Dopamine and the Disciple

Transcript

Well, good evening, brothers, sisters, and young people and friends. I know I certainly benefited by the Stoughton Boston Bible class many times during COVID, so I'm really glad to be able to jump on and give back a little bit here this evening. Just a show of hands behind the screen. Hands up if you've ever heard of the word dopamine, and keep your hands up if you feel you know what dopamine is to a greater or a lesser extent. Last number of years, I've been reading a lot about mental health conditions and addictions to help somebody in my life and just in general to help myself as well, and I keep running across this word dopamine, and believe it, it's at the root of many of the challenges that we've faced today, both young and old, and just as a teaser, here's a quote from a researcher, this is Dr. Anna Lemke, who was being interviewed a few years ago, and she says, although we have endless founts of fun at our fingertips, the data shows that we're less and less happy. Global depression rates have been climbing significantly in the past 30 years, and according to a World Happiness Report, people in high-income countries have become more unhappy over the past decade or so. To understand and counter this phenomena, we must first understand dopamine and how our current culture exploit this. So here's a researcher who identifies dopamine as being at the heart of a lot of general mental health conditions and difficulties and even low-level addictions. We don't have, we don't need to have serious mental health challenges to have troubles with dopamine, we don't have to be addicted, we are all affected as what she's getting at. We don't have to be ashamed about that either, we just need to recognize that we are struggling with this in our culture. So this evening I wanted to look at this topic of dopamine, and I believe that we live in a culture where it's increasingly important to be aware of dopamine. I believe dopamine has a significant impact on our lives as Christ's disciples, both good and for bad. So the same thing we'll talk about is what is dopamine, how does it work, and how does it affect our lives as disciples, and then take a look at some of the Bible solutions for the dopamine challenge that we face today. And our overall goal really is to expand our awareness of a life challenge that we are all facing together, and also look at some of God's help and his solutions for this life challenge. Now, an important biblical foundation to looking at this, I believe that God instructs us to do battle as disciples by putting on the full armor of God. Ephesians 6 shows that to us, right, Ephesians 6 verse 10 through 20 implores us to put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, to have our feet fitted with readiness from the gospel of peace, to take on the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and to pick up the sword of the spirit, which is defined as the word of God. So these are all important weapons, so to speak, to fight our daily battles that we deal with in our life. So we are doing battle, and these are fundamental pieces of our armor. But part of this battle is identifying and understanding what we're fighting against. It's nice to put on all this armor, but it's more important, or as equally as important, to understand what are we fighting. Take a look at Ephesians 6, verse 10 through 13. It lays this out for us, Ephesians 6 verse 10. The rulers of the darkness of this age against spiritual hosts of the wickedness in the heavenly places, and therefore take up the whole armor of God. So what he's saying is it's important to understand what are we fighting against, and that includes the culture of the world around us, spiritual wickedness, temptations, difficulties that we run into that are against God in our culture around us. And if we have access to knowledge about what our attacker is or who our enemy is, why not use it to our advantage? We can use our armor more effectively if we understand what we are battling against. And so God's wisdom, combined with a healthy understanding of these challenges or these phenomena can help us confront the challenge more soundly. I'm not an expert on this topic of dopamine, but I'm sharing what I've learned and what I've experienced in a very synthesized class. And I'd love to hear your feedback and your comments later on in our class. And if you have some questions and can interrupt me along the way, then feel free to do that. Well, let's start by understanding what dopamine is. God has designed our brains in an absolutely incredible way. It's made up of millions of nerve cells and they are interconnected to communicate and pass instructions to our brain and to various parts of our body. And the point that the nerves interconnect with each other, they're represented by these bright yellow spots here, is called the synapse. And the nerves send messages throughout the body by releasing chemicals across these synapses. And these chemicals, the little yellow dots there in the synapse, are called neurotransmitters or NTs. And there are many neurotransmitters that control our memory, our breathing, our muscles, our hormones, our senses, even our heartbeats. But there are four key neurotransmitters that affect our level of happiness among many other things. They are oxytocin, that's the love chemical, we feel oxytocin is released into our synapses when we pet animals, when we have physical touch, when we help others, when we socialize. There's serotonin, also known as the calming chemical, we release that into our bodies when we experience mindfulness, when we are exposed to the sun, when we go on nature walks. There's endorphins, which also give us feelings of happiness and pleasure, also known as the painkiller chemical. We get that when we listen to music or when we exercise or when we laugh. And then there's dopamine, which is regarded as the reward chemical. We get that when we're getting enough sleep, when we're achieving a goal in our life, when we are enjoying something such as a bath or when we're eating food. These are very general definitions of these. But with these four happy chemicals, we feel happy. And without them, we feel unhappy or anxious or very stressed. And sometimes these chemicals are imbalanced in our bodies. We get too much or we may get too little. For example, we may have too much dopamine, and that's been linked to schizophrenia. It makes our brains experience non-reality. We can also have too little dopamine. And this has been linked to serious depression. It's been linked to seasonal affective disorder or SAD. I grapple with SAD every winter. It's terrible this time of year. The lack of sunlight reduces the amount of dopamine that is promoted in your body, and you feel very depressed and you're fighting that. If you go into the sun or you take a trip down to Florida or the Caribbean, immediately you feel happy or back to normal. Parkinson's. A lack of dopamine is linked strongly to Parkinson's. The lack of dopamine reduces our fine motor control. We may need medication to help us with these situations in our life. I want to focus on dopamine. Dopamine is produced largely in the middle of our brains. It's released into the frontal lobe and the striatum, and it plays a role in controlling our movements, our memory, sleep, concentration, our ability to have attention, our ability to be motivated, and especially our emotions and moods, particularly pleasure or happiness. And this chemical is released into the synapse when we anticipate pleasure. In other words, we think about something that's going to bring us pleasure or that we smell or that we see that's going to give us pleasure. So it's the anticipation. For example, cookies baking in the oven. Just the smell of those releases dopamine into our body as we anticipate being able to enjoy those cookies or eat them. But the experience also releases dopamine into our body. So the experience of pleasure, the reward, gives us dopamine as well. It makes us feel happy and pleasured. This is called a pleasure or reward pathway, and it makes us feel good or gives us a bit of a rush. It motivates us to take action, to complete goals, to do things that give us pleasure and happiness in our life, and it reinforces the paver. So we don't just do it once. Because we enjoy it and it gives us pleasure, we want to do it again and again and again. So for example, this is how the reward pathway, the dopamine reward pathway works.

