Mastering Dopamine: The Key To Conquering Addiction & Success With Daniel Liberman

Mastering Dopamine: The Key To Conquering Addiction & Success With Daniel Liberman. Dr. Daniel Lieberman is the senior vice president for mental health at Hims & Hers Health and a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. He’s the author of the international bestseller The Molecule of More and Spellbound: Modern Science, Ancient Magic, and the Hidden Potential of the Unconscious Mind.

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About the host: Bert Martinez is a successful entrepreneur and best-selling author. Bert is fascinated by business, marketing, and entrepreneurship. One of Bert’s favorite hobbies is to transform the complicated into simple-to-understand lessons so you can apply them to your business and life. Bert is also obsessed with exploring the mindset of the high achievers so you can follow their secrets and strategies.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Welcome, everybody. I am excited today on the show, Daniel Lieberman, Dr. Daniel Z. Lieberman. He’s the senior vice president of for mental health at Hims & Hers Health and clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. He’s also the author of the best selling book, The Molecule of More. And he’s got another book out, today, we’re going to focus on the molecule of more.

If you wanna know about his other book, it’s called Spellbound, Modern Science, Ancient Magic, and the Hidden Potential of the Unconscious Mind. Doctor Lieberman, welcome to the show.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Thanks so much for having me.

BERT MARTINEZ:

This has been such an eye opening book, in so many different ways. As I told you earlier, you know, I’ve been looking at dopamine and trying to get a handle on what dopamine really is, at least how I perceive it to be and how I can use it. But in your book, the molecule of more, it really opens my mind anyway. It opens the mind to how our brains are really wired for more and desire and and really that that dopamine is this unquenchable fire. Right?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I learned so much about dopamine writing this book. I started my career as, an addiction psychiatrist. And, of course, I was dealing with dopamine all the time because that’s what makes things addictive, is its ability to stimulate dopamine in a particular circuit in the human brain. So I thought I was gonna be writing a book about sex and drugs and rock and roll. And that’s a really big part of dopamine, but I discovered that it is only a part, and there’s actually so much more to it than that.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yeah. That’s incredible. And it’s good to get that background about you being in a, going looking at it from an addiction standpoint of view. It is, such a powerful influencer. Right? I mean, it controls everything and, it just blows me away. So again, the book is called The Molecule of More. I would urge everybody to go check it out. It’s also available on, on your favorite, what do you call it, audiobooks.

So. All right. One of the things that, kind of bothered me a little bit was that we really think of ourselves as these rational creatures, but we’re really not. I mean, your book clearly demonstrates that we are more reactive than anything else?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. You know, rationality is so powerful. In some ways, it’s what sets human beings apart from the other animals. It allows us to think abstractly about things like mathematics and philosophy and justice and all of those wonderful things. But it’s important to remember that, yes, we’re human, but we are also animals. And we’re influenced by our neurobiology, how our brain functions.

And, if we don’t appreciate that, if we don’t learn to, I would say, team up with the animal side of our nature, we’re gonna be totally out of control of our life. And one of the reasons I wrote this book was to help people better understand one of the most important aspects of their animal nature when it comes to the behavioral decisions we make.

And I use the word decision advisedly because in many cases, it’s not a decision. It’s as you say, a reaction to the things going on in our environment. And we’re just bystanders in many cases.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. Absolutely. And what’s interesting to me again, I look at things from a completely different lens now. When I see, again, people reacting, you know, now I’m looking at it. They’re reacting this way because of these chemicals that are in our body. So and I wanna talk about this because you start off the book explaining these chemicals, and I love the labels you put on it. The down chemicals, which, you know, kinda help us to be in the present. And then we have the other chemicals which give us these, what do you call it? These pursuits for, being liked and and and really causes to desire these things.

So talk about these 2, the the these 2 chemicals or or series of chemicals, the down chemicals and the, and the up chemicals.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Right. So our current understanding of dopamine can be traced back to a kind of strange place. And it’s the way the human brain divides three-dimensional space. So when we look down, we look into what’s called the peripersonal space. That’s the space around us that is within arm’s reach. And the things in the peripersonal space are generally things that we own that we have control over. And when we interact with them, they’re right here. And we interact with them in the present moment.

So these might be things like a cup of coffee in your hand, or your cell phone, or your purse, or your wallet, or a pen. Things that you have right here, right now in the present moment. Now when we look up on the other hand, we’re looking out beyond the peripersonal space into the extrapersonal space. Things that are beyond our arm’s reach. These are things that we don’t have. These are things that we cannot interact with right now. What we can do is we can desire them, and we can plan how to get them. But these things are not real because they’re not in the present moment.

I shouldn’t say they’re not real. Our interactions with them are not real. Any interaction that takes place is going to take place in the future. Now we have 2 sets of brain chemicals. We call them neurotransmitters to process these 2 different three-dimensional spaces. The peripersonal space, which we call the here and now, are chemicals like serotonin that affects mood. Oxytocin that orients our attention to relationships. Relating to other people takes place in the present moment.

It can also be things like endorphin and, endocannabinoid. Things that give us happiness and satisfaction. When we look out into the extrapersonal space, the world of the future, the things that might be but are not yet yet, it’s one neurochemical that guides our brain processing, and that is dopamine. And dopamine orients us to the future. And be because it is a result of evolution, its job is to keep us alive and reproducing. So it’s not just any future. It is a future of greater abundance that dopamine is focused on. And that’s what we call the book The Molecule of More.

Dopamine is always trying to make our future more secure, more prosperous. And one of the things that that and there’s 2 important things that follows from this. 1 is dopamine can never be satisfied. That’s not its role. Its role is always to look for more and better. The other thing is that when you pursue something that your dopamine says you want, whether it’s a bigger paycheck, a new girlfriend, a new car, a new cell phone. Once you get it and it moves from the future to the present, dopamine shuts off. Because dopamine is not designed to process things in the present.

