It is both the duration between desire and effect . And when I say effect , I mean , the rewarding properties of dopamine that are experienced that's important . So very short gaps teach the system to expect and want short gaps makes it very hard to pursue things that take longer .
The same is also true for things like methamphetamine or cocaine or other types of substance addictions . And the same is also true for a lot of behavioral or what are sometimes called process addictions , things like sex addiction or video game addiction or any type of behavior that frankly is leveraging the dopamine system . But that engages this progressive narrowing of the things that bring someone pleasure such that nothing else is really salient .
In fact that there's really no other contingencies in between that the meso cortical system has to learn . In fact , what is the system quote unquote , learn , it learns cocaine equals massive amounts of dopamine equals feeling euphoric and energetic , et cetera . And in doing that , it reinforces the whole circuit .
So if somebody craves cocaine , what are they craving ? They're craving that dopamine peak , they're craving the increased level of alertness , they're craving a number of things associated with the feeling of being under the influence of the drug . But the stimulus for it simply becomes that line of cocaine or in the case of crack , that crack rock that they're gonna smoke and God forbid they're mainlining it , you know , they're shooting into a vein .
For more . And so this sets in motion , a vicious loop where people start pursuing peaks in dopamine that can come very fast without much effort . And that's one of the ways in which addictions start to take hold .
