Addicted to Learning--Getting Hooked on Dopamine: The Body's Natural Drug

Here is a great passage from John Coates excellent book, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: 

What else besides drugs of abuse* can create a dopamine-driven craving? If dopamine fuels a desire for information and unexpected reward, perhaps it also fills us with a burning curiosity. Perhaps curiosity itself, the need to know, is a form of addiction, making us race to the end of a good mystery novel, or driving scientists to work day and night until they discover insulin, say, or decode the structure of DNA, scientific breakthrough being the ultimate hit of information. When the Theory of General Relativity dawned on Einstein, he must have had the mother of all dopamine rushes.

Learning new math and science can give you this rush as a student. Dopamine: the body's natural drug. Get hooked on it!


*Drug abuse fools your brain and gets it to release extreme amounts of dopamine. Then it ruins your dopamine system and you never find that high again.