And so the way we feel about something when we don’t have it and want it compared to when we have it are very, very different things, and that gets people into a lot of trouble.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yeah. Absolutely. And I just took this note, the what do you call it? The molecule of more, that what I find interesting about this, every now and then, you’ll see this in a movie, in a book, and even in in some universities, there’ll be a lecture and they’re talking about, you know, maybe they’re talking about wealth or abundance or something like that. And somebody sooner or later will ask, well, when is enough enough? So based on dopamine, there is never enough. There’s always, like you said, you want more security. It’s not just that you want more money. Yes. That’s part of it.

But some people that’s that’s a game for them. That’s the way they hit get their dopamine hit. But like you said, it could be more security, more fitness, more love, more of whatever. So we’re wired to have more until we’re dead.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

And you know what? That was a great strategy for our evolutionary ancestors. They were always living on the brink of starvation. Right. And if one day they sat down and said, oh, I’m satisfied, they’d be dead in a few days probably. And so they had to constantly keep pursuing to avoid starvation. Now today, things are different. Today we’re not living on the brink of starvation. In fact, billions of people around the world have the opposite problem, and that is obesity and the illnesses that go along with that.

We we maybe consume too much, and maybe that’s having a negative influence on our environment. But the problem is that this brain that we got through evolution, which has been so effective at allowing us to master our environment, now is not well suited to the somewhat artificial environment that we’ve created. And now instead of working for us, in many cases, it works against us.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. You know, I I am just thinking again, you and I talked about this a little bit earlier about, you know, with social media, you can be in the present and in the future simultaneously. Right? So you have, what was it called? The peripersonal?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Peripersonal is arm stuff within arm’s length. Yeah.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Right. So so theoretically, you know, you have your phone. So this is your peripersonal, but because it’s social media or maybe it’s a video game or whatever, you can be in the future as well. Right? Would that would that be correct?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. That’s right. You know, the phone is really a window, outside of the peripersonal. You know, the phone tells us about things, that are outside our reach, about things that could be. And I think that social media is a great example of how the phone can really be a dopamine addiction machine. Dopamine is not just interested in, in in things that are going to make our life better. It’s interesting hypotheticals as well. So let’s just briefly go back to people who are obsessed with getting money.

Think about someone who’s got $1,000,000,000 There’s no way you could ever spend $1,000,000,000 in your lifetime. And yet people who have $5,000,000,000 $10,000,000,000 $20,000,000,000 they obsessively spend their life trying to make more and more and more. Even though it’s gonna have absolutely no effect on the quality of their life, what they’re doing is they’re just putting points on the board. And this is the same with people who play video games. It’s not leading to anything practical or concrete. It’s just that score is going up. And yet people work for hours. They’ll give up sleep.

They’ll give up meals. They’ll give up friendships. They’ll blow off work obligations because they wanna play video games. The rich guys, they blow off their families. They they sacrifice everything to make money that they don’t even need. So dopamine can be very compulsive. And that’s what these social media people have tapped into. They’ve they’ve gotten a lot of people addicted to likes, addicted to views, addicted to followers.

For some very few people, this translates into money. For 99% of social media users, it’s kind of useless. Right. It’s like a can of Pepsi. It’s empty calories that ultimately give you a little tiny buzz for a very few minutes, and then it’s not enough. I need another 1,000 followers. I need another dozen likes. You get on that treadmill, and you can’t get off.

BERT MARTINEZ:

And what’s interesting, I just remembered when I first got on to Facebook, and some of you guys might remember this. Facebook had a thumbs up and a thumbs down. They got rid of the thumbs down because that would be disappointing to people. They they they started realizing, hey. If we give everybody only the choice of a heart or a thumbs up, that’s gonna be less negativity. So we’re gonna be more light and we’re gonna become more addictive. You know, they started realizing, as you said, we can start engineering this dopamine fix, and we’re gonna keep people on there forever. And and I remember, it made the news when the guy I can’t remember his name.

I believe he worked for Google, but he created that what we call doom scrolling. They call it, you know, forever scrolling. It never ends because I mean, and we’ve all done this. I don’t care how smart you are. We’ve all started scrolling around bedtime. And then before we know it, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning, and time has gone by like that.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. One of the amazing things about it is you can be doing it, and and you can be aware that your mood is dropping. Yes. You’re feeling more and more dysphoric. You’re feeling guilty about wasting all this time, and yet you cannot stop. And and that’s one of the effects of stimulating dopamine. Cocaine addicts, cocaine stimulates dopamine very, very powerfully, will sometimes tell you that when they do cocaine, they don’t get pleasure anymore. And they started doing it because it was so pleasurable.

And they thought they were doing it because it gave them pleasure. But at some point during the course of the addiction, it stops giving them pleasure, and yet they still do it. And I think we see the same thing with social media. People can be bored. They can be unhappy. They can be lonely. And they’re aware that engaging on the social media is making this more and more severe, and yet they’re unable to stop.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yeah. And I I think that’s a great description of addiction. If something is hurting you Yeah. But yet you can’t stop, that should tell you everything you need to know.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

That’s right. That wipes rationality right off the board. A rational person would say, if it hurts me, I stop. It it it’s child’s play, of course. But unfortunately, human brains are more than rational, less than rational, different from rational. I don’t know what the right way to describe it is.

BERT MARTINEZ:

It just goes to show you, how complex we can be and at the same time, how simple. Right? So hey, you know, if this makes me happy, I want more of that. That’s fairly simple. But then it turns around. Hey, this no longer makes me happy, but I can no longer stop. I’ve lost control. And willpower you talk about this in your book. Willpower will only last for a short amount of time.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

That’s right. Yeah.

BERT MARTINEZ:

It doesn’t really exist. I mean, it does exist, but it not it’s weak. It’s very limited.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. It’s not a good tool for behavior change, especially change that involves dopamine or has become habitual. It’s kinda like a muscle in that it does tire. So for example, wonderful study found that, if somebody is on a diet and they need to resist something, somebody brings in cupcakes to work for somebody’s birthday. The person on the diet uses their willpower. They say, you know what? I’m not gonna eat that cupcake. Later in the day, when they’re faced with a bag of chips at home, they are more likely to succumb to temptation than if they hadn’t had to refuse that cupcake. So willpower is only good once or twice.

