We’re all addicted to something.
Some addictions can be quite positive.
Some stress can be positive, some stress can motivate you to succeed.
I believe that people develop addictions for 2 reasons.
- They’re not pursuing their passion
- They’ve ruined their brain with legal or illegal drugs
If you’re pursuing your passion, doing work that you love and you have enough down time you probably won’t get addicted to anything.
Even if you’re doing work that you love it will be stressful sometimes, you have to embrace that stress. There is an optimal level of stress that can motivate you to achieve more, but there’s a fine line between too little stress and too much stress, if you never experience any stress at all then you won’t develop resilience.
If you’re doing work you’re passionate about then it’s easy to stay motivated and work through the stress.
If you love what you do and you realise that you’re lucky to do work that you love every day then your whole mindset shifts.
I love running my retreats, trading and singing.
During the week I’m focused on trading from midday each day.
Sometimes the markets are easy and sometimes I find myself working harder to make money, but I always make money. The variety keeps trading interesting, but it can be stressful as well. Even though I know what I’m doing and I’ve been trading for years.
On the weekends I run my retreats, I have clients on my retreats every second weekend and sometimes that’s stressful because sometimes people cancel at the last minute even though they’ve paid, some clients make inappropriate comments and I have to think about my safety with some people that can’t be trusted. There’s a lot for me to manage.
Even singing can be stressful sometimes, I love singing and I usually go and sing somewhere once a week because I love singing and sharing my creative works.
So even if you’re pursuing your passion you will still experience stress. Dopaminergic imaginings may make you believe otherwise but as soon as you start to pursue your passion you’ll realise that it’s not all smooth sailing.
If you don’t take illegal drugs regularly then your brain circuitry can handle the stress.
If you take illegal drugs or you drink a lot of alcohol then your dopamine levels will be dysfunctional and your motivation will fluctuate, this will affect your results.
If you work for someone else then these fluctuations won’t matter as much, but if you work for yourself you have to be calm when things get hectic and reward yourself in positive ways that don’t disrupt basic neurological processes…
If you take drugs then you’re prolonging the action of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens or potentiating the activation of neurons in the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens.
The phasic release of dopamine is subject to experience dependent plasticity in a manner consistent with classical conditioning.
The plastic potential of the limbic circuits can be co-opted by chronic exposure to drugs of abuse, this leads to cellular and molecular changes that promote dysregulation, this dysregulation makes you more vulnerable to all sorts of addictions.
Illegal drugs alter the neuromodulatory influence of dopamine on the processing of reinforcement signals in the ventral divisions of the basal ganglia. Which in turn leads to the consolidation of addictive behaviour in limbic circuitry.
So if you’re tempted to take drugs I would recommend.
- More sleep
- Less caffeine
- More downtime
- More intimacy
- Meditation
- More novel recreational activities
- More exercise
It’s not normal to be happy all the time, if you spend too much time on social media you may think that it is. So read a book and engage more with the real world, get involved and pursue your passion with other people that have similar interests to you.