Running on Dopamine By Mary Guiney

Doc Searls CC




RUNNING ON DOPAMINE

There were signs of complexities since my teenage years. I was a not-so-sweet sixteen, hiding in my boyfriend’s wardrobe, not a stitch on me. He rammed me into the closet and firmly closed it after we heard the front door of the house slam. Footsteps plodded up the stairs. It was his dad, who would never suspect a thing. That was unless he casually opened the wardrobe to rifle through my boyfriend’s soccer gear and chuck it in the wash. 
    That same day, me and my boyfriend planned a night on the tiles with some of my older siblings. We had fake ID, but it didn’t always work when going out with peers our age. It worked with an older crowd. We were strategically camouflaged in the middle of a group of twenty-somethings. I wasn’t long into my drinking career and the numerous beers I drank made me quite literally sick. The night was young and I puked up my guts into an empty pint glass, with careful craft – no spillage and my vomit had neatly reached the top of the rim. There were no chunks of undigested food spilling over. My older sister, in her own intoxication but without the need to be sick just yet, came back to our table and thought her boyfriend had ordered her some type of reddish-purple smoothie. She proceeded to drink the beets that had churned inside my stomach that day.
    As academic and sporty as I was, I was also very experimental. The youngest of seven, I fooled myself into believing that I would learn from all of my siblings’ mistakes. I used to watch them, and as a copycat I dabbled in everything they did, whether that be study hard, go for a run, binge drink at weekends, take up smoking or even experiment with cannabis and ecstasy. It was certainly a colourful transition; I was never bored. I could be a walking advert for what an addictive personality is, and I craved more and more dopamine, cheap or not. Cigarettes and booze yielded an instant cheap high, but I would also pound the pavements, giving me a rich endorphin kick for hours each day – my slow-release reward, one which required effort. Then there was music, which always brought me joy – a rush for what I believe to be our most special neurotransmitter. Dopamine is responsible for thought, movement, reward, motivation, learning, and pleasure. 
    But what was it about smoking? It provided a fast dopamine hit. Smoking was never frowned upon in our household. It was welcomed and nourished. When my mum and dad threw massive house parties on the eve of Christmas for us kids and our friends, Mum not only put on a display of her best culinary skills but she ensured that the ashtrays were tongue-licking clean before lacing them with fresh unlit cigarettes that she had plucked from each packet. The older friends who smoked could enjoy as many puffs as they wanted. Another ten or so ashtrays were scattered around the house for tipping the tarnished tobacco leaves before quenching the butts. This was the turn of the millennium, not long before the indoor smoking ban came into Ireland, and smoking was still a socially acceptable habit. Our house was a clouded crib. My mum smoked, my dad puffed on the pipe, my big sister smoked and my brother, four years older than me, smoked. It was inevitable I was going to sample the dirty drug, with half of my family setting fire to white tubes packed full of tar, tobacco and thousands of chemicals on an hourly basis. I was rebellious, adventurous and wanted to dabble in life, a risky experiment. A coin flip. I had been a runner since the age of fourteen, gliding along the pavements several times per week, and I promised myself that surely, I could not get hooked on the weed. I was aware of the health risks, I hated my first cigarette, and no matter what they said, I wasn’t the type to become hooked.

My childhood was colourful; I had everything I needed – a Discman, a landline and a desktop computer. Connecting to the web took time, and the computer cackled and sang off tune for minutes before loading a web page. I went into chat rooms with weirdos and spent hours downloading music on Napster, even though it was illegal. I couldn’t pocket the music, meaning I glued myself to the computer, chatting to strangers from all corners of the world, while streaming beats. Email was also revolutionary and I’d create an account to send mindless threads to friends who had jumped on that bandwagon. [email protected] was my first ever email account. Another dot com taking off during the internet bubble. 

