03 The Dopamine Dilemma: Exploring Behavioral Addictions and Video Gaming

he was more irritable. He definitely was sleeping more and he didn't really want to hang out with anyone during that time either. If I didn't know to expect this, I may have started to doubt what I was doing was the right thing to do, Hello? Hello. Thanks for checking out this episode and spending some time with me today.

So I wanted to talk about dopamine and the role that it plays in our day-to-day lives, specifically related to addictive behaviors and even more specifically, video game addictions. I want to throw it out there that this isn't an episode about substance abuse addiction, but rather more so behavioral addictions. I read this awesome book about a year ago, and it really pushed me into having a deeper conversation with my older son about the amount of time that he was spending playing video games.

The book is called dopamine nation by Anna Lemke. She's a psychiatrist. So if you want to check it out, I'll I'll um, I'll put I'll link the book in the show notes, but my older son is almost 17 and he really enjoys playing video games. He has, since he's been old enough to even play them. He can spend an entire day playing video games, which it doesn't really surprise me because he also does have ADHD. For those of you who don't know. ADHD is a dopamine related disorder.

Dopamine disorders disrupt various brain functions, like attention, motivation and reward and our brains. So people with ADHD are known to crave dopamine. Producing activities and video games can produce intense dopamine hits. So dopamine is known as the feel good chemical in our brains. If we have an excess of dopamine, And our reward pathways, we can have more, or we can make more impulsive decisions.

We can feel more energetic, just engage in compulsive behaviors, be bigger risk-takers and become hyper-focused on immediate rewards. And on the flip side, if we have lower levels of dopamine in these reward pathways, we can become unmotivated or feel lethargic, socially withdrawal. And find it difficult to experience joy and pleasure. And have a very difficult time experiencing feelings of satisfaction in our everyday activities.

It's important to note that these symptoms can vary from person to person and may also be influenced by other factors. So just keep that in mind. Um, okay. So of course in our society nowadays, the constant access to technology and social media. And instant gratification contributes to an increase in dopamine related disorders like addiction and also depression and anxiety.

When we engage in pleasurable activities, dopamine is released in our brains and this creates a really good feeling that then can reinforce the behavior we're engaging in. The problem here with pursuing immediate rewards through certain behaviors is that it can lead to desensitizing

the dopamine reward pathway. This makes it harder for people to experience pleasure from their normal day-to-day activities. Addictive behaviors and Volvo like releasing and regulating dopamine. When we're doing things like gambling or playing an excessive amount of video games or spending too much time on social media, our brains release a surge of dopamine, which feels very rewarding. Over time. This intense release of dopamine can lead to desensitization.

This is where addiction becomes more noticeable because the need to feel the same level of pleasure becomes more difficult and people start engaging in their chosen behavior more frequently and more intensely leading to higher dependency on that particular behavior. That's when addiction steps in. It becomes a vicious cycle. And as many of us know, very, very challenging to face. So I want to give a quick overview on the specific part of Dr. Anna book. And it's the pain and pleasure balance.

Now, just to be clear, there are other chemicals that play a part in addiction, but we're just going to focus on dopamine. So she talks about this pain pleasure, balance so beautifully and pretty easy to understand, and our brains pain and pleasure work like a balance. So the balance is resembling a teeter-totter, hopefully you've seen or played on one of these at the playground in your life. And if not, I feel like you have missed out, but basically. Pleasure and pain are acting as opponents.

So one side is pleasure. And then the other side of this teeter-totter balance is pain. So picture the balance, being the level parallel to the floor. That's our equilibrium. When you feel pleasure, the balance starts to tip to the pleasure side. Now, there are certain activities that engage that we engage in that release more dopamine, which leads us to the pleasure side. So examples. Eating chocolate.

So eating chocolate will increase the output of dopamine in certain areas of, of our brains by 55%. And I, I mean, I wish I knew the percentage of the increase of dopamine from playing video games. But what I do know is that it is higher than eating chocolate. Um, but the comparison that comes to mind to eating chocolate is using nicotine. And use the nicotine increases dopamine in our brains by 150%. So as I'm so.

