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Yes i flirt with the idea of suicide from time to time. And it is very normal under certain conditions. There was a phase in my life where i was super bad mentally. And then i was really serious about ending it all. I bought a drug that could potentially kill me. And i prepared the injection. But then i realised that i could not do it . The urge to live, was too strong to overcome. You have to be really really bad to override this self preservation instinct. I wasn't at that breaking point. After that one incident, i never considered again seriously ending my life. I would just entertain it as a thought when things were hard but never seriously. You don't want to to die. What you want, is to stop the misery. That's an important distinction to keep in mind.

@Loba In acim it is sayed the qualification for entering heaven is to be able to maintain holy instant throughout the day. The presence of love that Jesus can teach u, if u can maintain that 24/7. U become eligible for heaven. But probably by the time u reach that place, all your thoughts about suicide will be long gone, as it should ?

I've been thinking a lot about heaven. I've had a few experiences that give me some idea of what I am to expect on the other side. I don't know if it is the same for everyone. I plan to commit suicide after my parents and my dog pass away. I'll use the money from the house for a few years of enjoyment, just staying in a hotel, smoking weed and coasting for a while before going out on heart and or pain medications and alcohol. I've done my research, mental illness is treated as a terminal illness and as long as I am a good girl and can work on my attitude in this life then I'll hopefully be in a good spot for the next world... What I think happens is that we are grown in groups of souls. Bubbles floating around in a soup of consciousness, but I have no idea what that will look like or how it will be experienced from the other side. I just know that there is a group there and that we are all connected to one another. I don't know who I have met in this life that is a part of them or if they are all on the other side. I have also experienced a partner, when I was at my sickest he showed himself through intuition and told me that we have been playing a kind of game, like hide and seek, and to follow the pieces through the things that I love in life, that when the time comes he will catch me, like in a net of sorts and that my soul won't dissolve into nothingness. I don't know anything about him other than that this is a life where I am supposed to "feel" the absence of him, so that I know how it will feel when he is there, so that I will have a full appreciation. I think this life was meant to be one of lack and loss so that I know what I want, what I need and so that I am oriented in the right way when the time comes. I was born very feminine - I think this is because my partner will be very masculine and that it will even itself out. I think that I am supposed to wait until I die, and that I shouldn't make any friends or find any partners while I am alive or I will have more karmic ties to the wrong people. When I think about my heaven, I think about him. I think about not having the weight of human life to contend with, I think about being able to be young forever - I was a very beautiful young woman and so I will be in death - I think about snuggling up close and not having any walls or obstructions in the way preventing me from being able to show my love in the way that I was supposed to. I think about nuzzling my partner's cheek with my nose and nibbling on his earlobe like a bunny does on fresh grass. I think about how love and sex will feel like being perpetually high on MDMA. I feel that the afterlife will be enjoyable in the ways that we wish we could have here on earth, that lack and longing are just there to show us what we actually want for our own private little heavens. Mine will be the perfect INFP heaven, full of romance with my partner, learning about different things and getting to play in various landscapes. We will take turns being the ones to make new worlds to explore and play in and maybe sometimes we will come back down to earth as spirits to watch over humanity and marvel in the mysteries of nature. My heaven, with my family - my true family and my partner, my true partner. I just have another 15 years to wait. It's going to be a rough, lonely 15 years, but I'm a perfectionist and I only want to bring my best self to the table and that best self exists as a soul and not a human being. I don't believe in human love, I think the best stuff comes later. Heaven will be a great place. We will all be free and healed and happy. I can't wait to be Home, with someone who loves me, someone that I can love for eternity, without arguments or things getting stale. It will be a place of sweetness and goodness and no evil will ever touch us ever again. So, I guess I believe in more of the Muslim side of things, but more romantically. I don't think that everyone has someone waiting for them on the other side, I just know that I must be one of them because I need it so much and God is ideal and cares about its creations and wants to give us what our hearts crave. I think this need, that I have always followed since I was a little girl, was put in my soul's blueprint because I am so polarized as a feminine being, that to become one with another who is very masculine, that this has a balancing property to it. I am willing to fulfil my responsibilities to my pets and to my family, but once they are gone, then I am coming home. I was made to be limited, sad, lonely, so that when I come back I will know and understand what it truly means to be limitless, happy and free.