In the case of substances like chocolate, I think we can all relate to this one, I definitely can. The anticipation or thinking of chocolate gives us a little bit of a dopamine rush. It makes us feel happy and it gives us the motivation to move forward and to eat that chocolate or find chocolate or pursue chocolate. Once we've eaten the chocolate and we've been rewarded by it, it also gives us another boost in dopamine and makes us feel even happier. And this actually reinforces that behavior. And then we repeat it. We may go back to eating another piece of chocolate or we may later on think about eating chocolate again and remember, oh yeah, that was good, I'm going to do that again. But notice as well, we've got a little brain down here on the bottom, flat on this face, there is a period of unmotivation or pain or discomfort after we feel this pleasure. In other words, we may feel we've had enough. We go through a bit of a come down. If we've had a piece of chocolate or several pieces of chocolate, we may say to ourselves, all right, I'm satiated. I've had enough. I don't want any more. And we may also feel pain in the sense of craving as well. We may crave it later on again and go back to it. So it's a bit of a cycle that it creates, but we go up, but we also come down. That's the natural body cycle. Now I'll show you how this works as well with behaviors, not just substances, but behaviors like running or completing a project for work or for the Ecclesia or in our house, the anticipation of winning the race or completing the project gives us a dopamine rush. We feel happy and motivated winning the race or finishing the race or the project gives us the reward and a dopamine rush again and that behavior is reinforced. But again, we may repeat that, but we may also go through a bit of a crash as well. We're done. We've had enough of it. We don't want to do it again for a little while. We crashed. We have a come down as well. So just note how God has designed our brains in an incredible way to enjoy parts of our life. The anticipation and the reward makes us feel happy and God has built that into our lives. He's given us pleasure and enjoyment and excitement and reward in our lives, which motivates us to do and to enjoy things again. Imagine if God hadn't built this into our lives, into our brains, if we could not feel pleasure or reward or happiness or reinforcement, we'd just be sitting around dumb-faced doing nothing.