I mentioned this because the more our balance tips when engaging in these activities, the more like the more pleasure that we feel. So in that example, nicotine equals more pleasure than eating chocolate. As wonderful as it would be, or it would seem to continuously stay in the state of play pleasure. That's just not how our brains work. There is a self-regulating mechanism that tries to regulate our dopamine levels back to baseline. Baseline is when the balances level to the floor.

So, how does this, how do we do this? We, we start to release chemicals on the pain side of the balance to regain homeostasis, but because it is a balance, it doesn't just stop once it's level. It tips equally onto the side of pain. Okay. So this is what it can look like when we're talking about playing video games. So you're having a lot of fun playing your game. AK you're on the pleasure side of the balance. Then the game comes to an end and you've won. It was so much fun.

But now the funds over AKA pain side. You can either stop playing the game or, and go do something else. Or you can be tempted, like most of us to click. Let's play again. So the balance tips away from the pain side and back to the pleasure side. Most of us. Do not prefer to hang out on the pain side. But the issue with this back and forth between pain and pleasure when we're engaging in our behavior of choice is we start to build up a tolerance to the pleasure.

The pleasure side becomes the lesser shorter and the pain side becomes stronger, which leads us to wanting or, and, or like needing to engage in our chosen behavior more and more to chase that pleasurable feeling. AKA addiction. This is how people end up playing video games. During, like all of their spare time. Now the majority of us, can't just spend all day every day playing video games because we have other responsibilities, like work and school. Social family obligation.

playing sports and so on. So during their break from the video games, they're likely going to start to experience some withdrawal effects. This could look like anxiety, irritability experiencing like less feelings of pleasure and interest in, in these other obligations that they have. What's interesting is prolonged. A prolonged period of being balanced on the pain side is what leads to Relapse.

So. This could look like someone experiencing a lot of stress in their jobs or relationships or school. And just to note, it doesn't have to be stress or depression or physical pain. It could also be joy. Some people are really uncomfortable feeling

joy. So I know that kind of sounds contradicting because we don't think of joyous pain, but nonetheless, my point is that there's a variety of things that keep us balanced on that pain side. Now there's a bright side to this. If we abstain long enough from our chosen behavior or activity, then our reward pathways readapt to leveling the balance out. And then we regained homeostasis.

So with all of that said my husband and I, we were trying to find realistic ways to decrease the amount of time that our older son was playing video games. Now my son is such a trooper and he was on board with me sharing this with everyone. He was spending so much time on video games. He wasn't really socializing. I mean, he like on games, he was playing with his friends, but he wasn't showing an interest in getting off of the game and hanging out with friends in person. That often.

Now my son may disagree with this, but what I also was seeing was him not experiencing like the same amount of joy in sports, just not having as much fun. And he seemed kind of. Um, like he was just going through

the motions and not getting as pumped up about things as he used to. Um, from what I could see, as soon as he would get home from his games or school or wherever he was, he would just head straight to playing video games. And then, I mean, there were things that we were asking him to do around the house chores or whatever it was, or taking his little brother to certain places. Like he wouldn't want to do those things. And some, and a lot of times he actually wouldn't do them.

So it was just this constant battle between, between us, with him. Um, now. I don't want to, I don't want to discount that some of these things of course can just be related to being a teenager, but we did feel like things were worsening. The more they, the more time that he was spending on video games. Um, Dr. Anna Lemke, she talks about abstaining from addictive behaviors by doing an experiment. I really liked this idea.

So after I read this book, I had a couple of conversations with my son about what I was seeing and then what. What I felt like was happening in his brain when he was playing and not playing video games. And just introduce this idea of this experiment to him. I was pumped about it. Understandably he wasn't, but, um, he was a pretty good sport about it. So I really did appreciate that.

The basic, idea of the experiment is to abstain from playing video games for four weeks, then revisit whether we wanted to reintroduce playing video games by limiting the amount of time that he was playing them. So by abstaining from addictive behaviors, you're giving your brain time to readapt and reset those reward pathways. She says four weeks is a good starting place. So that's what we tried. And, I agreed now that I have some like, experience with it, I think that was a good starting place.