This is very true he has a gift for this. I don't think some people on the forums understand either, and when they do find out it will put them in an existential crisis. To know that your life is just a thought in an infinite mind...no more significant than a thought in your own mind would drive some to suicide.

When I’ve idealized suicide it’s because life felt like too much and I used it as an escape from those feelings. It’s not a bad thing to feel like escaping, it’s natural to not want to feel difficult emotions. Some of the things that helped me feel less bad about my life were making small changes that allowed me to feel proud of myself. And recognizing that life is hard, and giving myself credit for the things I have done.

It probably sounds like something an angsty teenager would say, but I feel like my anxiety stems from just living in a fundamentally sick and corrupt society. Living in a city with hundreds of thousands of people, no real connections or sense of community, isolated and don't feel like anyone around me has the same interests/beliefs as me, no one is on my side or looking out for me. Alone and vulnerable in a sea of people. (At the same time I'm introverted and anxious so it'd be hard to make connections even if I wanted to.) At some level I think all of my anxieties are about people.... people being unpredictable, violent, increased crime, or just people being loud and obnoxious and inconsiderate. Worrying what people will think, say, or do. My current cope is that if I could just move away from the big city I live in, and be on a couple acres away from everybody where I don't even have neighbors to worry about, and only need to go into a small town once a week to get groceries or something, then it would be a much less anxiety-filled life. At some level I suspect this wouldn't work though. I have an extremely avoidant personality and go to pretty genius lengths to get myself out of situations that make me anxious. I made my own business to work from home so I wouldn't have to deal with the stress of taking a crowded bus to work every day, dealing with coworkers and work drama, having to talk on the phone, etc. But all that tends to happen when I remove my bigger sources of anxiety, is that my level of anxiety just stays the same and I find smaller and smaller problems to be equally anxious about. So instead of worrying about a meeting at work I'm just worrying about what my neighbor thinks of me or something instead. PLUS it wears away the desensitization to everyday stressors, so where it was easier to go out and do stuff before, now it's extra anxiety-provoking to go to a mall or if I had to go back to riding a crowded bus. If I moved to a place where I never saw people again, my anxiety would most likely shift onto something else like worrying about racoons or skunks on my property or something. In terms of sleep I have no problems. I've always been out within 10 minutes of hitting the pillow. I have a baby now so there's more interruptions in the night, but I don't think it has really had an impact on my anxiety. Although I have started drinking caffeine in the past couple of years as a result and it'd probably help if I cut that out. I will check out chamomile extract and ashwaganadha though, plus watch the IFS videos that Leo just posted on the blog. Thanks! I have what is probably the "normal" depression where I just feel less happy and motivated for months at a time, a slightly depressed state is pretty much my default state. Then rarely a few times a year, I'll get 1 - 2 weeks where I'm happier and have lots of energy and almost manic. Then maybe 4x a year I'll have a period of 1 - 3 days in a row where it's severe depression where it's extra hard to do things, crying for no reason, etc. (But still not to the point that I can't get out of bed or shower, like the most severe cases I've heard of.) What are the long-term health risks of taking anti-anxiety or anti-depression meds? I did a quick Google search and didn't see any studies on brain damage. I saw something about 14% increased risk of cardiovascular issues. Do you know how these meds negatively impact the body and cause brain damage? (especially SSRIs like sertraline, which is most likely what I would end up taking) Is the increased mortality statistic maybe just skewed because depressed people are more likely to commit suicide or something like that? Appreciate all your insight either way

@Sine I just spoke with a woman who channels Jesus/Yeshua, and she lost her husband to suicide about 10 years ago. Maybe she could help you move forward and find peace with what happened. If you're curious you can pm me I'll help you set it up