But when you’re trying to struggle with behavior change, especially bad habits, you’re going to be hit over and over and over and over again. And in the addiction community, we have a saying. It’s better to be smart than strong. Don’t try and overcome these things with sheer strength of willpower. Strategize. Try to outsmart your dopamine so you don’t have to use willpower.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. I love that. It’s better to be smart. No. It’s yeah. Better to be smart than strong. Yeah. I love that.

That’s great. Alright. So I guess for those of us who aren’t quite grasping how dopamine works, because it it it it’s again, it’s both good and bad. What’s the simplest way of explaining how dopamine works?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. So, the simplest way of explaining it is unfortunately a tiny bit complex. We can’t simplify too much, or are we we’re no longer accurate? So one thing you need to know about dopamine is, dopamine is always focused on maximizing future resources, getting more. But there are different pathways in the brain through which dopamine travels. And those different pathways, do things that are slightly different. So for example, one pathway we have is what’s called the desire circuit. We call it the desire circuit. It’s not an official name.

And that, that does 2 things. It makes you want things, and it briefly rewards you when you are about to get them. Not when you get them, but when you’re about to get them. And there’s a wonderful illustration of this in, of all places, Winnie the Pooh. Christopher Robin asked Winnie the Pooh, what do you like best in the world? And Winnie the Pooh is about to say eating honey, not surprisingly when he stops. And he realizes that there’s a moment just before he begins to eat honey that’s better than actually eating the honey itself. But he doesn’t know what it’s called.

And what it’s called is dopamine. Because remember, dopamine is only about the future. When you’re about to eat the honey, dopamine is maxed out. It’s about to come. It’s about to come.

Once you start eating it, dopamine shuts down. Now, a sophisticated user of their brain is going to shift over to paying it from paying attention to dopamine, now to paying attention the activities of things like endorphin and endocannabinoid. Not the pleasure of anticipation, which is a kind of excitement pleasure. But the pleasure of satisfaction, which is a much more calm pleasure. It’s fulfillment. It’s saying this is enough. Here I am in the present moment enjoying what I worked for. And it sounds easier than it is because our culture is so focused on dopamine.

What’s new? What’s improved? What’s next? What more can we do? That in some ways, our ability to experience here and now pleasure has atrophied. There’s no there’s no profit to be made in helping people enjoy here and now pleasures because that’s about what you have. Right. It’s not about what you don’t have. And so we’re constantly bombarded by messages of those here and now pleasures are not worth it. They’re trivial. Focus on the dopamine pleasures. Open up your wallet, pull out your credit card, and get more.

So, one of the things the book is about is encouraging people to learn how to savor the here and now pleasures. So that’s dopamine in the desire circuit. Now there is another circuit that we talk about, and, that’s a control circuit. That one is evolutionarily newer than the desired circuit. It involves the frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex, which is the most recently developed part of the human brain. And that helps us maximize future resources, not through desire and reward, but rather through abstract planning. All right. So for example, if I want a bag of chips, I can just go to the pantry and grab it.

But if I want a promotion, that’s more complex. That’s gonna take longer. If I want to fly a rocket to the moon, I’ve got a plan far in advance. Break it down into intermediary steps and use abstract concepts like the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, mathematics, weather forecasting, all of these things. This is still dopamine. Even though it’s not about desire, but it’s about planning and logic and rationality. And that’s a function of dopamine that most people aren’t as familiar with. But but I think if we look at, an illness in which that circuit doesn’t work very well, it becomes more clear.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Wow. So is somebody that has ADHD, are they’re going to be more susceptible to addictive type stuff like social media, pornography, food, drugs, than somebody who doesn’t have ADHD?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

ADHD. Or you say ADD, attention deficit disorder. That’s more familiar. Yeah. Yes. People with ADD have a very high risk of developing addictive disorders. And many years ago, psychiatrists proposed giving amphetamines to young people with ADD. And initially, there was a lot of concern about that.

The concern was that amphetamine is an addictive drug.

Yeah. The Drug Enforcement Agency schedules it in the same category as opioids, which we know is extremely addictive. And they said, look, these kids are high risk of addiction. Let’s not give them an addictive drug. That seems like a very foolish thing to do. But, you know, the brain is always surprising. And you can’t you can’t really guess. You’ve got to test.

And so they did test it. They gave some kids amphetamine, some kids a placebo, and they watched for addictive behaviors. And what they found was very surprising. They found that the earlier the amphetamine was started and the higher dose it was given at, the less addictive behaviors you saw. So, ironically, this drug that is addictive for people who misuse it protects against addiction when it’s used in a medically appropriate way. That’s incredible. And the reason is because the addictive behaviors in people with ADD is a result of weak dopamine in the frontal lobes. This boosts it up, and it gives them control.

It allows them to look farther into the future than the impulsivity would typically do.

BERT MARTINEZ:

I’m reminded of  this quote about the journey. Right? That you have to enjoy the journey, that the journey has to be as fulfilling or as enjoy as in, yeah. You have to enjoy or be as fulfilled by the journey than the destination. And I’m trying to it’s like, what is it?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Journey for hopefully is better than to arrive.

BERT MARTINEZ:

And, you know, back back to Winnie the Pooh. First of all, it’s funny that you pulled that out of there. But at the same time, it’s a it’s a very real life lesson that’s that’s embedded in this children’s book.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Winnie the Pooh contains so much wisdom.

BERT MARTINEZ:

There you go. The wisdom of Winnie the Pooh.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

But you you’re right. It it’s so important to enjoy the journey, to not always be looking at what am I going to get at the end, but rather what what kind of good things are happening right now. And one reason why it’s so important not to be totally focused on what you’re going to get at the end of your all your hard work Is because when you get it, there’s a very good chance you’re not going to enjoy it.