So God has built this into our brains and it's a critical pathway and process. But this is how it looks if we charted dopamine in a graph and how the reward works in our body. Just another way of looking at it. So the dopamine, the anticipation over here on the left gives us motivation and gives us a bit of a dopamine rush and the dopamine is released as we move up to the peak where we get the reward. And when we get the reward, we feel more pleasure and reinforced and then the dopamine levels in our body begin to go down and they crash over time and we have a lack of motivation and we may feel pain and discomfort or just a malaise in our life. But then they bounce back to this middle of the road, this baseline, kind of a neutral level after a while. And then if we do the same thing again, it bounces back up, goes back down and then goes back to this baseline. So it actually crashes to almost an equal level as it goes up and then comes back to neutral. And when we come off this high, the body produces various pain types of pain, cravings and depression. We may even feel blue. You think about going to a study weekend. We feel really great about going to the weekend. We go to the weekend. We have a great time. We're satiated by all of the social connections and eating and the studies and afterwards we may feel blue when we get home later on because our dopamine levels have crashed and they're beginning to come back to our baseline. And eventually we are motivated to go back and to repeat this behavior. So if we can wait long enough, the feelings and the neutrality is restored in our body and our bodies always want to go back to this baseline, a normal neutral state. The pleasure is always fighting against the pain and vice versa to create a stable neutral in our bodies. And so our dopamine naturally resets to a normal baseline level if we let it do that. Now, it's important to understand this cycle. And again, it's amazing how God has created this. Pleasure is limited to a period of time. To prevent abuse of things that pleasure us, God has built a stop into it to slow us down. But even pain is limited for a time. To prevent overwhelming pain, God has built a return to bring us back to a neutral state so that we can repeat these same cycles and enjoy life. And together they help us to moderate our life and to moderate pain and pleasure which are both important. So this is how God has designed our body naturally to work. But this cycle is also a bit fragile. It needs to be treated with respect. And we can abuse this natural cycle. We can attempt to achieve pleasure directly in our lives by addictive substances or addictive behaviors. And these are ones that increase the level of dopamine in our body unnaturally. For example, here's a bunch of things we may anticipate doing that are addictive. Addictive drugs or substances, cannabis, cocaine, alcohol, gambling, online gambling. That was a big one for the Super Bowl the last few days. Billions that were bet on the Super Bowl. We may think about looking at pornography or online vices or maybe we do something that gets us into jail, like shoplifting or other illegal behaviors. These can give us a bit of a dopamine rush unnaturally. We're motivated, feel good by it. We are rewarded perhaps when we do it. We get another rush and we're reinforced. But our body crashes afterwards as well. And not only that, we become quite a basket case in the case of these addictive substances specifically. Because these addictive substances really jack our dopamine levels up, they also really, really come down. And you see people who are addicted on drugs and they're bent over in this stupor in their life. They've crashed, right? But then they experience the pain of coming down and they go back and they crave these drugs or these substances or behaviors again and they go back through the cycle. And we can get into that cycle as well. This is how the addiction spike looks. Way off the chart and then it crashes way back. But the interesting thing to note is that our baseline is reset lower and for a prolonged period of time that can really leave us a mess. It doesn't come back to a natural baseline. It comes back to a new baseline that is in the pain side of this cycle. So this dopamine crash can last for ages and it stays low rather than rebounding. And it makes us even more desperate for more substances to elevate our pleasure. And it only crashes again and it can cause havoc obviously in our life with money and with their own lives and with their loved ones. Scientists use dopamine to gauge how addictive a substance or a behavior is. They're not all the same. The level of dopamine produced by the brain is different. Some trigger much larger amounts. For example, on the far left here is the baseline. At 100%. But food can boost our dopamine by 150%. Video games can boost our dopamine 175%. Alcohol, 250%. Pornography, 300%. Gambling, 400%. Cocaine, 800%. Amphetamine, 1,000%. Methamphetamine, 1,300%. So you can see the unnatural and massive boost of dopamine that this introduces into our body. And just consider how readily available these are in our life. In fact, some of them are actually pushed on us by companies and by industry around us. Porn, gambling, video games, food. And addictions destroy the natural ability to create and to restore dopamine in the brain. The image on the left is a normal brain, and you can see that little red area in the brain. It's producing dopamine normally when it should. And on the right is a meth abuser, and it's not producing dopamine correctly. That's why they stay in this state of constant down and pain in their lives. So these substances and behaviors can destroy us by abusing the natural dopamine cycle, and they have devastating impacts on us. God didn't design the body to be addicted or to use dopamine. Now, we may look at this and say, well, this has nothing to do with me. I don't struggle with addictions per se, but we all have a tendency to want to repeat pleasure in our life and to spike dopamine in our life through substances or behaviors, often before it has reset itself normally. There's a natural tendency to counteract pain

that we may feel in our life by another dose of pleasure. So, for example, when we overstimulate ourselves in our life in various ways,

we are constantly spiking the dopamine in our life, and we repeat the pleasure over and over again and perhaps before our body has a chance to reset dopamine to a baseline. And it has a similar impact as an addiction, just repeating pleasure in our life, just simple pleasures. If we keep repeating the pleasure or have excessive pleasure over time, we build up a tolerance to it, and we have to do the pleasure more often and in greater doses to create the same rush. But if we overstimulate ourselves over a short term to break the tolerance that builds up, the reverse actually happens. Instead of becoming more pleasured, our dopamine gets lower and lower and lower and lower, and normal dopamine baseline is reset lower in the brain on the side of pain, just like with an addiction. So we don't have to be involved in addictive substances to do the same thing to our body. We don't experience the same pleasure or dopamine spike. Instead, we feel less pleasure, more pain, and instead of pleasure, we end up feeling depressed