There is an interesting dynamic that can occur when one is suicidal. Ordinarily the suicidal ego structure is intensely contracted. This sort of contraction is caused by suffering in one form or another. The type of suffering can be manifold, I think often it is related to shame, hopelessness or loneliness. The ego structure is resisting reality because it desperately wants reality to be another way, causing friction that becomes intolerable to the structure. Through suicide the ego seeks to resolve that tension and resistance, in other words, the ego seeks freedom from itself. Freedom from the rigid, constricting and suffocating texture of the structure of the ego. The interesting dynamic I was referring to is that, the ego can realize that it's own death means freedom. I am not talking about some sort of thought, but a direct realization of the solution to this problem. "If I am dissolved, all my shame will be gone, because I will no longer care about being ashamed anymore. It will not matter!" "If I am dissolved, all my hopelessness will be gone, because I will no longer care about hoping for something. It will not matter!" "If I am dissolved, all my loneliness will be gone, because I will no longer care about being alone. It will not matter!" If I died now, everything would be meaningless. Everything I am right now resisting so much against, it will not matter. And then the ego realizes: Why then, do I need to take it seriously at all? What if I let go? What if I let go of wanting to not be alone? What if I let go of wanting to be something I am not? What if I let go of wanting something that is not? If I was dead, none of that will have mattered anyways, so why does it need to matter while I am alive? What do I have to lose? I have nothing to lose if I let go of everything. This is how Eckhart Tolle achieved ego-death. When the ego is inflicting so much suffering to itself, it builds up a tremendous momentum, a tremendous force. If the ego realizes that it's own contraction, it's own nature, it's own structure, is the cause of it's suffering, then it will turn around. It will look at itself, and realize the opportunity of that energy. It will shatter itself and what will remain is freedom. Freedom from shame, freedom from hopelessness, freedom from suffering. There is nothing to hope for and nothing to be lonely about, because it will not matter anymore. There is nothing to lose if you let go of it all, and that's what you want to do anyways. Get in touch with your own suffering, with your own contraction. With everything you want the world to be. If you were dead, none of that would matter. This means that all you need to do is live as if you were already dead. Then you will see the beauty and perfection of existence, because it will not matter anymore where it is beautiful and perfect. Your suffering will have served it's purpose. You must turn the resistance against itself. Make your ego realize that it is the source of all it's suffering, and that there is nothing to lose if it will simply let go. Let it go, and live your life freely. Look at this thread. Terror of letting go. If you are truly suicidal, why do you need to be afraid of letting go? See, you are not afraid of letting go. You want to let go. So, let go. You are one step ahead of most people, because you are willing to dissolve yourself. You just need to dissolve the right thing, the thing that is causing your suffering.

Posting a stream of half naked pics, a pic with a gun, and some random high selfies at home over the course of a couple hours (without any context) looks more like insanity than sanity Especially given Leo's generally pretty grounded personality. Add to this the fact that Leo takes a fuck ton of psychedelics, and that people in the spirituality/self-help community have a tendency to go off the rails or even commit suicide, and it doesn't paint a great picture If it was one of your friends who did not normally behave like this then you would definitely be very concerned. I'm not even trying to suggest people should have been concerned for him as much as I'm suggesting people were justified to feel weirded out by it Anyway, it's clearly not insanity. I think it was more a case of being out of touch with how instagram is typically used more than anything

It's more that sporadic changes in behaviour without context can be concerning. Especially in a field known for people going insane, losing all groundedness, and committing suicide

One of the core concepts of Spirituality is that life is a dream, that it isn't real. But since the dream is being dreamt of by an all-powerful being that dream is essentially real. But also if that all powerful dreamer is able to wake up in their dream, then the dream will cease to be real. So the dreamer needs to be fooled. We all have encountered this aspect to various degrees in our lives. When you play a game whether its a video game or a sport. When you take it serious in that moment it becomes real. Really competitive people see loss as a death, and winning as survival. They can get really angry and even violent in their attempt to win. Seriousness makes something akin to life and death, whereas playfulness is all about soaking up the moment and appreciation. Now if all of reality is illusion then how different is that from playing pretend? We see many kids growing up pretending to do things they see adults do and we laugh and smile and say that is so cute look at them. Yet the