One great example of that is buyer’s remorse. Years ago, I bought a new car, Mazda Miata, which I absolutely adore. It’s now almost 20 years old, and it’s my anyway, before I bought it, I I would spend hours on the Internet, on these Miata forums, reading all about it, and it gave me so much pleasure anticipating it. Then when I got it, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t the same. I was no longer obsessed with it.

You know, not too long ago, I bought a virtual reality goggles, a meta a Meta Quest. A Meta Quest. Yeah. And I was so excited. And I was imagining how cool it would be. I got it. I used it once. And I haven’t used it since.

So, you know, in some ways, our imagination of what could be is so much more satisfying than what really is. And so to say, we don’t want to play the if only game. If only I get this promotion. If only I win the love of this wonderful person. If only I get this new cell phone, then I’ll be happy. No. You will never be happy playing the if only game. You’ve got to enjoy the journey.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Man, that’s that is that is wild. That is so significant. I hope people pick up on that. Alright. Real quick. Since you mentioned the goggles, and our mind can be manipulated or tricked, with augmented reality and and these 3D, games and processes. Is that going to be an issue for us as humans later on? I guess it has the same ability to get us addicted in that world than in any and just like people who are now addicted to to video games without using the the the goggles. Right? I mean, again, I see some good with augmented reality, but at the same time, I could see people that sooner or later won’t be able to function without their goggles on.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

You know, I may be a pessimist, but, I think that, augmented reality and artificial intelligence is going to mean the end of the human race within 10 or 20 generations. Maybe sooner. And here’s why. Already, the birth rate is falling in industrialized countries. Every single industrialized country around the world. There is not one that is producing on average 2.1 children per female in order just to simply maintain a stable population. Even among developing countries, the birth rate has fallen below replacement in many of them. Many countries are now bribing their citizens to have children.

Why are the birth rates falling? Well, it’s because dopamine has given us so many other things to do besides raising children. Recently, a friend of mine, a young woman, got married. And I said, hey, you’re gonna have kids? And she goes, no. And I said, why not? And she goes, more money for my husband and I. Right? More money for gadgets, more money for restaurants, more money for overseas vacations. Having kids is very, very hard.

So kids are out the window. Nobody wants them anymore. What’s gonna go out the window next is human relationships. Human relationships are very, very difficult. They’re very imperfect. And, they’re not about dopamine. They can only be enjoyed in the here and now, which we’re no longer good at.

We now have, AI girlfriends. Just saw an article about someone’s predicting, this is gonna be a $1,000,000,000 AI Girlfriends is gonna be a $1,000,000,000 industry very soon. Interviewed a guy who’s spending $10,000 a month on sites that offer AI girlfriends. Wow. Once they’re robotics, once they’re robots, indistinguishable from humans, except they never challenge us, they always do exactly what we want to, We’re gonna stop reproducing.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yeah. So about 2 years ago, I had this guy on the show. He’s the demographer. He studies demographics. In case I in case I didn’t say that right. And to your point, this is again couple years ago. At that point, they had already picked up that the birth rate among teenagers had fallen drastically.

And they had tied that in to the latest technology. So maybe it’s 3 years ago. At that time, the emerging technology was this thing called Uber and Lyft. And the reason for that, which I thought was interesting, is there’s no chance of privacy. Growing up so I just thought that was so interesting. But but it’s true. It was you know, getting your vehicle was a was a rite of passage for most teenagers.

For whatever reason, a bunch of you know, again, the this generation of teenagers no longer thought that was important because Uber and Lyft and because that wasn’t important to them. The privacy that we get from having our own car went out the window. Teenage pregnancies went down, which sounds good until you realize that, hey. If we’re not making babies, sooner or later, we’re we’re not replacing ourselves, which is vitally important to to stand to sustain our our way of life.

And then to your point with relationships, right now, I would say the younger generation is struggling with this concept of relationships because, again, they everything’s on the phone. I mean, I have I have 5 kids ranging from 35 to and then the twins are 23. And the behavioral difference between my older kids and my younger kids is night and day.

For example, my older kids, kinda the way I grew up, somebody comes knocking on the door, you go to the door to see who’s there. With my twins, somebody would knock on the door, and they would scurry like roaches. They would dad, somebody’s at the door, and they would run upstairs. Where did that come from? It was the weirdest thing. But you could see how this younger generation is very reluctant to do anything face to face or build a relationship. They’re already struggling with the relationships.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

One of the countries that’s having the most problem with this is Japan. Their birth rate is like almost 0 at this point. Wow. And they’re having population collapse. And one young man, one Japanese young man, was asked, why don’t you have a girlfriend? And he says, I prefer pornography to actual sex because, the pornography never asks anything of me and never says no. So, you know, for most people, a pornographic video isn’t going to do it. But but what about when you’ve got an interactive avatar that only says things that are supportive, only says things that are positive? That’s gonna pick up more people. And then when it’s an embodied robot that looks sexier than any human being that you’re able to attract, is kinder, knows you better, has no needs of their own, no human beings to be able to compete.

BERT MARTINEZ:

That that in itself is a book and a movie right there.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

And, you know, people ask us, how come, you know, the universe is infinite? The universe is huge. And there’s billions and billions of planets out there. How come we’ve never seen any evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations? And I think this is the reason. Once a civilization becomes advanced enough to start moving through space, they also become advanced enough to build, quote, unquote, reproductive partners who don’t actually reproduce, and they go extinct.

BERT MARTINEZ:

I wonder if that’s what happened to the Mayans. You know, supposedly, they were well, you know, way, advanced, and they had their own they had that, the Mayan calendar and and maybe that’s what happened to the Egyptian people with their fancy pyramids. But that’s an interesting idea. And but it’s so it’s so true.

I mean, it it does not take a huge jump to think that first of all, our kids, our younger kids are struggling making relationships. They fear face to face interaction. Here comes another way that they don’t have to interact with real humans, meaning they can do it with augmented reality or AI or a robot, and, yeah. Then no more babies. I think that you’re right. I mean, I I’ve never thought about that. But, certainly, within within a few years, we no longer exist.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

We we may get 5 generations out of the human race. And then that’s the end.