And for some people, they may need more time than that. It just depends on the person. Now you can expect like the first week of abstaining, like the first week or two to get worse before it gets better. Week one, two is that withdrawal period. So like I was mentioning before that could feel like depression, anxiety, irritability. Also low energy. Apathy in potentially like insomnia. Some of those things were noticeable in my son, especially the first week. He was more irritable.

He definitely was sleeping more and he didn't really want to hang out with anyone during that time either. If I didn't know to expect this, I may have started to doubt what I was doing was the right thing to do, because even though. It was just on video games that he was playing with his friends. And he wasn't really doing that in person. He was still socializing in a way, and we know that that is critical, like a critical part of growth and development for kids.

Um, but anyways, we push through the first week and at the end of the week, I would check in with him to see how he was feeling and what his thoughts were about the week prior. And at the end of the first week it went something kind of like this. He definitely was annoyed with me. Um, he was feeling like it was a crap experiment and he didn't agree with it. He didn't feel like it was helping at all. And I can completely understand because he was feeling like crap. I mean.

But I did remind him that it was going to feel worse before it was going to get better. And I tried to support him the best that I could. So towards the end of the second week, things started to turn around for him. He was becoming more talkative and started hanging out with his friends more. He was asking them to come over our house and he was going places more often. One of his friends even actually told us that taking the video games away from him was like the best decision that we made.

Um, that definitely made us feel like we were on the right track. Um, I just love seeing him hanging out with his friends and he's so freaking awesome. And it just makes me so happy to see him having fun with his friends and in person and person. I love that. But by the end of the fourth week, I was pretty certain that his dopamine levels were restored.

And we had a discussion about what moving forward looks like with him playing video games and just the importance of needing to limit his time plane, because he did in fact, want to restart playing again. So he understood and he agreed to that. I was hesitant because I really liked how things were going without the video games. But if he could find a balance, I was okay with him, like replaying or restarting playing video games.

And plus it was the agreement and I wanted to hold my end of the bargain. So we tried. And I think this was helpful for him to see and just find insight into how he was behaving with and without video games. And it hasn't been perfect since this experiment earlier this year, but we did find that this is a very effective way to support his mental health. So if we ever have to revisit this experiment, we definitely will do that.

Um, so if you decide to try this experiment, whether it's you or your kids. Um, so while you're abstaining from the video games or.

Your behavior of choice whatever it is some things that can help restore dopamine levels are things like exercising regularly moving your body so lifting or going on runs or walks swimming playing sports whatever it is just some type of like movement in your body And having friends and family that you can lean on for support and making that connection with them people who can encourage you and just hold you accountable during that time too Deep breathing meditating mindfulness activities all of

those

things can be helpful at restoring dopamine levels And remembering define moderation and these other healthy activities so it's not like okay exercise let me go full force and i'm just going to do that all day long like that's not healthy you need to find moderation in that too Um But it may also be something to consider working with like a therapist or a counselor who can help you develop other coping strategies too.

so keep that in mind But i will link this book in the show notes if you're interested in reading or listening to it And i hope that you had found this helpful and i want to challenge you to try this four week abstinence experiment from video games or whatever the behavior is If you or your kids are spending too much time on it If you do try this experiment i would love to hear about it so dme either on facebook or instagram and just let me know what your thoughts are and i'll link both facebook

and instagram in the show notes also With that being said the holidays are right around the corner so i'll be back next week with some tips on how to decrease stress and just increase joy during the seasons i hope you guys have a great day and i'll see you next week Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of landing and perfect. I truly appreciate you being a part of this community and sharing this journey with me.

If you'd like to connect further and continue the conversation, you can find me on Instagram at Lander and on Facebook at Jen Leander, I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions or stories. So don't hesitate to reach out. And remember, this podcast is a personal project. It's unrelated to the full-time work I do for the company. I help treat those with eating disorders. While I aim to provide professional and educational inspirational content.

It's important to understand that the podcast is not a substitute for professional treatment. So if you or someone that you know is struggling with any issues I've discussed, please consider seeking the help of a qualified healthcare professional. And I'll be back with another episode next week. So stay tuned and continue your journey to personal growth and empowerment. Can't wait to connect with you again until then take care and remember it's okay to embrace their imperfections.

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