Pleasure and Pain Balance
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I recently listened to a wonderful podcast about addiction, pleasure, and pain. The crux of it was that pleasure and pain (not necessarily physical) are found in the same part of the brain and they have to be equal or in homeostasis.
If you experience pleasure you have to experience some sort of pain/low to get back into balance. The more pleasure you seek/experience the bigger the downs, cravings, and feelings of depression etc.
The trouble is we are in a time of abundance and many of us are addicted to some sort of pleasure giving activity. If we get too much pleasure, we start to lose the ability to find joy in other things.
It is all related to dopamine which the brain releases as a reward to get you to do the activity again. But if we get too much dopamine, we go into a dopamine deficit to get us back to homeostasis.
Think about when you see a trigger for your addiction, you get a spike of dopamine in anticipation of the reward immediately followed by a deficit which is the craving, you feel slightly agitated until you get the thing and get your dopamine hit.
And this is the trouble with addiction, we end up in a really big dopamine deficit and as soon as we stop doing our addiction, we feel bloody terrible.
The upside is abstaining from pleasure/addiction will eventually reset your balance and allow you to find pleasure elsewhere.
Basically, we should purposely be doing things that are difficult such as exercise, working out problems, walking and just spending time off our pleasure giving devices as this puts us into the negative and we have to feel good to get us back to balance. Thoughts?
This is the podcast I listened too, found it very interesting.
Are We All Addicts? Anna Lembke, MD On Our Dopamine Nation - Rich Roll
Rich Roll sits down with psychiatrist & Stanford professor Dr. Anna Lembke to discuss the neuroscience of modern addiction, dopamine fasting, & more.
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@nzzp said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
@tim said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
Sorry to derail, but the topic is far too good an excuse not to post this song.
I'll be honest, I clicked on the topic with some trepidation
But you still clicked on the topic, didn't you....?
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@crucial said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
I thought this was another cricket thread.
They can be connected
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/76969412/flashback-the-umpire-the-dominatrix-the-falls-and-the-ill-timed-visit -
@pepe When I was a kid her Dad built our swimming pool, and she came to the house to see him one day. My mother had some choice words to say about her.
Years later I had a drink with an older neighbour, who was her flatmate around that time. Reckoned the boyfriend was very manipulative and was running her life.
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@pepe said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
@crucial said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
I thought this was another cricket thread.
They can be connected
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/76969412/flashback-the-umpire-the-dominatrix-the-falls-and-the-ill-timed-visitI took my half sister and bro in law over from Canada on holiday to Huka falls and regaled them with the tale of Peter Plumlee Walker.
They are both cops and have twisted senses of humour so they pissed themselves.
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@chimoaus said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
I recently listened to a wonderful podcast about addiction, pleasure, and pain. The crux of it was that pleasure and pain (not necessarily physical) are found in the same part of the brain and they have to be equal or in homeostasis.
If you experience pleasure you have to experience some sort of pain/low to get back into balance. The more pleasure you seek/experience the bigger the downs, cravings, and feelings of depression etc.
The trouble is we are in a time of abundance and many of us are addicted to some sort of pleasure giving activity. If we get too much pleasure, we start to lose the ability to find joy in other things.
It is all related to dopamine which the brain releases as a reward to get you to do the activity again. But if we get too much dopamine, we go into a dopamine deficit to get us back to homeostasis.
Think about when you see a trigger for your addiction, you get a spike of dopamine in anticipation of the reward immediately followed by a deficit which is the craving, you feel slightly agitated until you get the thing and get your dopamine hit.
And this is the trouble with addiction, we end up in a really big dopamine deficit and as soon as we stop doing our addiction, we feel bloody terrible.
The upside is abstaining from pleasure/addiction will eventually reset your balance and allow you to find pleasure elsewhere.
Basically, we should purposely be doing things that are difficult such as exercise, working out problems, walking and just spending time off our pleasure giving devices as this puts us into the negative and we have to feel good to get us back to balance. Thoughts?
This is the podcast I listened too, found it very interesting.
