In a recent NPR interview, psychiatrist Anna Lembke explained that each of us has a dopamine release baseline. When we engage in certain activities, our dopamine levels go up or down depending on the behavior or the substance we’re ingesting. This is what happens when some people find delight in riding roller coasters and others abhor it.
Researchers tried to quantify the amount of dopamine that gets released in pleasurable behaviors. So, if you enjoy eating chocolate, dopamine, on average, will rise about 50 percent above that baseline. Sex is likely to cause a 100 percent spike. Amphetamines, a class of drugs that includes meth, will trigger dopamine to surge above baseline at about 1,000 percent. Evidently, then, some drugs can flood the brain with pleasure, and this may help explain why many people addicted to drugs stop doing activities they formerly enjoyed because they just don’t produce the same high level of dopamine surge.
In a report, PBS referred to meth as “the mother of them all” in reference to drugs that produce powerful dopamine surges. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since meth is also associated with one of the highest relapse rates (roughly 93 percent). The report indicates that all addictive substances trigger a dopamine release, but at different amounts. For instance, alcohol will produce a dopamine surge on par with a cigarette. Cocaine, on the other hand, produces a much larger release of dopamine.