BERT MARTINEZ:

That’s so incredible, and  it’s frightening. And this is, again, where the government’s gonna have to come in and really lay down some regulations because it’s gonna spread like wildfire. I mean, as it is, look at we’ve been talking about social media, and social media is linked to suicide, depression, all of these learning disabilities, and the and and we’re seeing litigation class actions against these companies because they specifically knew how to trigger or manipulate our dopamine to keep us there scrolling all night.

So the government’s gonna have to eventually step in, or all these lawsuits are eventually gonna kill the the social media companies, but something’s gonna have to be done because I totally believe with that you what you just said. Robots are in our future. They’re already becoming more and more advanced. There you can go on YouTube and type in female robot, and they’re already looking pretty good. And as you said, now you can create a robot that’s only gonna be supportive, is never gonna bother you, not gonna really want anything from you, and you can just live in your own little bubble.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

I, I saw an interview with, the founder of the sexbot company called RealDoll.  And, they asked him, are you gonna you gonna make this gonna give this doll muscles and and joints so it can move? And he said, that’s very, very difficult. And I don’t think that’s gonna happen in the near future. But what I am gonna do is I’m gonna give it an AI brain, and people will fall in love with it. Wow. Because it’s gonna say all the right things.

BERT MARTINEZ:

So let’s talk about love when it comes to dopamine because you can fall in love with somebody because of the dopamine. Right? I mean, because that’s really what it is. It’s it’s a combination of dopamine and oxytocin.

And you can make those things happen. And one of the things that I teach with my sales team and I teach this with my my clients as well, I do talk about building a bond with your customers using oxytocin, being aware. And I have a whole thing on negotiation. And, again, one of the things that I teach is is the way most people handle negotiations or selling is they’re not trying to build, they’re not trying to trigger oxytocin. Right? And so if  you and I are negotiating something and we’re both fierce about it, one of the things that I’m gonna do is I’m gonna try to leave us on a good note. If I can get you to laugh or smile or we can end on a on a good note, I’m gonna I again, I’m and you correct me if I’m wrong. I’m trying to use oxytocin to leave out a good note. So when you see me again, there’s a positive reaction versus a negative reaction. And and but love is that way. Love can be manipulated just like this sex bot’s talking about.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

I I think that dopamine plays a very interesting role in love. And to understand it, we’ve got to split love into 2 pieces. Just like we started by splitting the world into 2 segments of three-dimensional space. There’s the feeling of being in love. And we might call that passionate love. For many people, and I would include myself in that, it is the most pleasurable experience of one’s entire life is falling in love. You you feel like the world has been absolutely transformed into fairy land. Your life is transformed and will never be the same because you’ve got this this divinity who is in your life.

And you say, this is it. Rest of my life is gonna be great. This is never gonna go away. But no. It doesn’t last forever. It lasts on average 12 months. And and the reason and that’s driven by dopamine.

And the reason is that dopamine never lasts forever. Because remember, its goal is not to make you satisfied. In some ways, it’s to make you dissatisfied. And so after a while, it shuts off and goes on to the next thing. When that happens, a lot of people make the mistake of saying, oh, I guess this person wasn’t really the one. And they end the relationship and go on trying to find somebody else. And, they’re just going around in a circle, because it doesn’t matter who it is. They’re not gonna get much more than 12 months out of it.

What a more sophisticated person does is that they realized that the love transforms. It goes from dopaminergic passionate love to here and now, companionate love. Companionate love, as the name suggests, is a kind of a friendship. It’s a kind of a very, very deep friendship. And in some ways, in some ways, it can be better than passionate love because it’s enduring. It’s about the deep satisfaction of having someone else’s life entwined within your own. Knowing that there’s someone who’s always got your back. Who understands you better than anyone else in the world and is always going to be there for you.

That’s pretty darn good. Arguably as good as passionate love. So I would just say that if somebody is in a new relationship and they’re feeling they are in love, wonderful. Enjoy it. But be on the lookout for that moment when it needs to transition. And as I mentioned, modern people are not good at going into the here and now. Be aware. It’s going to be a challenge, but there could be a lifetime of payoff.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Absolutely. Well and, ultimately, isn’t that we all want? We want that companionship love that you’re talking about because we all know, at least people who have experienced it, we know that that passionate love, which as you said, it is sweeter than sweet. It’s the best of the best, but it only lasts whether whether it lasts for 12 months or 24 months or whatever. But sooner or later, one of the benefits of being in a long term relationship is that you can start focusing on other things. I I remember for me, and I think other guys do this, but at least for me, I remember one of the reasons I was excited about getting married was I won’t have to worry about dating anymore. All the all the time and money I’m gonna be saving by not dating. I was wrong. If you wanna have a long term relationship, dating is gonna be part of that.

But that is one of the benefits. If you have a long term stable relationship, then it frees you up to work on these other things because love is important, companionship is important. And I think in that, what is it? The hierarchy of of needs, it it for some people, it comes first. And then once you have that, then it frees you up to focus on other things. Not that you’re waiting on that one thing alone, but again, historically, you fall in love relatively young in your twenties. And assuming that it’s working great, you’re you start focusing on other things. At back in the day, men would work on their career. The women would start working on on having children and and and nesting and getting all that stuff squared away.