Are We All Addicts? Anna Lembke, MD On Our Dopamine Nation - Rich Roll
Rich Roll sits down with psychiatrist & Stanford professor Dr. Anna Lembke to discuss the neuroscience of modern addiction, dopamine fasting, & more.
This is 100% why I'm now addicted to exercise. I've unfortunately faced some really bad times and trauma and know all about lows. Easy highs are drugs and alcohol of course but the comedowns are terrible. Just look at a great night on the piss. It's always followed by a wasted day of being hungover and recovering. Exercise to me is nothing but a net positive. Despite all the shit, I feel like a new person after I've exercised. Swimming in particular is like night and day.
I guess the whole point is that you experience pain and struggle getting to that high, rather than getting it for "free" and thus the balance has already been achieved?
I assume that also applies to acquiring things, like working hard to pay for something yourself rather than being gifted it for nothing.
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@rancid-schnitzel 100% agree, I think working towards any tough goal that takes effort and is challenging always feels good when you reach it.
There is a real paradox that we have a mental health crisis when we have the highest standard of living ever. It kind of makes sense in this pleasure/pain paradigm as we have literally removed every possible obstacle in our way to make things as easy and pleasurable as possible.
It is no wonder many people are miserable as we are all in dopamine deficits just by the way we have engineered our lives.
I believe lots of exercise and having a creative outlet to challenge ourselves is key to achieving a more balanced life.
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@rancid-schnitzel said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
@chimoaus said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
I recently listened to a wonderful podcast about addiction, pleasure, and pain. The crux of it was that pleasure and pain (not necessarily physical) are found in the same part of the brain and they have to be equal or in homeostasis.
If you experience pleasure you have to experience some sort of pain/low to get back into balance. The more pleasure you seek/experience the bigger the downs, cravings, and feelings of depression etc.
The trouble is we are in a time of abundance and many of us are addicted to some sort of pleasure giving activity. If we get too much pleasure, we start to lose the ability to find joy in other things.
It is all related to dopamine which the brain releases as a reward to get you to do the activity again. But if we get too much dopamine, we go into a dopamine deficit to get us back to homeostasis.
Think about when you see a trigger for your addiction, you get a spike of dopamine in anticipation of the reward immediately followed by a deficit which is the craving, you feel slightly agitated until you get the thing and get your dopamine hit.
And this is the trouble with addiction, we end up in a really big dopamine deficit and as soon as we stop doing our addiction, we feel bloody terrible.
The upside is abstaining from pleasure/addiction will eventually reset your balance and allow you to find pleasure elsewhere.
Basically, we should purposely be doing things that are difficult such as exercise, working out problems, walking and just spending time off our pleasure giving devices as this puts us into the negative and we have to feel good to get us back to balance. Thoughts?
This is the podcast I listened too, found it very interesting.
Are We All Addicts? Anna Lembke, MD On Our Dopamine Nation - Rich Roll
Rich Roll sits down with psychiatrist & Stanford professor Dr. Anna Lembke to discuss the neuroscience of modern addiction, dopamine fasting, & more.
This is 100% why I'm now addicted to exercise. I've unfortunately faced some really bad times and trauma and know all about lows. Easy highs are drugs and alcohol of course but the comedowns are terrible. Just look at a great night on the piss. It's always followed by a wasted day of being hungover and recovering. Exercise to me is nothing but a net positive. Despite all the shit, I feel like a new person after I've exercised. Swimming in particular is like night and day.
I guess the whole point is that you experience pain and struggle getting to that high, rather than getting it for "free" and thus the balance has already been achieved?
I assume that also applies to acquiring things, like working hard to pay for something yourself rather than being gifted it for nothing.
Exercise is massively important to me too without quite being an addiction…….same as the odd big night drinking…..if I didn’t exercise there’s no way I’d let myself go out for those 15-20 beers that I know I will do in the coming weeks with Xmas and what have you.
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@chimoaus said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
@rancid-schnitzel 100% agree, I think working towards any tough goal that takes effort and is challenging always feels good when you reach it.
