A low baseline dopamine level results from a depleted readily releasable pool of dopamine, often after experiencing large dopamine peaks.

“And now it should make perfect sense why if you take something or do something that leads to huge increases in dopamine afterward your baseline should drop because there isn't a lot of dopamine around to keep your baseline going.”

“if you get enough movement in that pool you get big waves some starts to Splash out and the total amount drops in other words the Baseline level of dopamine has dropped or in this analogy it's dropped so I like the wave poool analogy because even though it doesn't embody all of the Dynamics of dopamine it embodies many of them that we can relate to for instance if we take the extremes of things that cause massive amounts of dopamine release these are typically illicit drugs things like methampetamine thousandfold increase in dopamine release um you know cocaine um the combination of different highly reinforcing dopamine related activities or drugs so methamphetamine plus sex right this is common in certain addictions right um people will take stimulants like methamphetamine they also engage in sexual activity now you're getting way up past a thousand it's not always additive but it often can be additive or even synergistic what happens under those conditions well neurons in the let's just call it the motivation and reward pathway are releasing massive amounts of dopamine sometimes to the extent that the readily releasable pool of vesicles or sometimes called vesicles in the US of the little um spheres filled with with neuromodulator dopamine actually get depleted and the neurons need to man manufacture more and that takes time before more can be be created there can also be neurotoxicity where the neurons actually are killed off although that's in more extreme cases”