jokes on us, they are closer to the truth than we were. Its funny, and it makes sense why Jesus said "" Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 19:14 (KJV) He is saying when you enter heaven (enlightment) everything around you is just play. You see everything for what it is The love of life, the love of pretend, that desire to create is child-like it is the part we lost when we became adult and the part we must reconnect with. Before the conditioning you were drawn to certain things, and loved certain things. Your creativity was infinite and not bound by conventionality and the logic of this world. If people knew how much their current desires were a result of conditioning they would realize how silly it all is. I have seen a lot of people who are having ego backlashes into wanting to leave Spirituality and go back to other ways of thinking. Its funny to me, because I know they will come right back. Its like the story of the Prodigal Son, you want to go experience the world and go against what you have been taught and then you come crawling back and realize....it isn't what you want. There is really only one thing you want in life, and it is so simple. You want to possess love, share love, and have love reflected back to you. That's it. Its simple. Its not rocket science. Why do you want a career? So you can fully express yourself. You want to share all the parts of yourself your intelligence, your creativity, and you want to make a contribution of profound magnitude. Why? Love. You want to be in a relationship because you want to again express yourself in all aspects to someone and have them reflect that back to you. Again its love. You want to be remembered and not forgotten, again its love. So do you notice this? Each of these examples described long term- deep connection of expression and that expression being shared. Anything outside of this is delusion. Its why I laugh when people try to argue against me. This is what every human desires. Then you might say but Razard monks don't want that!! To which I will reply yeah they don't want a career, but they desire to have a deep connection with the Divine and to allow that divine to have itself full expression. So notice? Every human wants to have a deep connection, and to have full expression. Is this not the essence of Spirituality? It is. You can't run from it. Yet you get frustrated and try to demonize Spirituality when all you want is what Spirituality points to. You want a deep connection, and you want full expression. Deep Connection- You cannot have deep connection without investing time and energy. You can't have deep connection without facing fears and experiencing pain and disappointment. You cannot have deep connection without vision, without a knowing that it will come to fruition. Full Expression- You can't have full expression without dropping judgment, you cannot have full expression if you live in an authoritative environment, you cannot have full expression if you are focused on win/loss, control, power, status, money, appearance, surface level matters. Full expression has depth, authenticity, and challenges the status quo, its bold, its fearless, its multifaceted, at the highest level it would be undefined, it would be everything, it would be God. The whole reason God becomes creation is to experience Deep Connection, and the whole reason man connects to God is to find Full Expression of their perspective as a finite being. If you do not tap into the divine creator in you, you will not find full expression, and if you do not find a deep connection life will be a constant endeavor of chasing that which is within you. You either chase God in creation, or within. In creation it gives finitude, within it gives completion. Now there are many that are able to find full expression by connecting to the Divine unknowingly through insights or great displays of ability. But since these individuals have no formed a deep connection many of them seek it in win/loss, control, power, status, money, appearance, surface level matters. What usually transpires in these peoples lives is they either die/commit suicide, or have the famous coming to Jesus moment. Why? Because man's search for meaning is just man's search for a deep connection. The most fundamental question is why? The answer is love. Its cliche, its considered soft, and woo woo, but the sad thing is its the ultimate truth. What you craved as a child you still crave as an adult. Deep Connection and Full Expression. Which can simply be called Love. You want to find your Life Purpose? Its easy. What do you feel a deep connection with? And I don't mean that sweet in front of you. What inspires you? Go towards that. What do you desire a deep connection with? Develop that. Face the fear that blocks you from those things...and obtain what even God itself cannot attain. God created you, to obtain Deep Connection. What greater connection is there between creator and creation when they are ONE? That is Full Expression, That is Deep Connection, that is God, That is You, That is Life, That is Love.