or anxious or unhappy or irritable or unfulfilled or unmotivated, just like that quote at the beginning of our presentation. It's just like an addiction. And we may do this for different reasons. We may be obsessed with something. We may develop an obsession for something such as running or eating or cell phone scrolling or gaming over days or over weeks, and it leaves us feeling burnt out, unmotivated, unhealthy, irritable, depressed, and unfulfilled. We may binge. That word was used a lot during COVID. We may binge or overstimulate ourselves. For example, we may watch episode after episode after episode after episode of You Fill in the Blank. We may binge on junk food over a weekend or over weeks, and we end up feeling awful, depressed, or unmotivated. And this is why. It's because of a natural cycle in our body. We may do something that's called layering. In other words, we may perform multiple pleasures at once. They call it layering. And this is what it looks like. If you were to sort of graph it out. So for example, we may do a number of things that stimulate dopamine in our body. We may listen to music, play video games, watch movies, do online gambling, gorge on pizza, eat chocolate, talk to friends, and do drugs all at the same time. And it's just total overwhelming to our body. And we do that stuff in our life. I'll give you an example. Back in the summer, I took my nephew down to see a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game. And it's like going to Disney World now, going to a baseball game, at least in Toronto. Anyways, it's not as relaxing as it used to be. Everybody's on their phones, and they're not necessarily watching the game, and there's food, and there's sound, and there's lights, and there's cheering, and there's stores that you can shop at, and there's crowds, and there's alcohol, and there's just so much overstimulation. And on the way home, ever, my nephew absolutely crashed. And I did too, because we had absolutely layered on the stimulation to the day. But this doesn't promote pleasure in our bodies. And it's not using dopamine that we got designed it to naturally. We can abuse it, and it crashes our dopamine system. And if we repeat this over prolonged periods, our baseline resets, and it rewires our mind and our body. It rewires it, and it can do permanent damage to our bodies, our mood, and our motivation, depression, anxiety, unhappiness, weight gain, problematic behaviors. There's a condition called anhedonia, the lack of wanting or having interest or pleasure in normally rewarding experiences. It can impact and damage others who are around us, violence or anger or people walking on eggshells. And it feeds into an addiction pathway. So even if we're not taking something addictive, it can become addictive because of this. So God wants us to consume pleasure and pain in just the right amounts. And we need to ask ourselves, are we? Or are we over-dopamine-izing our bodies, like the culture around us wants us to? Now, we may feel that we don't fall into these categories, but what has shocked me in my reading and research is that we likely are or have at some point or have come close. Here's a few quotes just to sort of help put this all into context for ourselves. And just think about yourself as well, reflect on yourself. Dopamine firehose. We're living with this firehose of dopamine. We're constantly and now bombarding our reward pathway with very high levels of dopamine throughout the day, starting with checking our smartphones the moment we wake up, to our highly caffeinated beverage, to our highly sugared, salted, and fattened Danish that we eat for breakfast, all the way to the end of the day when we're binging on Netflix. With repeated exposure to these highly rewarding drugs and behaviors, our dopamine cycle starts to accumulate on the pain side of the balance. This results in a general despair, an inability to take action or be motivated, and the loss of even wanting to bother. We're not using, we're experiencing, when we're not using, we're experiencing universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance, which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria, which is unease, and craving. We feel incredibly depressed and nihilistic. In other words, we want to go against values that we may have and unhappy, and we don't even know why. So what do we do? We reach for more of those things that give us pleasure in the short term, and yet those are the very things that are creating the despair in the first place. I think that's a very, very insightful quote and look at our lives. Here's another quote. We've transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance. Drugs, food, news, online, gambling, online, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagraming, YouTubing, tweeting. The increased numbers, variety, and potency of high-rewarding stimuli today is absolutely staggering. A smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle delivering digital dopamine 24-7 for a wired generation. If you haven't met your drug of choice yet, it's coming soon to a website near you. That's so true. You look at all these things electronically from Mr. Beast, which is like Mr. Beast is kind of the epitome of this, right? Fast, action, loud, sound, activity in your face all the way to skip, anticipating something at the door nice and quick. There's another interesting quote. Our brains are not evolved for this world of plenty. We are cacti in the rainforest, and like cacti adapted to an arid climate, we are drowning in dopamine. The net effect is that we now need more reward to feel pleasure and less injury to feel pain. How do we survive and thrive in this new ecosystem? How do we raise our children or our grandchildren? Great question. We are now all addicts to a degree. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle. We turn to it for quick hits, seeking attention, validation, and distraction with each swipe, like, and tweet. Since the turn of the millennium, behavioral, as opposed to substance, addictions have soared. Behavioral addictions, not just substance addictions. Every spare second is an opportunity to be stimulated, whether by entering the TikTok vortex, scrolling Instagram, swiping through Tinder, or binging on pornography, online gambling, and e-shopping. For example, just getting hits by buying stuff on Amazon and having it show up at your door the next morning. We're seeing a huge explosion in the numbers of people struggling with minor addictions. And just a side note from some other reading I was doing, artificial intelligence, which is big now, is now learning who we are, what we like, how to provide us with something new at the right time to keep us coming back, in other words, addicted, and what will give us a dopamine hit. All these electronic algorithms can figure that all out and start channeling at us on our phones or our computers, exactly what we want, and increases the chance of addiction. So they know this. Industry knows that they can tap into this. Now, obviously we live in an age of overstimulation and overindulgence, too much pleasure that is causing us pain. We live in an age that also attempts to shelter us from any pain. And this helps us to reset dopamine to our baseline. So on both ends of the spectrum, we're being attacked, so to speak. We're always trying to be jacked up in pleasure. And dopamine overindulgence can easily impact all of us. It's nice to talk about this, but I think it's also helpful to self-reflect.

Hopefully you had a chance to look at the handout there that I sent to Jason yesterday.