In other ways, I was late to the party and didn’t get my first smartphone until I was twenty-five. I thought I was clever in delaying this gratification.
   “That phone of yours looks like it could squirt water,” my friend Martin told me when he joined me to live in London town. I was still playing around with my old Nokia, and spending thirteen pence to send a text. I recall being in a pub in the city one evening, waiting for my friends to arrive. I discreetly pulled my water gun out of my handbag, attempting to shield it from prying eyes. After sending a text and planting the brick back into my bag, I gazed over to my left and noticed a group of boys jeering as they pulled out their smartphones from their pockets, dancing them in each other’s faces. Their eyes darted over to me and they all sniggered. Still, this event didn’t force me to cut ties with my block. 
    I had heard a lot about the hype of WhatsApp, a messaging platform which was gaining in popularity, but I wanted nothing of the sort. My trusted iPod provided endless entertainment, and my laptop was my crutch for when I wanted to log onto Facebook or Gmail. I remember it so vividly, when I first got my hands on an iPod – I had landed on the moon. The transition happened so fast. No more running on the pavements clutching a bulky Discman, with wired earphones that kept popping out of my ears. No more MiniDiscs that had limited storage capacity. Fast forward to my mid-twenties and the stubborn streak remained. I felt the need to cling dearly onto three devices – my Nokia, iPod and laptop. 
    “You need a breathalyser on your laptop,” Martin used to say the morning after a night out. I’d arrive home pissed, open my laptop and, being left to my own devices (quite literally) and the glowing screen, I would post nonsense to my wall. Not the sort that required psychiatric intervention, but one or two drunken comments which made sense to me but were probably gibberish in front of my audience. I had all of my kit. Facebook was now the new chat room. What else could one need? 

My next boyfriend in my twenties didn’t drive me crazy for the most part, but I could see how he was addicted to his device. I thought it was wacky, him lying supine on the bed, his iPhone locked between his palms as he scrolled. I always fell asleep before him. Was his habit a contributor to the end of our intimacy? Now everything we need is stored on one device. Many people are going to physios to combat their aches and crunched spines due to “text neck.” It’s all too common we see people wandering down the street, heads hunched forward, eyes glued to their little machine as they meander right into us. We dart our eyes towards their foreheads, prompting them to cop the fuck on and look up, but paradoxically we’re most likely guilty culprits of this behaviour ourselves. We’re in a tech culture, which has led to an epidemic. Phones most definitely provide a quick dopamine hit, and it’s estimated that the average person will pick up their little machine 150 times a day. Time is the most precious currency we have, and a lot of time is spent mindlessly scrolling, taking away from productivity and cherished time with loved ones.  
    It was 2011 when I got my first smartphone, by no choice of my own. I didn’t go out shopping for one, but when I resigned from my job at an electronics company, they gifted me a brand-new Galaxy, a bottle of wine, vouchers and to top it all off, a monster of a glass that fit a full bottle of wine. Around eighteen months later, my psychological quirks surfaced. I wouldn’t say I was a phone addict, but perhaps the thrill of having all I needed on one glowing device caused my psychological excitement to surface, along with all the other dopamine hits I mentioned. 
    Was I running on dopamine? I craved more and more of the good stuff. Dopamine is synthesised by tyrosine, a basic amino acid and is stored in synaptic vesicles. Alcohol feeds dopamine, nicotine binds to nicotinic receptors in the brain which deliver more dopamine to cells, and exercise is proven to fuel dopamine release. I was intoxicated with this special neurotransmitter and kept its neural circuit ticking with each heartbeat. Was it a deadly soup, feeding my head and fuelling my ego? 