Things have changed since then, but still, when you’re in that right relationship, it it does free you up a little bit. As you mentioned, it gives you that support. It’s great that this person has your back, and they know they know the good, the bad, and the ugly about you, and they still wanna be with you. So that is a phenomenal thing.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. I think a healthy long term relationship, it it it fills a need that almost all humans have. And if that need’s not filled, we have to spend so much time and energy trying to get it filled. Once it’s filled, in in a way, it’s it’s a firm base, and it’s rocket fuel. We we can we can capitalize on that feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction, to catalyze other aspects of our life.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanna ask you this. Again, I’ve been studying dopamine. I’m I’m I’m trying to see how I can use my knowledge of dopamine to manipulate my own behavior. Is there, in your opinion, a dopamine crash? In other words, you and I have a goal to run a marathon, and we run that marathon. After the marathon, man, we’re high fiving each other. We’re feeling good for a day, a week, maybe even a month. But after that, does it crash?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

You know, dopamine is more likely to crash when you expect a reward and then you do not get it. And, there are few things in life that are more upsetting than that. For example, if I were to tell you right now, hey, I got some bad news. I was gonna give you a new car, but now I’m not. You’re kinda like, well, okay. Fine. I don’t care. I wasn’t expecting it.

But, you know, if you were working at a corporation you were expecting a promotion and somebody else got it, that would be pretty devastating. A very simple example is you’re waiting in line at Starbucks for your cup of coffee and muffin that you have every day. Your cell phone goes off. Your boss says, there’s a crisis coming right now. Drop everything. And you don’t get your muffin and coffee. We might feel like a baby, and it’s kind of a big deal. I didn’t get every single morning, I get my coffee and muffin.

This is this is the greatest injustice in the history of the world. That’s what crashes dopamine. When you expect a reward, you don’t get it. Conversely, what pops dopamine is when you get an unexpected reward. So, for example, if I get if I get a $1,000 bonus, I’m like, wow, that’s fantastic. But if I get a $1,000 raise, 6 months down the line, there’s the extra $1,000 of my paycheck. It does nothing for me as expected.

And dopamine only works with stuff that you don’t have yet. So but but but to your point, there could be dopamine crashes. There can also be dopamine desensitization. Alright? So if we are always, artificially stimulating our dopamine with social media likes, with junk food, with pornography. We desensitize it. And everyday rewards like, oh, your spouse cooked you a nice dinner. It doesn’t do that much because you desensitized it with the hard liquor of junk food, pornography, and social media.

So so we need to watch out for that. The more we engage in in those cheap thrills, the harder it is to be happy with everyday life.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

So then And I imagine he wasn’t satisfied lifting the same weight every day. It had to be more weight and more weight and more weight. Because the old weight doesn’t give you dopamine anymore.

BERT MARTINEZ:

That’s right.  And look, if any of you guys take anything away from today’s interview is you have to be aware of what you’re doing. I mean, you again, we can I, and I wanna get into this a little bit more? We can manipulate or train our dopamine or how we react, but we have to be aware of some of the things that we may be addicted to. It could be something as simple as social media. That’s I don’t wanna say it’s it’s, what do you call it? Non harmful. It’s it’s still harmful, but not compared to hurting yourself by jumping over the Grand Canyon in a rocket ship.

But, but anyway, so Ronnie Coleman, he he eventually stopped lifting weights. He is, he was in a wheelchair for a while. And when you ask him, hey, do you regret any of that? No, I don’t. And and to the point, I get that because, look, he made history. 8 time mister Olympia, tons of awards, tons of money. A lot of us will do crazier things for no for minimal recognition. So, anyway but it it is just amazing to me. The more I study dopamine, the more I realize that we can become addicted to anything. We can lose control like that.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

And I just wanna pick up something you said that I thought was so important, and that is about being aware. You know, a lot of times we don’t pay attention to what’s going on inside our own head. But but in some ways, that’s like leaving a puppy alone in your apartment when you go out. You gotta monitor it because it’s wild, and and it’s gonna cause damage if you don’t. And so one thing that I think is useful I found useful that I started doing when I wrote wrote the book is I would ask myself, is this a dopamine moment or a here and now moment? So when I’m working, that’s a dopamine moment. I’m creating things that are new. I’m creating a better future. But when I get home at night and I spend time with my family, that’s a here and now moment.

And all too often when I’m with my family, I’m stuck in dopamine mode. What did I forget to do at work? What do I need to do tomorrow? What do I want to get that’s going to make my life happier? What are the things I need? And I started trying to get myself more into those here and now moments when I was in a here and now situation. And, also, when when when I was in a dopamine moment pursuing more, I would also ask myself, am I behaving instinctively or am I behaving rationally? I’m heading to the kitchen to get some chips. Why? It’s because I believe eating a bag of chips is a good idea, or am I being led by the nose by my dopamine? And just trying to be a little bit more aware of what’s going on, what’s influencing my behavior, and whether that’s really what’s best for me.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. Absolutely. I love this idea. This explains so much, especially for for people who are competitive or high achievers. Because I think most people who are in that frame, entrepreneur, people who are, you know, looking at how can I get more, you get home, but you’re not fully present?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

The people who are able to afford beach houses are the ones who are incapable of enjoying them. They’re not gonna sit on the sand and watch the sunset and enjoy the beauty. If they’re out on the beach at all, they got their laptop out, and they’re writing emails.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. But you know what? That’s enjoyable. Look. To to be able to say that I was at my beach house wheeling and dealing on the beach, that that is enjoyable. Now I will I I will say that if you’re on the beach with your laptop and your family’s there and you can’t put away the laptop or the phone, again, we’re back to an addiction. Yeah. I have I have a friend of mine, Jason, and we make fun of him because this guy is addicted, And he is struggling with putting that phone down. And he’ll check it, you know, all the time. He hits like, dude, your your phone isn’t even making noise. What are you checking it for? And it’s just so funny.

But I like this idea of of again, back to questioning why we’re doing something. Is this because I need a dopamine hit? Or do I really need a bag of chips? Because we never really need a bag of chips. I mean, we might need some some protein. We might need some carbs, and we might need some fats, but we don’t need processed carbs or processed fats. That’s terrible.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

If you wanna eat a bag of chips, eat the bag of chips, but do it deliberately. Say, alright. This weekend, Saturday, I am going to have a sensible serving of chips because I enjoy chips. Right? And then it’s not this this impulsive thing. And you say to yourself, and while I’m eating those chips, I’m not going to be watching TV. I’m not going to be serving the Internet. I’m going to be focusing on the sensation of eating the chips. And then I can say to myself, all right, I did it. I don’t need to do this again for another week or 2.

