Do the Dopamine Shuffle

The word “addiction” has been weaponized and should be confined to criminal and damaging behavior. Also, it’s outrageous to consider substance use as criminal behavior. Substance use and gambling are habits, bad habits for many. If you have to steal to support it, then you can call it addiction. Also, damages like cutting, and probably Marlboros.

I don’t know of any studies on commonality between a persons number of (at least somewhat visited) interests and habits and their chances of any being undesirable, but the arithmetic would infer that it would be harder for an interest or habit to become overwhelming or malevolent if it had to share someone who had a number of interests (tobacco, cards and alcohol notwithstanding). For instance, it would be harder to abuse alcohol if one likes to drive.

Some interests can resonate positively, such as an interest in nutrition, the joy of cooking, and molecular biology.

Travel and photography.

Music and dancing.

We can’t overdose on dopamine. We can’t have too much fun.

But we can try.