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There's a great experiment where rats
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were given a lever to press for cocaine
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and after learning that it releases a
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lot of dopamine, the rats will [music]
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press that lever till exhaustion or
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death, which is essentially the model of
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addiction that we see in humans. But if
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the cocaine is then removed, eventually
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they won't press the [music] lever
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anymore. Now, if that same rat after a
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period of time is then exposed to a very
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painful foot shock, the first thing the
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rat will do is run over and start
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pressing that lever again. And that's
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really powerful because it shows that
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when individuals are under extreme
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stress, [music] they are more vulnerable
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to going back to compulsive
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overconumption of our drug of choice
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because their brain has already encoded
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using these high dopamine rewards as a
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way to get out of that pain.
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>> Okay. So, what do I need to do to make
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sure that I can knock the bad habits and
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add some new ones?
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>> So, first of all, on average, it takes 4
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weeks for people to get out of constant
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state [music] of craving. But here's the
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problem. Our survival depends on
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figuring out how to live in a world of
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abundance. For example, we're now seeing
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the drugification of human connection
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through social media, dating apps, and
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now artificial intelligence designed to
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flatter, to validate. There's no
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friction there. And [music] so, it's
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pulling us away from the hard things
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that we need to be doing in real life to
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cultivate real life relationships. Just
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we cannot go in that direction because
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in a world of abundance, we are
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entertaining ourselves to death. Sounds
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like a good way to go.
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>> It's really not because the relentless
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pursuit of pleasure leads to anhidonia,
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[music]
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the inability to take joy in anything at
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all.