BERT MARTINEZ:

What’s so extraordinary what you just said, one of my clients, this is many years ago, was a weight loss clinic. I’m not gonna mention who it is, but you you go there. They had they had meetings. They they talked about this exact same thing that one of the easiest ways to over eat is not being present with your food. It is so customary for us to sit in front of the TV and eat. And my brother, we were all get we all gotten together, us and the siblings. And my sister had made, one of our favorite desserts, which is a flan for, and it’s a a custard type, very delicious dessert. Anyway, all of us who were present, once we’ve been into it, we realized, oh, this is bad.

This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever eaten. And my sister gets up and says, don’t don’t eat it. The vanilla has gone bad. It’s terrible. My brother walks into the kitchen. His plate is empty because he was so fixated on watching whatever he was watching watching on TV. He ate it, didn’t realize it didn’t taste good.

And to make things even worse, now we’re sitting in front of the TV with our food and our small screen while we’re watching the big screen. So we’re like, over overwhelming ourselves.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

I wish we spoke to someone, who writes for, for TV, for Netflix. And, they said that they can’t write interesting, complex storylines anymore. Because now the TV is called the second screen.

The only thing that he was allowed to write is stuff that people could get the gist of while not paying attention to it. And he said it was so frustrating. He can’t tell good stories anymore.

BERT MARTINEZ:

I heard that. It is amazing. And the sad part is is that they’re catering to it.

Which, again, look, as as we wanna make our customers happy. But at the same time, there are companies out there that say, look. This is what we do. This is how we do it. If you don’t like it, this our company is no longer for you. And and I think that Netflix I see I I do understand their point of view. I mean, if if you’re dealing with somebody who has multiple screens going on or has attention deficit, they’re not gonna pay attention. No. We are we are in so much trouble, aren’t we?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

We you know, if you’re a businessman, you you’ve gotta find the balance point. To some degree, you’ve gotta give the customer what they want or you go out of business.

But you also got to have some ethics. Because the reason you’re in business is ultimately to find happiness for yourself.

And, if you’re unethical, you’re not gonna be happy.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. I I yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things that you talk about in your book is glamour. I and I wanna talk about this be because I had never heard this definition of glamour before, but to me, it’s something that, again, needs to be discussed. Give us the the definition of glamour and how it can hurt us.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. So, glamour is an interesting word. It it comes from, a word, that meant to be hypnotized or enchanted and not in a good way. You know, you go to this place where there are fairies, and we think of fairies being positive. But in the old days, they were very negative. They’re very dangerous. And they put a spell on you when you can no longer function properly. And in a way, that’s what glamour does.

Something is only glamorous if it’s in the extra personal space, if it’s triggering dopamine. So let me give you a few examples. You you you look up in the distance, you see a mountain. Oh, my God. The mountain is majestic and absolutely beautiful. And you catch your breath, it’s so beautiful. You you go on top of that mountain, it’s just a bunch of trees, you know? And and you look down to the valley, the sunny, warm valley. Oh my god what a romantic you were just there wanting the mountain. Right? Another example. Look up in the sky, you see an airplane. Right? Oh, boy. People people on the airplane going to exciting places. How glamorous. You’re on the airplane, it ain’t glamorous at all. Right? It’s not all that different from being on a bus.

Hollywood. You see Hollywood movie stars. Oh, they’re all beautiful. They’re all perfect. They’re all witty. They’re all passionate. No. No. They’re not. This is just this is just this is just the glamour of the makeup and the lighting and the director. Hollywood is actually a very tawdry place. Yes. Characterized by sexual abuse and drug addiction and backstabbing and all that horrible thing. So glamour is dopaminergic. It only works if it’s off in the distance. It only works when it’s not real.

BERT MARTINEZ:

I just love that definition so much. And you’re right. I think that, Hollywood is a great embodiment of that definition of glamorous. Because anybody on the outside of Hollywood, like you said, they think, oh, this is all shiny and beautiful, and it’s so cool. But any of us who know anybody that works in the industry, you’d come to realize these are some of the most vile people that Yeah.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Recently, we’ve been hearing about all this childhood sexual abuse that goes on and nobody is surprised. And then recently, there was, was it Weinstein? Or Yes. Yeah. Raping all these women. It’s a vile, vile environment.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Look at Bill Cosby. Who would have thought that America’s dad I mean, this guy was loved and beloved. He was he was everything. I mean, he he had he he changed TV multiple times. I remember the show that I first remembered Bill Cosby on was I Spy, I believe was the name of it. And it’s the first time that you see a black man in a in a lead part in a series TV series. And, you know, that was a big deal. He and and then later on when he had the Cosby Show and it showed him as, as a as this successful professional married to another successful professional.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

And he was warm and wise Yes. And wonderful. And that’s who you think he is.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. And that he’s this he is this serial rapist on this on this level that we’ve never seen before. And it’s and I think, again, that that is, a good, unfortunately, a good analogy of what Hollywood is really like. And that’s why you see a lot of a lot of these Hollywood stars. Once they become big enough, they start setting the terms, and they’ll no longer do this. And sometimes they’re referred to as hard to work with because they have boundaries now. I’m not gonna do an I will not do a nude scene. I, you know, I will not do this. I will do you know, I’m gonna have boundaries. And you have to do that.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. Sometimes they’re labeled hard to work with just because they refuse to go to bed with someone. Yes. And and that’s the revenge and their career is over.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. And just to be clear, it’s not just the women that are being preyed on. It’s the guys too. And so that was a revelation to me because the women’s stuff was has been around since forever. But then recently, guys started coming out that, yeah, they have to put up with it too.