Women liked to be gamed and conquered. They liked to be chased down. Directly asking sex is like begging, there is simply no fun, charisma or energy to it. You made it sound like a routine and instantly made it super boring to her. She will eventually have sex if she is attracted, but did you build attraction with her ? She is looking for chemistry and stimulation and you give her none of it when you directly beg for sex. You give her no good reason why she should sleep with you. It's like you are marketing a product to a client and saying, "please buy this, please please buy this, please just buy this. " With this strategy most people would be turned off and they will be less likely to buy. There is simply no tact and it appears repulsive. They would also look at the product with suspicion and might assume that you're forcing them to buy something that people wouldn't buy unless forced to. This will backfire. This is a bad strategy. Similarly telling a woman to her face that you want only sex or you want sex explicitly brings up different contextual scenarios in her mind like - she thinks you're only interested in sex. This is a big turn off because nobody likes to be hired as a sex object. The feeling of being objectified is equivalent to that of slavery. Unless it's a bdsm situation and mutually agreed upon, nobody likes to be treated or viewed as a slave. she thinks you're a fuckboy. Pump and dump is what her mind is imagining you would do to her. This makes her feel unwanted and insecure. A girl's insecurity is her biggest and worst enemy. By giving her a pre-signal that you would be dumping her, you are aiding her insecurities instead of alleviating them. Basically you're getting her scared creepy vibes. Men who are serial killers or rapists show no emotion or care and attack women for sex. She can easily think that a man wanting sex could be a potential rapist and see you as a red flag. personal dignity is to a woman what pride and ego are to a man. Would a man like if I said to him that he is good for nothing? He would be instantly turned off. Wanting a woman for sex is synonymous with calling her a loser, disregarding her worth, putting down her dignity. It's similar to slut shaming. It's making her feel like a slut. This means she is capable of offering nothing better than sex. This makes her feel devalued. It's a shot to her personal dignity. She feels shamed. This indirectly means she is good for nothing as a woman and the only reason she is being liked is your desire for sex. The feeling that she has nothing more to offer than being a cute sex doll is an attack on her personal dignity which a woman holds very dear to her. Women are deeply impacted when they lose personal dignity, it's like emotional suicide. No woman wants to be seen as just a pair of tits. women want more from a guy than mere desire. They want emotional commitment. She is expecting you to show more reasons why you like her. This will make her mind think that you're commitment oriented guy. she thinks that you're too desperate. Desperation is a general turn off. Nobody likes someone who is too desperate because it's an indicator of selfishness. Nobody wants to be a victim of someone's selfish goals. she thinks you must be doing this to all girls. When you are too explicit about anything, let alone sex, it appears as a crude shallow gimmick that you must be playing on everyone. It's like that magician who runs a stall and everyone looks at him in wonder and then pass by. A girl might assume that you do this to all women to obtain sex. She sees you as a trickster. she thinks you're boring and nothing else to offer other than sex. Your value as a man falls in her eyes.

00:00:00 Introduction & Tool 1 to Induce Lasting Dopamine Dopamine is responsible for: Motivation, desire, and craving Satisfaction and feelings of wellbeing Addiction to all things This podcast will focus on: What we do, how we do it, and how we conceptualize those things leads to changes in our dopamine levels. What dopamine is and what it isn't There are many myths about dopamine that need to be dispelled How Dopamine works: Biology Psychology Neural circuits Dopamine schedules Food, drugs, caffeine, porn even some plant-based compounds can change our baseline levels of dopamine and subsequently the levels of dopamine we are capable of experiencing from very satisfying or dissatisfying events in the future. This will be a vast discussion that will be well structured and you will come away with a deep understanding of: What drives you Tools to leverage dopamine How to sustain energy, drive, and motivation over long periods of time. Fascinating results from a paper published in the European Journal of Physiology underscore what dopamine is capable of and how behaviors alone can allow us to achieve very high sustained increases in dopamine levels in ways that serve us. The study involved: Human subjects getting into water of different temperatures Warm, moderately cool, and very cold They sat in the water for up to an hour Measurements of cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine were gathered The study found: Cold water exposure led to very rapid increases in norepinephrine and epinephrine, as well as dopamine The increases in dopamine were very significant They kicked in after 10-15 minutes of cold water submersion and continued to rise, eventually reaching levels as high as 250% above baseline. After getting out of the water this increase was sustained Many people are interested in cold water therapy as a way to increase metabolism and fat loss, but also to improve the sense of well-being, cognition, clarity of mind There is something special about this very alert but calm state of mind that seems to be optimal for everything except for sleep, from all aspects of work to social engagements, to learning and sports. Cold water exposure done correctly really can help people achieve that state of mind. The details of this study and what it entailed will be discussed later on as well as: How to limit the amount of cortisol (stress hormone) that's released as a result of the cold water. Compounds (supplements) people can take to increase their levels of dopamine should they choose. 