But these are just some examples of things that we can get dopamine hits from. And some of them are just basic things in our life, but we can fall into the trap of overstimulating ourselves with them. So I think the question is, and if you haven't had a chance to look at this, you may want to look at this in your own time afterwards, but can you see yourself in any of these? Can you see yourself in any of these up here at some point in your life? And not only that, can you identify any of them as sources of pain

or depression or anxiety or unmotivation in your life? So can you see yourself in any of them? And can you identify any of them as sources of discomfort? In your life, we live in a world of instant gratification rather than delayed gratification, which is what God implores us to focus on. Just give you an example of how things have changed as well. This may be helpful to an older generation who is not as familiar with some of these new technologies and evolutions of technology that have come out. The rise of a dopamine culture. So it shows on the left what we used to do in a slow traditional culture, what we did in a modern fast culture, and what we are now doing in a dopamine culture. So for example, athletics. We used to play a sport, then we used to watch a sport, and now we gamble on a sport. In journalism, we used to read newspapers, then it was multimedia on the web, and now it's clickbait, which is these small little ads and enticing articles that get your attention and have very little in them, and they're short reads. Video. We used to watch film and TV, then it became videos on the net, and now it's actually just reels of short videos, little shorts that you can watch, say, on YouTube that just tantalize us for a few moments. Music used to be albums, then it became tracks, now it's TikTok. Images, we used to go watch or look at art on a gallery wall, then it became looking at it on the phone, now we just scroll through them endlessly on the phone. Communication used to be handwritten letters, then it became voice, email, and memos, and now it's just short little texts. Relationships used to be courtship and marriage, then it became sexual freedom, and then it's just swiping on an app, in other words, Tinder and these other dating apps or other vices related to this pornography. So things have changed, and this is what these researchers are noticing, and how this impacts us. For example, just think about your cell phone. I forgot to turn off my cell phone tonight, and it's dinging in the background, and we get these digging all day long, and it gives us a jolt of dopamine every time the ding goes off. And even a like, or when we're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, it gives us dopamine, and we can get caught into a culture of that in our lives. So we need to be honest with ourselves. How are we getting our dopamine hit? How are you getting your dopamine hit? How am I getting my dopamine hit? What are we making available in our house to ourselves, to our loved ones, to our kids that are giving dopamine hits? Video games? How is it impacting us, our family, our kids? Do we know someone who is battling with some of these behaviors? And what are we doing to battle it or to help others? I think by understanding that this is going on, it helps us to understand that if we don't set limits, we can hurt our relationship with God. It robs us of spiritual growth and spiritual pleasure that is far more important than this world's pleasures. Really interesting article I read called Your Dopamine Hits Are Killing Your Relationship with God. Just notice this and see if this relates to you. It does to me, I know that. When God's way seems dull and gray, there's a hidden cause. Have you ever gone to read the Bible or pray only to find that it feels, well, just dull? Or maybe too heavy, bland? Not what you need right now, and your mind just drifts and wanders. God feels distant. Your prayers are half-hearted and not seeming to make a difference. Your passion is gone. Before you know it, you set aside the Bible and scrolling Instagram and then onto other things. As your day crowds God out even more. Why is this? Because you're lazy? Because you're a sinner? Because God is far from you and too much effort to get back close to? Because you've quenched God's spirits? Maybe you've developed ADHD or insert your own negatively spiraling thoughts here. Mostly these kinds of thoughts don't lead to fixing the actual problem, but just make you feel worse and try even less. There is a lesser known physical reason why you may be experiencing this. Dopamine hits or dopamine highs are killing your relationship with God. Brother and sisters, just think about that. Do you think this is impacting our ability to do readings in the morning or in the evening or meditation during the day or study for Bible classes or for sisters classes or CYCs or just prayer or praise in our life? I think it is. I know that I battle it myself. So now that we know the enemy, how do we fight this battle with dopamine? Let's talk a little bit about that. God's word combined with help and knowledge from modern science and research, I believe is an effective armor and way to do battle. Let's just talk a little bit about some basic or general principles that help us to do battle with this dopamine culture. Let's start with some of God's basic principles because they provide a great foundation for our battle plan. First one I want to take a look at and this is all in the context of faith. How do we fight this dopamine battle? The first one I have down there is pursuing pleasure in God. I think that's really important. Pursuing pleasure in God. Not things around us in our culture, in our world or at least prioritizing things that give us pleasure in God. Take a look at Psalm 37 verse four. Psalm 37 verse four. The psalmist implores us to delight yourself also in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart. So the Bible teaches us to seek joy and fulfillment primarily in our relationship with God rather than material possessions or fleeting pleasures. It shows that true satisfaction and pleasure in this life comes from a deep connection with God. That we build over time with God and by taking that time to do that and investing our lives and our minds and our efforts, our energies, our motivations into doing that. It's not from temporary highs provided by dopamine driven rewards and it doesn't mean that God doesn't want us to enjoy things in this life. It's a balance that is much more in favor of God. So here's some examples of good dopamine and these release dopamine into our body. Research shows that they do. Building your relationship or pleasure or connection with God and whatever way we decide to do that spending time with him and his word. By prayer, by praise and music those all release dopamine, good dopamine. God connecting relationship building dopamine into our body. Meditation, reading and quiet study without a screen. Helping or doing things for others releases good dopamine as well. This is an interesting one. 1 Corinthians 16 is the verse I've got there and it talks about the household of Stefanus who addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints. That's the only time that that word, a Greek word is used for addiction in the New Testament. So, addicting ourselves to ministering to others is a good dopamine hit. That's what God wants us to do. Healthy social situations not just sitting at home behind a screen but being in touch with people. Connecting with people not screens. I was reading another article that was talking about how a lot of people have purchased pets especially with over COVID and there's this trend towards people spending more time with their pets and building their relationship with pets than with people. They won't leave their homes they become more connected with their pets and they won't even go to people's houses that they can't bring their pets with them or to the store and that and obviously there's some healthy situations there but it can become unhealthy. Reveling in God's creation. Go kayaking, hiking, bird watching whatever it is that gets you outside and looking at God. Soaking up the sun, exercise is critical. Moderating or changing work habits including ecclesial work we can become workaholics. Inside the ecclesia and outside the ecclesia to get dopamine hits. So we need to moderate that. Having a healthy diet taking care of the bodies that God has given us and nutrition and proper sleep. There's dopamine to avoid and this is through research as well. Avoiding multitask mayhem. We live in a culture where multitasking is heralded. The more things you can multitask the better person you are. It's just not true. It releases dopamine but it just burns us out. Avoid distracting ourselves.