It is just crazy and sad because at the same time, Hollywood has helped move, I think, America forward. When you see again, going back to black actors, for the longest part, they had a very specific role to play. There were usually servers and tap dancers, and there were these sidekicks and kind of silly little, bits and pieces. But then later on, Sidney Poitier, I remember, you know, again, his his coming on to the silver screen and then the TV and stuff like that. Hollywood helped with racism. It helped break these lines down. Something as simple as Star Trek where you had, Uhura, who was part of the of the leadership team there and stuff like that. And I think if I’m not mistaken, Star Trek had the first interracial kiss. So not all bad. Hollywood does some good.

Again, back to the glamour. It’s only glamorous until you understand that it’s not.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

That’s right. When it moves from the periperson the extra personal to peripersonal, the whole facade falls apart.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. It’s incredible. Alright. So what can we do to train ourselves or to be able to train our dopamine? I I guess to be how do we train ourselves so we’re not so reactive? I mean, I’ll one of the things that you’ve already suggested is ask these questions. Why do I want this bag of chips? And then to be aware, okay, I’m gonna sit down and I’m gonna enjoy this bag of chips. I’m gonna turn off all other stimulants, sit down and enjoy my how did you say my reasonable portion of bag of chips, because we are so reasonable. But are there other ways where we can control our dopamine?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

As I was researching and writing this book, I started meditating. I developed a meditation habit. Meditation does 2 things. 1 is that it strengthens the control dopamine in the frontal lobe. Because it’s about focus and concentration. And that allows you to bring that desire circuit that makes you impulsive under better control. It also gets you better at being in the present moment and experiencing what’s going on right here, right now, becoming more familiar with those here and now neurotransmitters. So meditation is hard.

It’s like exercise for the brain. And I think that developing a meditation habit is very similar to developing an exercise habit. In the beginning, you don’t want to do it. But then once you’re doing it, it feels good. And then once it’s habitual, you feel bad if you miss a day. So, it’s it’s difficult to get started, but there’s a huge payoff. And I don’t know I don’t know if you need to do it that long. I’m doing it 10 minutes a day. And, if I blow it off for a while, my kids can tell. I’m more reactive. I’m less chill. So just even 10 minutes a day seems to have some benefit.

BERT MARTINEZ:

I could just hear them say, oh, dad, you must have missed your meditation today. Oh, bless our kids. That’s for sure. Alright. When you were going through this putting your book together, was there an unexpected surprise? Did you find something new that you weren’t aware of?

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

A lot. A lot. The first surprise was that it’s not the chemical of sex and drugs and rock and roll. It’s the chemical of the future. What we do not have, maximizing future resources. And that really just blew it open. And then from that, came the second part of the book. When we discovered the role of dopamine in all of these unexpected places, creativity, politics, science, mathematics. All of these places. And we found it absolutely permeates our world. That was what was most surprising to me.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yeah. That’s that was the bigger the biggest Aha I got out of your book as well. It is scary. We are dopamine creatures.

You know, everything we do or don’t do is because of dopamine more or less. And then, of course, you become aware that again, we talked about social media. We’ve talked about the food industry. There are these companies out there who have become experts at manipulating us through our dopamine. Yeah. And let me tell you, unless we as parents do something about it, unless the government does something about it, our new generation is is gonna be slaughtered. I mean, they’re gonna have they’re gonna be they’re already addicted to the phone. You know, somebody made a a comment the other day that the zombie apocalypse has already happened because you have all these people walking around like this.

There is no interaction. I mean, you have a you go to a restaurant, is there if there’s 4 people there, they’re all 4 on their phone. And they’re sitting right next to other humans, but yet they feel more comfortable scrolling on the phone. And then, you know oh, look. This is funny.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

I know. I know. It it’s horrible. My hope is that it’s gonna be like cigarette smoking, where it took a while, but people recognized that it was very, very harmful. You know, the tobacco companies fought and fought and fought. And they delayed the realization, but eventually we did. And then, there was government regulation. But I think that what really did the trick was it was no longer socially acceptable to smoke cigarettes.

That’s not to say that it’s completely eliminated, but it’s it’s much less common now. And I think it’s because of social disapproval. I think we will get to the point where pulling your cell phone out when you’re with another person is gonna be like lighting up a cigarette in in a restaurant. People are gonna say, no. No. No. No. No.

No. No. That’s not acceptable.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Man, what a what a glorious day. But you what’s interesting though is that you’re seeing more and more of that. You will have where they’ll tell you to please put your phone on silent or please your put your phone away. Now some events, you have to lock down your phone. You can’t even have it on your person. They put it in those special containers, and they give you a receipt, and they locked up your phone.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

And some some schools are forbidding, they have to put their phone in a cubby when they come in and no phone all day long. And their task scores are stratospheric. Yes. Simply by taking away the phones, they go up. Discipline problems go down, and and and the students just start interacting with each other more and develop social skills that people with phones are not developing. That needs to be a universal law in all schools. You you put your phone away when you step through the door.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. And maybe to some extent, in our offices as well. Because, look, if you’re at the office, you have access to your computer. You don’t really need to be tethered to your phone. Yeah. And and it’s it it be it’s become kind of like an, a nervous tick. It you know, if if you have a phone, it’s again, looking at it just like if you’re at a social setting, that you’ll see people who are their their nervous tick is taking a sip, you know, trying to look cool. Anyway, listen. We’re out of time. Go ahead.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

I just did a cheap dopamine thrills are now like oxygen. We have to have a constant supply of it. We can never stop.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Yes. Absolutely. It’s been such a pleasure getting to know you and and diving into your book, The Molecule of More available wherever you find your favorite books. I I would love to bring you back and talk about your other book when you have a chance. I I I just found this subject matter to be so fascinating, and it really helped me to understand that how addicted we are to step out everything, how we can become addicted to everything. And, you know, my biggest takeaway from today, besides all the stuff on dopamine, is the fact that we’re really on the verge of having the human race disappear.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

I think so.

BERT MARTINEZ:

The the thought of robots and AI replacing replacing human interaction is real. 5 years from now, it’s just gonna be a ghost town.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Yeah. I’m afraid of that.

BERT MARTINEZ:

Anyway, thank you so much for stopping by. It’s been a blast.

DR. DANIEL LIEBERMAN:

Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.