There is a real paradox that we have a mental health crisis when we have the highest standard of living ever. It kind of makes sense in this pleasure/pain paradigm as we have literally removed every possible obstacle in our way to make things as easy and pleasurable as possible.
It is no wonder many people are miserable as we are all in dopamine deficits just by the way we have engineered our lives.
I believe lots of exercise and having a creative outlet to challenge ourselves is key to achieving a more balanced life.
Yeah, I've never really thought about why affluence and fewer problems have resulted in a mental health crisis, but that makes perfect sense. It's really ironic that by making things easier and more comfortable for our kids, we're actually screwing them up in many ways.
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I wouldnt say I'm addicted to exercise, but I certainly start feeling it (mentally/physically) if I dont do any physical activity for a few days or more.
But I do love going to the gym, and while I enjoy the physical aspect, it is the mental side that I think is most beneficial (without thinking about the other benefits of going to the gym...
) and know only too well how much I struggled in the last L4 lockdown. -
2 weeks ago I joined a gym - the first time I have been inside one for 20 years. I'm using a hyper-abbreviated regime, which currently involves one day on, one day off, with only one rep of each exercises. The point is to reach the point of failure where you can no longer move the weight at 7 or more repetitions.
So basically, I'm only spending about 90 minutes in the gym (3 sessions at 30 minutes each) each week, but I am finding that I need more self control not to go more often, even though I need the gaps to recuperate.
I'm not sure how I would cope if the local area drops into red traffic light - this lifestyle has become my new norm, and I think it would negatively impact me mentally as well as physically. I think I'll head out to kmart and grab a few kettle bells, so that I'm prepared for at least some exercise if the gym option is unavailable.
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@chimoaus back to the actual content; good post.
I think there is a lot to the philosophy the set out. One of the things we find in our personal life is something quickly goes from a 'treat' to 'normal', and then you need the 'treat' again. It's crazy - people normalise so much so quickly.
Agree about the pain/pleasure thing; I think you really have to earn the 'high'. I enjoy winter as it contrasts with summer and makes us appreciate it; spending a bit of time in Singapore, there is no 'cold' - and so it's just oppressively hot the whole time. Getting things you haven't earned (both physical and experiential) is like cotton candy; nice occasionally but if you have too much, it is not good for you.
interesting observations from others, too. It seems to resonate with people.
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@nzzp Thanks, it resonated with me as it rang very true. I have a gaming addiction where I can get lost playing games and when I am down that rabbit hole, I find it very hard to enjoy other things, I just want to go back to playing games. My wife told me I have an addiction and I laughed her off and got defensive etc.
That was 12 years ago, and I am now in a good place where I have deleted all the games from my PC and Phone and find only abstinence works for me. As soon as I start playing, I fall into the same old patterns.
I thought addiction was for substances such as drugs and alcohol and I didn't really consider other behaviours such as food, gaming, social media and sex as real addictions. But they work in the exact same way in that we are forever chasing that high and we feel awful when not engaging in that behaviour.
Like everything in life, it's about balance, but this balance is hard to achieve when we are surrounded by pleasure enticing substances and behaviours.
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@chimoaus said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:
I have a gaming addiction where I can get lost playing games and when I am down that rabbit hole, I find it very hard to enjoy other things, I just want to go back to playing games. My wife told me I have an addiction and I laughed her off and got defensive etc.
I think this is a very real thing and will be a big issue going forward, especially with the way the world is.
I find it very hard to enjoy other things, I just want to go back to playing games. My wife told me I have an addiction and I laughed her off and got defensive etc.
This is TR Jnr to a tee, he has a bit of a thing for a girl, so am hoping that might make him focus less on the gaming and break away from it, otherwise he is opting to stay home and play PS4 instead of anything else, one time last summer, he was being a knob, all aggro and arrogance, I took the modem with me when i went out with my wife and daughter haha.
We also changed providers a few weeks ago, and there was 2 days we had no internet, he wanted to do stuff, cos he had no choice...so is an addiction/laziness due to convenience.
I play 1 game on my phone, but no where near addicted (I did have a patch about 10 years ago an online game I played I was bordering on it though, but saw it quickly and deleted it)