We're constantly distracted every time we sit down to do something but we can over distract ourselves. Stop scrolling on our phones or our computers. Limit our screens especially phones. Turning off notifications on our phone. It always annoys me when people add me to groups and they don't ask you if they can add you and your phone just starts dinging all day long because you're part of this group that is constantly responding to things. We can add people and put this burden on other people unnecessarily as well. So think about how we do that judiciously with each other or turn them off. Limiting groups and social media apps. Limiting shopping apps. Limiting other apps on our phone for banking or other. Looking at our bank account every single day can give us a dopamine hit and become somewhat addictive. Steering clear of gambling apps or other online vices. So those are ways, good ways and bad ways that we can get dopamine but we want to pursue pleasure in God. That's the focus. The next one I have down there is meditation, mindfulness, prayer, praise and study which we mentioned but if we incorporate these five into our daily routine it can help us to manage our dopamine driven impulses and this is backed up by research as well. It helps us to restore pain to baseline and it also raises our pleasure above it if we take part in those five items I've got listed there. Take a look at Philippians chapter four. Philippians chapter four verse six, we'll start out. Philippians four verse six.

Paul reminds us, being anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all that is in you all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus.

So just notice how being quiet and developing prayer and supplication and thanksgiving and a connection with God gives us the peace of God and this helps to guard our hearts and our minds. That's kind of the battle terminology we're talking about. This helps us to do battle or to fight and to repel the enemy, this culture around us that is driving at us. When we are quiet we achieve direction, correction and affection with God. Direction, correction and affection with God. Community and fellowship is the next one I have down there. So this can provide us with support and accountability and as long as we aren't overdoing fellowship and social and community in our lives this can help us in our lives. We can also overdo it as well. We can become totally dopamine burned out if we are overdoing community and fellowship in our lives as well. But if we balance it and moderate it it can be very helpful. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 24. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 24 and 25. Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together as is the manner of some but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. This is talking about good dopamine heads. Consider how we may spur one another on by meeting and encouraging each other and not necessarily just with our ecclesia. We can get that by people outside the ecclesia as well but providing mutual support and understanding and compassion to each other is really important. We want to create a culture of openness in this culture of dopamine. Not a culture of shame and blame because we're struggling with these things but a culture of self-compassion and helping. It doesn't mean that we tolerate or have apathy to godlessness but if we take an approach of helping one another and supporting one other it helps to thwart the godlessness I believe that can creep into our life. Next one I have is service and purpose there as well. Aligning our actions and our time and our thought with god's will and serving others can provide a greater sense of pleasure fulfillment and purpose. Take a look at Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10. Ephesians 2 and verse 10. For we are Ephesians 2 verse 10 we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So we've been created in Christ Jesus to do good works and God has prepared those ahead of time for us to walk in them. West in his word study says that that phrase walk in them is the Greek word and the Greek means to regulate one's life or to conduct oneself or to order our behavior in good work. So if we walk in them it helps to regulate our life to be in tune with God and these good works that Paul is talking about includes having an addiction to the ministry of the saints like we saw in Corinthians 16 1 Corinthians 16 and so we need to ensure that our preaching our teaching our support our service and purpose in our ecclesia and our lives is not catering to dopamine bursts like the culture around us. We need to make sure that our preaching and our teaching is focused on good dopamine intake and we need to fill our life with that service and purpose to promote dopamine in our body in a good way. Contentment is another general principle that the Bible teaches us. Take a look at Hebrews 13 Hebrews 13 verse 5 Hebrews 13 verse 5 Let your conduct be without covetousness Be content with such things as you have for he himself has said I will never leave you nor forsake you so we may boldly say the Lord is my helper I will not fear what can man do to me?

