And so this sets in motion , a vicious loop where people start pursuing peaks in dopamine that can come very fast without much effort . And that's one of the ways in which addictions start to take hold . Uh , there's a simple way to think about this and to remember if you want to avoid this whole thing .
The same is also true for things like methamphetamine or cocaine or other types of substance addictions . And the same is also true for a lot of behavioral or what are sometimes called process addictions , things like sex addiction or video game addiction or any type of behavior that frankly is leveraging the dopamine system . But that engages this progressive narrowing of the things that bring someone pleasure such that nothing else is really salient .
Let's just think about addiction because in biology and in psychology frankly , it really often pays to think about the extremes first and then work our way towards more typical circumstances . And with that said addiction unfortunately is very common . Nowadays , I just heard a statistic in fact that there is an 88 0% increase in alcohol use disorder among women in the last 30 years , I talked a little bit about this in the episode that I did about alcohol and health .
Nothing else is really pulling them in in the way that their video games or sex or pornography or alcohol , pick your substance or you know , behavior that you see out there or uh hopefully not , but that you might suffer from an addiction to . So what's happening in addiction ? Well , addiction involves dopamine among other things , often the opioid system , et cetera .
So what's happening in addiction ? Well , addiction involves dopamine among other things , often the opioid system , et cetera . But if we were to think about what's the stimulus in an addiction and what's the peak in dopamine ?