It was so damn flippant. The carefree ride into mania. How does someone with bipolar type 1 journey to an optimum point, ever so slightly hypomanic? The edge of creativity stabbing them with razors, puncturing scars into their depressed brains, allowing it to bleed ideas which land on the page in a coherent, magical way. I’ve been there, but only once, and it was the ride of a lifetime. There was no “on” or “off” button. The plasticity of the brain is delicate. It’s the most mysterious organ, offering only a glimmer of insight into how the mind works. Not one person can be credited with fully understanding its unique architecture and how neural pathways fire constantly like bonfires on Halloween night. I had no control that May, but it was pleasant.  
    After my latest boyfriend and I broke up, as I approached my forties, I didn’t break down. I put all my energy into the crafting of words, assembling them like ants in a line, some stepping to the side, others carefully planted in a row which moved with ease. I spent a week after the break-up going through the usual emotions. Rage at him, rage at me for letting him treat me that way, melancholy and disappointment. These thoughts always woke me from my sleep and had a typical lifespan of a few minutes. I must vent my frustrations onto the page. I was sure that I was leaving a sour toxicity behind and decided to channel the energy I gave him back into myself. I had several short stories on the go. I wrote and wrote and wrote. My brain’s neural circuit firing, generating ideas, words, sentences, paragraphs. 
   Sleep was a little elusive, but nothing to warrant an intervention. I was still getting around six hours under the duvet each night, but would write when most of the country’s delicate brains were re-charging. What I like to call hypomania may not have even been hypomania at all, but I’ve had enough experience with mania to give an educated guess as to what I was going through for about a month. Two more writing deadlines were due, and the hyperactive state was waning. Normality returned without me switching the “off” button. I wasn’t ready to wave goodbye, and was reluctant to welcome writer’s block back into my life. Writing felt more like a chore rather than a great genius riding the train of consciousness, not wanting to ever get off. I’d open an incomplete piece, read it over, and at best type a sentence, kill a darling or two and at worst a micro-edit here and there. The fun was over. June was the month for routine; as mundane as a sticky schedule was, it also injected a healthy stab of discipline into my life. The creative ego hid behind the curtain, dormant for now, unaware when it would express itself again. Bipolar disorder is truly senseless and no one can ever tell when it will spark a fire. Certain life events may trigger a warning, but life must go on, and we cannot shut down our day to day. 
    The ride in May felt like ecstasy. Why can’t I be bipolar type 2 – the less severe form of the condition? Those who suffer from bipolar type 2 will experience more periods of depression, but their highs are never as extreme. They experience hypomania – a less debilitating high that generally doesn’t require medical intervention. Once an episode of mania is experienced, the person is automatically labelled with bipolar type 1. Needless to say, I’m fortunate my depressive episodes are under control – a few grey days here and there, but I always jolt myself back into a manufactured happiness. I’m grateful the hyperactive state that May didn’t escalate into a prolonged euphoria, a hard-wired mania that never gets me anywhere, not even in writing. It only lands me in a ward, surrounded by crazy. 

Are we, as a collective culture, chasing too much dopamine – the cheap, fast highs? Phones, cigarettes, booze, drugs, screens, junk food? We need dopamine, but we must achieve a healthy balance and that is to nourish ourselves with more of the slow-release dopamine – exercise, sex, wholesome food, love, physical connection, books, music and nature. It’s only with balance that the ballerina comes out of the woods – the depression can’t win. Its ugly paralysis of pain crumbles. 
    While there are no biological tests for bipolar disorder – no brain scans, no blood tests to tell whether an individual has elevated dopamine, there is a field of research which shows that once an individual has been placed on a neuroleptic or antipsychotic drug for a prolonged period of time, their brain naturally offsets this dopamine blockage by sprouting new dopamine receptors. Does this make the individual more sensitive to dopamine in the long run? It’s a very delicate game. I have to be very cautious with how much dopamine I reach for each day. For me, that meant cutting ties with the sneaky cigarettes. Not only is tobacco wrecking mental health in some, but my twenty-two-year long smoking career gave me periodontal disease and deep vein thrombosis. Countless quit attempts were made in the past – the cold-turkey approach, the Allen Carr book, or the help of an app, all of which have been successful at removing the brainwashing the tobacco industry have ingrained into smoker’s minds for some, but not all smokers. I wasn’t one of the fortunate ones. I was back puffing the dirty weed within a month or two. 
    One of the most common myths about smoking is that it relieves boredom. But when smoking, with no distractions, no TV, no scroll hole, I realised how boring the filthy weed was. Most of the time, we aren’t even aware we are smoking a cigarette. I paid attention to the sinister smoke entering my throat and deep into my lungs, only to expel the smoke after it had successfully poisoned every inch of my body. Smoking is not only habitual, but it is a drug addiction, and one which is supposedly harder to stop than heroin. Moronically, I had never tried nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). I had chewed the odd gum or sucked on a lozenge from time to time, only to dispel them from my mouth within seconds as I found them vile. After my diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis, my motivation to quit was at its peak. NRT was the answer, and I decided to get a greedy supply of Nicorette patches. To my pleasant surprise the transition was easy. Even though there was nicotine being released slowly into my body, I was no longer hoovering up a quick-fast hit of dopamine. 
    I no longer chase the quick highs. 

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Mary Guiney is an emerging writer from Ireland. She left her career in finance not long after experiencing an acute episode of psychosis in Vietnam in 2012. She has finally found a literary agent for her memoir, and will know very soon if he finds a home for her book. She has a piece published in the Blackbird at the Seamus Heaney Centre and has been volunteering and working with CRAFT Literary since May 2024. 
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