Paul in Philippians 4 verse 11 says I have learned in whatever state I am to be content and so what these passages are teaching us is to cultivate a culture of contentment in our lives in our kids in each other not looking around at what everybody else has or what I need to to buy or to get to give me a dopamine hit and there's a tendency to make ourselves feel better and to stimulate ourselves by buying and getting things

but we need to face up to that challenge and that temptation in our life we are faced by the culture that is constantly trying to light the fires of discontent and covetousness and comparison in our life but God wants us to be content discipline and self-control I think are very specific instructions in the Bible take a look at Galatians 5 Galatians 5 verse 22 so discipline and self-control help us to to do battle with dopamine culture as well Galatians 5 verse 22 Galatians 5 verse 22 Galatians 5 verse 23 but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long -suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such there is no law in other words no one's stopping you from from doing these things get yourself fully into it self-control and self-discipline is is stressed by God many times in the Bible Phares says that this this word self-control here is the virtue of one who masters his desires and passions especially one's sensual appetites a virtue of one who masters his desires and passions in 1st Corinthians 7 verse 9 it's used when it talks about the control of sexual desires in 1st Corinthians 9 verse 25 it's used to describe the control that an athlete has over one's body when it's training or when it's in a competition and and Paul makes the understatement for emphasis against such there is no law these fruits including self-control fully meet the demands of God's law and so by understanding the role of dopamine we can better resist temptations and focus on long-term spiritual rewards in our life and self-control and discipline take a look at Proverbs 25 as well this this really feeds into what's being talked about here by Paul Proverbs 25 great little pithy verse here and this is coming from a man who struggled with dopamine hits in his life Solomon he was he had all kinds of things including lots of wives Proverbs 25 verse 28 and Ecclesiastes talks about his battle I think against against dopamine in his life the vanities of life Proverbs 25 verse 28 he says whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls in other words if we don't have self-control or self-discipline we we leave ourselves vulnerable to the enemy we leave ourselves vulnerable to covetousness and to

a lack of self-control and just total breaking down in our life without this self-discipline we're subject to the attack of our enemy we have no defense just notice the context of the previous verse as well verse 27 it is not good to eat much honey so to seek one's own glory is not glory so this verse is talking in the same context it's talking about overindulgence in substances or in behaviors if we're eating if we're taking substances or we overindulge in pleasant substances and behaviors that stimulate our self-image if we live our lives with a firehouse of dopamine in our life this is what ends up happening to us our walls are broken down the trebuchets are throwing rocks and they just crumble us we are setting ourselves up to be the city broken down without walls in verse 28 if we if we don't develop self-control with substances and behaviors in our life so something to practice every single day like these other things that we've talked about we want to practice these principles and these commands moderation is another really good one this is in proverbs 25 verse 16 as well and it's another honey helper proverbs 25 verse 16 have you found honey eat only as much as you need lest you be filled with it and vomit now there's a principle in there isn't it overindulging in dopamine or whatever or honey whatever it may be can make us sick in many ways and

this includes good dopamine in the powerpoint that we're looking at as well everything needs to be done in moderation and this is a huge challenge in our society in our culture to moderate ourselves and to reflect on ourselves every day am i moderating my life am i overindulging am i going too far with this am i allowing my body to and my brain to reset sustainable motivation is another one and what i mean by this is thinking and acting long term versus short term so we need to to have a motivation in our life that is sustainable over the long term not just a short-term burst take a look at hebrews 12 hebrews 12 talks about sustainable motivation thinking long term not just short term hebrews chapter 12 verse 1 and 2 hebrews 12 1 and 2 therefore we also since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight such as bad dopamine inputs and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance long term you can't do that in a short burst we have to do that over the long part let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking unto jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before endured the despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of god and so it's tempting to rely on and to fill our life with short lived short-term both bursts of dopamine for motivation but what god wants us to do is to to build perseverance into our life moderation over the long term to be motivated over the long term by good dopamine inputs not just living short term by short dopamine bursts in our life or over indulgence we're not living for today we're living for the future and another one there is embracing pain we talked a lot about the the pleasure side of dopamine but the pain part is really important to consider as well one of the notable pieces of is that we have become less pain tolerant in our culture in our society today we are trying more and more to avoid pain in our life yet the body naturally needs pain and discomfort and a lack of motivation temporarily in order to enjoy pleasure they have to work back and forth with each other we are working against the natural cycle that god has built if we are running away from pain in our life whatever that pain is and this is especially true with our children here's a really interesting quote on pain avoidance it applies to to adults as well but we have over sanitized and over pathologized childhood raising our children in the equivalent of a with no way to injure themselves but also no means to ready themselves for the world by protecting our children from adversity have we made them deathly afraid of it by bolstering their self-esteem with false false praise and lack of real world consequences have we made them less tolerant more entitled and ignorant of their own character defects by giving into their every desire have we encouraged a new age of hedonism which means pleasure or self-indulgence is the good and aim of human life this is an amazing questions good things to think about as parents or as as grandparents we don't want to be addicted to pain but we want to embrace and accept pain as god has naturally designed it in our life he gives it to us so that we're not always in a

