine. We can switch out drugs for something as simple as browsing looksmax. Reason being looksmax is addictive is due to the dopamine spikes, if you remember the rat study where when researchers swapped out the amps/coke for nothing, the rats lost motivation to engage in pulling the lever, the same principle can be applied to browsing looksmax. If for example you get dopamine spikes from reading posts, interacting with others etc. You essentially need to quit cold turkey, getting something like a website blocker would be a good idea. Remember how the rats felt 0 dopamine when pulling the lever and thus stopped, now with the website blocker you will get no dopamine from browsing looksmax. In theory curing you of your addiction, since you've made your brain realise that looksmax =/= dopamine.

To encourage good habits again using the rat model, e.g. encouraging studying more. I theorise using a combination of the Pomodoro technique and using a dopamine stimulant during your break. Your brain should in theory be able to realise the action (studying) will lead to a reward (dopamine stimulant e.g. a cig, a piece of food/chocolate). Obviously I am not encouraging smoking or anything, please ensure you pick a good dopamine stimulant when doing this technique.

I hope you enjoyed this post!
There should be more posts like this in looksmax and less of:
"XYZ is cope"
 
In humans you get the web-blocker, and you feel tempted to try even harder to get onto looksmax (like how rats increase lever freq with low dosage), but if you remove all avenues of accessing looksmax, you realise there is no dopamine in your actions and thus you stop browsing
you cant remove all avenues of accessing looksmaxs, I tried it with porn a couple years ago. The only thing you can do is throw all your devices in a lake or some shit.

And even then, once you get desperate enough, you buy other devices.

But yes, putting obstacles between you and your addiction is a must
 
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why not? whats the difference between reward and reinforcement, i couldnt understand?
When you are rewarded, it suggests there is an element of pleasure and doesn't describe a compulsion. Reinforcement is a compulsive behaviour.

Look at meth addicts. Ask any meth addict if they are having fun doing meth despite it fucking their life up, they'll say no. They fucking hate meth, there is no pleasure i.e. reward, instead their meth addiction is an enforced behaviour. Reinforcement coming from drug use (look at graph i posted in main part)
 
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Read every single word
 
you cant remove all avenues of accessing looksmaxs, I tried it with porn a couple years ago. The only thing you can do is throw all your devices in a lake or some shit.

And even then, once you get desperate enough, you buy other devices.

But yes, putting obstacles between you and your addiction is a must
To be frank.

If we had the technology, the only surefire way to destroy a porn/fapping addiction would be to somehow make the act of fapping less pleasurable and not release dopamine. But that obviously won't work.

Hence the throwing the devices away/website blocker is the best idea. If you kept "failing" in your attempts to watch porn. you'd have given up like the rats did when they realised there was no amps from pulling the lever.

It took the rats a day or two to lose motivation and that was only after 4 days of amps. You've been fapping most of your adult life, it won't be easy
 
When you are rewarded, it suggests there is an element of pleasure and doesn't describe a compulsion. Reinforcement is a compulsive behaviour.

Look at meth addicts. Ask any meth addict if they are having fun doing meth despite it fucking their life up, they'll say no. They fucking hate meth, there is no pleasure i.e. reward, instead their meth addiction is an enforced behaviour. Reinforcement coming from drug use (look at graph i posted in main part)
what creates compulsion?
 
Ask any meth addict if they are having fun doing meth despite it fucking their life up, they'll say no
wrong according to this video:

He says something like "I wont lie to you, its the best feeling in the world while your on it. Thats the reason meth addiction is so extreme"
 
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what creates compulsion?
Look at the little graph I had drawn earlier. It's a cycle.

Naturally what's meant to happen is for example:- You go hunting -> you kill animal and eat it (dopamine release) -> you now like eating -> it's reinforced into you that eating is great -> you now will always hunt for animals to eat (due to the dopamine).

