Andrew Huberman· PhD
What I pointed out is that, if you are somebody who tends to experience difficulty with motivation-- that so-called dopamine stacking as I called it might be something that you want to avoid.
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We can't find evidence that holds up here. Proponents are reasoning from mechanism or analogy rather than direct human data, and the most credible skeptics raise objections we can't dismiss.
What I pointed out is that, if you are somebody who tends to experience difficulty with motivation-- that so-called dopamine stacking as I called it might be something that you want to avoid.
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But what will happen is people will start consuming caffeine at higher and higher levels. Again, caffeine isn't necessarily bad, but they'll start doing that. And they'll start layering it in, or stacking, very potent music, potent for them, plus things like L-tyrosine. Again, none of these things are terrible on their own. In fact, they can be very beneficial. Sometimes they'll start taking Mucuna pruriens. Sometimes they'll start relying on things like Adderall, Ritalin. And pretty soon what's happening is they're getting these big waves in that dopamine wave pool, big peaks. And within a few days or maybe even within a few hours, they're depleted and they're at that low. And then, as Dr. Anna Lembke, who is a guest on the podcast, talked about in terms of addiction but also in her wonderful book Dopamine Nation, what happens is after those big peaks in dopamine, the reservoir, the baseline in dopamine, drops below its initial level. So it's as if the reservoir got deeper, and it's emptier, and it takes much, much longer to fill.
Does that mean you should never combine caffeine, L-tyrosine, music, and a workout, and time with friends? No, absolutely not. But don't expect to do that, and then go do an intense bout of work, and then get up the next morning and do it all over again for more than a few days before you find yourself pretty depleted.