we don't want to over pleasure or under pleasure or but we want to allow our bodies to reset and to embrace pain and the bible acknowledges this take a look at james chapter 1 james chapter 1 verse 2 james 1 verse 2 maybe this helps to put these verses into context in our life my brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials or pain or difficulties or challenges knowing that the testing of your faith and the pain that comes with it produces patience but let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect complete lacking nothing and so just like christ who had pain in his life god puts pain into our lives and we learn by the things that we suffer and it helps us to balance out our lives and we can we can look at pain and difficulties from a different perspective when we when we see that in light of how dopamine works in our life we live in a world of instant gratification and always wanting pleasure and god encourages delayed gratification which means pain and discomfort at times in our life we don't like hard work we don't like to focus we don't like to wait for things but god has built those things into our life as important to reset our lives as well so pain helps us to get back to a baseline now practically those are some verses that help us to to understand god's perspective in dealing with dopamine and to do battle how do we tackle dopamine that we face with each day here's a helpful acronym that's if you're looking for something to start start working on in your life with some something that you're struggling with with dopamine this may be a good help and it comes from a workbook by this researcher dr analympia she has this acronym dopamine and if we use these steps we can help to tackle and identify dopamine in our life and to to to evaluate whether or not we need to get rid of it so i'll just go through it quickly with you and if you want more information you you may want to order her book or i can send you some more information so what this is what she says first of all we need to gather data that's the d and dopamine gathering the facts of our consumption what when why where and how are we consuming or getting our dopamine hit in our life so gathering those facts understanding it having some insight into how it impacts our life in the first place that's step one the o is objectives in other words determine or reflect on the reasons for consuming or for our consumption what are our objectives why are we doing it is it is it to cover some pain in our life is it something else in our life why are we doing it reflect on that that's step two number two or number three the p is is for problems identify problems and impacts related to our use and evaluate them against god's relevant principles so that chart that we looked at the handout if we found something we circled in there maybe we we want to evaluate that against god's principles maybe we want us to evaluate what problems they are actually calling causing in our life or in our family's life or others around us a is for abstinence if we found that there's something and we it causes a problem in our life we need to abstain from it in other words go on a fast so that we return our dopamine to a baseline level and the time that that's required depends on what we're using and how long we've been using it for so abstinence maybe the next step mindfulness observing and aware of how we feel and what our brain is doing during the abstinence not shaming ourselves not beating ourselves up or each other not being judgmental but just reflecting on how we feel what's going on are we are we craving are we we feeling depressed is it clear now that this has had an impact on our life and by going off of it it's impacting us having insight reflecting on ourselves and behaviors during abstinence that's i and and god's principles so we we need to reflect on our behaviors while we are abstaining are we angry are we violent are we are are we going into a depressed mode that helps us to understand the impact it's having on us and then evaluating what our next steps are that's n once baseline has been achieved we've we abstained for a while days weeks or months we need to decide whether or not to abstain or to moderate maybe we can go back to having a few pieces of chocolate a week as opposed to not having any chocolate at all or maybe we've realized that chocolate isn't having any impact on our life and we can have chocolate the way we were before so coming up with some next steps and then experimenting armed with that knowledge and that process and those experiences and a new baseline we can maintain it through trial and error and maybe we need to go back to these steps and we find that it's become addictive or that it is a problem for us so maybe that's just helpful for yourself as as some starter steps to to do battle with dopamine in your life with something maybe you circled on that chart or or otherwise or helping somebody else as well I think it's it's important as well to go back to this these verses in ephesians six the full armor of god combined with these steps it's really important that we are are are using prayer in all of this and paul states that in these verses he says to pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests and then later he says be alert and always keep praying for all the lord's people so personal prayer for god's help and wisdom and working with these these battles we have in our life is critical that's part of the battle that's part of the armor that's part of the weapons that we need to to take on and it's not just for ourselves it's for others as well praying for all the lord's people so we're we're having to work as a team to work through this battle we need to help each other we need to think about each other not shaming not blaming not judging each other but creating a culture of help of love of care in dealing with these really difficult cultural challenges that we are faced and just note as well you know this is this is this is this is laid out in in paul's principles when he uses some of this military language in his epistles he uses this phrase stand fast armies worked together as a team they collaborated as a team families parents age groups ecclesias schools working together to do battle with this dopamine culture is really important we need each other so we need to work as a team on this sometimes armies needed specialists as well right there was people who knew how to man the trebuchets there was those who who knew how to how to hold the pikes and to to um to form formations and use special uh weapons such as the axes or an iron maiden or whatever we needed they needed specialists just like we may need in our life as well we may need to go to a therapist somebody who has specialty in working through these issues and helping us with the scientific knowledge and and the knowledge and helping our brains so a specialist may be really important and we need to stand fast is what paul says in first corinthians 16 working together staying together to to work through these these challenges so brother and sisters hopefully this provides um some some overview and understanding and awareness of what dopamine is how it works in our life and how it impacts our lives as disciples i'm struggling with this in my life and i struggle to understand and to identify and mitigate it in my life and i'm sure that that some of you do as well if not all of us we live in a world of overindulgence over stimulation and over pleasure and we need to create an action plan in our lives to deal with this what action plan are you going to create after the class tonight what action plan do you have to do battle with this and one of the big parts of the solution is to not over pleasure ourselves god didn't design our bodies to operate this way over pleasuring distances us from god his principles and each other's it leads to long-term pleasure unhappiness health problems and mental health problems as well the solution is to do battle with a dopamine culture to use god's word as the armor and to use science education and experience to understand the enemy by understanding dopamine's role in our lives as disciples we can better navigate the challenges of modern living while staying true to our faith so let's seek our ultimate reward in the love and the grace of god and find joy and pleasure and purpose in his eternal promises