When someone is addicted to drugs :- they do drug -> dopamine -> doing drugs feels good, I'll do more (reinforcing behaviour) -> more drugs (more dopamine), etc it becomes a loop.

Compulsion arises from the "doing drugs feels good, I'll do more" part. Drug addicts aren't having fun, they are compelled to doing drugs
 
wrong according to this video:

He says something like "I wont lie to you, its the best feeling in the world while your on it. Thats the reason meth addiction is so extreme"

Yeah while you're on it jfl, but he quit meth I assume because it wasn't fun in the long term. Drug addicts have an awful time lol
 
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Hence the throwing the devices away/website blocker is the best idea
I'll present to you an argument against the cold turkey method.

I probably have an addiction to food. Its the only thing on my mind 24/7 especially if im cutting

Common advice for binge eaters is to not completely cut out your favourite cheat foods (e.g. chocolate for me). This is because doing so always leads to binging out on that particular food eventually, for example if you are at a party and have a tiny bit, youll suddenly realise how good chocolate is and come up with some shitty excuse (e.g. just be a normal person and let loose for one day) to end up binging on chocolate that day. Whereas if you allow yourself to have chocolate once per week, this wont occur since you wont be as desperate.
 
I'll present to you an argument against the cold turkey method.

I probably have an addiction to food. Its the only thing on my mind 24/7 especially if im cutting

Common advice for binge eaters is to not completely cut out your favourite cheat foods (e.g. chocolate for me). This is because doing so always leads to binging out on that particular food eventually, for example if you are at a party and have a tiny bit, youll suddenly realise how good chocolate is and come up with some shitty excuse (e.g. just be a normal person and let loose for one day) to end up binging on chocolate that day. Whereas if you allow yourself to have chocolate once per week, this wont occur since you wont be as desperate.
Irl you have a lot more freedom than a rat in a cage, as a result going cold turkey is a lot harder since there are more temptations. Like I said in the experiment, the rats stopped pulling the lever after a day or two. They still made attempts at pulling the lever I.E. had cravings/compulsive behaviours.

Point being that if you are truly addicted to like chocolate for example, then you must realise your behaviour is one of compulsion and not pleasure seeking. Only way to get rid of compulsive behaviour is to truly go cold turkey and put yourself under extreme conditions.

That isn't possible for most people however, so what you can do for your food addiction is this.

Say you have a few chores which you will take a long time to do, and it's something you hate. You should ONLY allow yourself to eat the chocolate after finishing those awful tasks (and eat a little/taper amount). If you continue this, you'll most likely either end up liking the chores or disliking chocolate a lot because whenever you get a craving you make yourself do those tasks.

Obviously best way to get over such an addiction is to avoid all chocolate all together, but irl is a bit more complex
 
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my uncle does, and my grandad died of alcohol abuse when my mom was young, but my fathers side are all traditional
Ask your uncle is he having when smoking and see what he says. He will say it's compulsive
 
wdym by this. I find eating chocolate is immensely pleasurable,
The act of eating chocolate is very nice and pleasurable. However the reason as to why you eat chocolate is due to compulsion not pleasure. You aren't eating chocolate because you think "oh wow chocolate, it tastes good". But you're eating it because "Fuck, I've not had chocolate in a while, I want some!!"

Interesting fact, but im 99% sure chocolate actually releases dopamine too
 
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The act of eating chocolate is very nice and pleasurable. However the reason as to why you eat chocolate is due to compulsion not pleasure. You aren't eating chocolate because you think "oh wow chocolate, it tastes good". But you're eating it because "Fuck, I've not had chocolate in a while, I want some!!"

Interesting fact, but im 99% sure chocolate actually releases dopamine too
ngl my new strat is to just hit a nic vape every time i get the urge to binge on food

Its autistic but its all i have left
 
ngl my new strat is to just hit a nic vape every time i get the urge to binge on food

Its autistic but its all i have left
Alcar nicotine fidgeting and hiit else stfu and ngmi
 

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