00:04:48 Sponsors: Roka, InsideTracker, Headspace 00:09:10 Upcoming (Zero-Cost) Neuroplasticity Seminar for Educators 00:09:58 What Dopamine (Really) Does Tonic and phasic release of dopamine Most people have heard of dopamine, usually in terms of 'dopamine hits' but these are a bit of a myth, and misunderstandings of this need to be dispelled. Your body uses dopamine at baseline concentrations, meaning there is a set amount of the chemical that is always circulating in your brain and body (tonic release). This is important for how you generally feel; whether you're in a good mood, motivated, etc. You also can experience peaks in dopamine above that baseline (tonic) level, so-called phasic releases of dopamine. These two things interact and this is very important to know and understand The underlying neurobiology for this will be taught clearly If you remember nothing else from this episode, remember that when you experience or crave something really desirable, exciting, and pleasurable that afterward your baseline level of dopamine drops. These peaks of dopamine (phasic) will influence how much dopamine will generally be circulating afterward (tonic). You might think that after a big peak in dopamine you will end up feeling even better because of the pleasurable/desirable event, but what actually happens is that your baseline level of dopamine drops after that peak experience, and your general mood thereafter will be lower. The precise mechanism for how these two things interact will be explained. Dopamine has everything to do with how you feel right now as you're listening to this, how you will feel an hour from now, your level of motivation, desire, and your willingness to push through effort. If you've ever interacted with anyone who doesn't seem to have any drive, who's given up, or someone who seems to have endless drive and energy, what you are looking at is a difference in the level of dopamine circulating in their systems WITHOUT QUESTION. There will be other factors too, but dopamine is the primary determinant of how motivated we are, how excited we are, how outward-facing we are, and how willing we are to lean into life and pursue things. Dopamine is what we call a neuromodulator Neuromodulators are different from neurotransmitters Neurotransmitters are involved in the dialogue between neurons (nerve cells) tending to mediate local communication Like two people talking to one another at a concert Neuromodulators influence the communication of many neurons Like many people dancing in coordination at a concert In the nervous system, this means that dopamine levels will change the probability that certain neural circuits will be active and that other neural circuits will be inactive It modulates many things at once and this is why it's so powerful at shifting not just our levels of energy, but also our mindset, our feelings of whether or not we CAN or CANNOT accomplish something. How does dopamine work and what does it do? Responsible for motivation, drive and craving at the psychological level Controls time perception We will get deep into how it modulates time perception and how important it is that everybody be able to access increases in dopamine at different time scales. Important to avoid addiction to substances and sustain effort and be happy over long periods of time. Vitally important for movement The difference in dopamine for mindset and dopamine for movement will be discussed In diseases like Parkinson's or Lewy Body dementia, there is a depletion or death of dopamine neurons in a particular area of the brain which leads to shaky movements, challenges in speaking, initiating movement, as well as drops in motivation and affect. 00:15:30 Two Main Neural Circuits for Dopamine There are 2 main neural circuits in the brain that dopamine uses in order to exert all its effects. The first is a pathway that goes from the ventral tegmentum to the ventral striatum and the prefrontal cortex. This is the mesocorticolimbic pathway This is the pathway by which dopamine influences motivation, drive, and craving Involves structures like the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex Gets heavily disrupted in addictions by drugs like cocaine and amphetamine. If you are pursuing anything in life you are tapping into this mesocorticolimbic pathway The other pathway emerges from the substantia nigra The cells in this area are dark and connect to the dorsal striatum This is the nigrostriatal pathway The first part of neuroanatomical nomenclature tells you where the neurons are, the second part tells you where they are connecting to. This is heavily involved in movement. Remember that there are 2 pathways as this turns out to be important later. 00:18:14 How Dopamine Is Released: Locally and Broadly Dopamine can be released locally, between two neurons, and broadly over many neurons at once. Synapses are the little spaces between neurons Neurons communicate with one another by making each other either more or less electrically active One nerve cell influences the next to fire (become electrically active) by spewing out vesicles (little packets) of chemicals, when they enter the synapse some of it docks on the other neuron, and by virtue of electrical changes in the postsynaptic neuron that neuron will fire. Dopamine can do this like any other neurotransmitter or neuromodulator, however, dopamine can also engage in volumetric release. The volumetric release is like a giant spew of packets that influences thousands of cells. This makes dopamine interesting because it can have influences from a very narrow to a very broad scale. If you were to take a drug or supplement that increases your level of dopamine you are influencing both the local and volumetric releases of dopamine. This is important because you are affecting your baseline and peaks above baseline levels. Many drugs that increase dopamine will make it harder for you to sustain dopamine release over long periods of time, and to achieve those peaks that most of us crave when we are in pursuit of things. When both the volumetric and local releases are being affected the difference between the peak and baseline is likely to be smaller. How satisfying a reward is doesn't just depend on the height of the peak, but the height of the peak relative to baseline. If you increase the baseline and the peak levels, you are not going to achieve more and more pleasure from things. Increasing your dopamine levels overall will make you excited about all things but it will also make that motivation very short-lived. There is a better way to optimize this peak-to-baseline ratio that will be discussed. We have covered: 2 main neural circuits, one for movement and one for motivation and craving. 2 main modes of communication with dopamine. Local and broad. 00:22:03 Fast and Slow Effects of Dopamine Dopamine is unique compared to other neurotransmitters because it works through what are called g-protein-coupled receptors. Mostly neurons communicate through one of 2 modes (there are others) fast electrical synapses (ionotropic conduction) basically one neuron activates another and ions rush in through ion gates (usually Na+) . Slower g-protein coupled receptors Dopamine is released in these little vesicles, some of it binds the postsynaptic neuron and it will set off a cascade of events. Although g-protein coupled receptors are slow they also have multiple cascading effects, they can even impact things like gene expression or how well or how poorly that cell will respond to the same signal in the future. The effects of dopamine take a while in order to occur This is important because it now underscores 2 things additional things: Dopamine has two pathways to communicate, (craving and movement) There are 2 scales at which dopamine can act (local and broad) Dopamine can have slow effects, really slow effects or very long-lasting effects (even gene expression) 00:25:03 Dopamine Neurons Co-Release Glutamate Dopamine doesn't function alone Neurons that release dopamine co-release glutamate Glutamate is a neurotransmitter that is excitatory meaning it stimulates neurons to be electrically active. You should now begin to get a picture that dopamine is responsible for movement, motivation and drive, but also that it stimulates action in general because it releases this excitatory neurotransmitter tending to making neurons more active. Dopamine is very stimulating overall, we say that it tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal When the sympathetic nervous system is active it brings us into a state of more alertness, readiness with a stronger desire to pursue things outside the confines of our skin. In summary, dopamine, when released tends to make you look outside yourself, pursue things outside yourself, and crave things outside of yourself and delivers the pleasure that arrives from achieving things, (this also involves other molecules.) If you've ever felt lethargic and lazy with low motivation or drive; that’s a low dopamine state If you've ever felt really motivated and excited (perhaps even a little scared) you are in a high dopamine state. Dopamine is a universal currency that you use to track pleasure, success, and whether or not you are doing well or poorly. How much dopamine is in our system at any one time compared to how much dopamine was in our system a few minutes ago and how much we remember enjoying a particular experience of the past dictates your so-called 'quality of life' and your desire to pursue things. This is subjective, but if your dopamine is too low, you will not feel motivated, if it is really high you will feel motivated. If your dopamine is somewhere in the middle, how you feel will depend on whether or not you had higher levels or lower levels of dopamine a few minutes ago. 00:28:00 Your Dopamine History Really Matters Your experience of life and your level of motivation and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experiences. This is something that isn't accounted for in the simple language of 'dopamine hits'. A simple way to envision dopamine hits is that every time you do something you like you get an increase in dopamine. This is correct, however if you enjoy something and get a peak, things that you might otherwise have found enjoyable might not be interesting in comparison shortly thereafter as they don't stimulate the same level of dopamine release. If you do something later it might be more interesting than immediately after something else that you have experienced as enjoyable. How much you enjoy something depends on your baseline level of dopamine when you arrive there and your previous dopamine peaks. When you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment goes up and up and up. We will talk about this process and explain how it works because if you understand it along with some of these schedules and kinetics around dopamine you will be in a terrific position to use any dopamine enhancing tools that you decide to use, modulate and control your own dopamine release for optimal motivation and drive. For people who want more information on the biology of dopamine transmission, there is a link to a review of that was published in nature reviews neuroscience called Spatial and temporal scales of dopamine transmission. 00:30:30 Parkinson’s & Drugs That Kill Dopamine Neurons. My Dopamine Experience 2 anecdotes, one from Huberman's personal life and one from recent history illustrate some of the core biology of dopamine and how profoundly it can shape our experience. Tragic situation occurred in the 80s when there was an outbreak of what looked like Parkinson's symptoms in a young population. Parkinson's is a disease where people will start to quake, and have issues with smooth movements, speech, and sometimes cognition as well. Typically it hits people later in life and has a genetic component. There is a question of whether or not certain lifestyle factors can also create Parkinson's. Some years ago illicit laboratories were trying to make a drug called MPPP which is an opiod-like compound a bit like heroin. Heroin addicts went out and bought what they thought was MPPP, unfortunately, what they ended up taking ended up being a lot worse; MPTP. A number of opioid addicts took this and ended up becoming completely boxed in and paralyzed. Both aspects of dopamine transmission were disrupted. They had no motivation and drive They couldn't generate any movement of any kind This condition is irreversible because MPTP kills the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra and the mesocorticolimbic pathway. Huberman was in college when this happened and at the time he had no understanding of what it was to have very high or very low levels of dopamine. He had experienced regular ups and downs of life and various pleasures but nothing compared to this next anecdote. Huberman got Giardia which is a stomach bug that causes terrible diarrhea and is extremely unpleasant. He ended up going to the emergency room and ended up begging them for something to stop up his guts. They put in a saline line for hydration and injected it with Thorazine. Thorazine is an antipsychotic drug given to people who have schizophrenia and functions by blocking dopamine receptors. Within minutes he felt more sadness, and an overwhelming sense of depression than he's ever felt in his entire life, it was absolutely profound. He was crying miserably without understanding why he was crying. He then begged them to give him l-dopa to get his dopamine levels back up again. They did and within minutes he felt fine again. It was incredible for him and really opened up his mind to what it is to have plummeted levels of dopamine. The poor souls who took MPTP lost all their dopamine cells, People with Parkinson's struggle with this as well because their dopamine-producing cells often die; it's not merely a problem of them not releasing enough dopamine. We will discuss dopamine neuron health and protection as they are very precious. Huberman's experience with Thorazine opened his eyes to the fact that dopamine is perhaps one of the most powerful molecules that any of us has inside of us and one we ought to all think very carefully about how we leverage. While most experiences and things we do, take, and eat won't create enormous highs and lows in dopamine, even subtle fluctuations in it really shape our perception of life and how we feel so we want to guard them and ensure we understand them. 00:36:58 Tool 3 Controlling Dopamine Peaks & Baselines We want to keep the baseline in the appropriate healthy place and still be able to access the peaks in dopamine, as these are some of what makes life rich and worth living. All of us have different baseline levels of dopamine Some of this is sure to be genetic, some people simply ride at a higher level and are a little bit more excited and motivated than others who are a little mellower and less excitable Some of this has to do with the fact that dopamine doesn't act alone It has close cousins and friends in the nervous system Epinephrine (adrenaline) is the main chemical driver of energy, it's released from the adrenal glands above our kidneys and from an area of the brainstem called the locus coeruleus. Its release tends to wake up neural circuits in the brain and various aspects of our body's physiology giving us a 'readiness' Dopamine and epinephrine often work in conjunction with one another Epinephrine is manufactured from dopamine, l-dopa is converted to dopamine, to nor-epinephrine, and then to epinephrine. Any time you discuss a peak or release in dopamine that inevitably means you have an increase in epinephrine as well. Dopamine colors the subjective experience of an activity to make it more pleasurable, Epinephrine is more about energy; fear, mental paralysis, and trauma. If dopamine is mixed in with this state of fear then it becomes a state of 'excitement' 00:40:06 Chocolate, Sex (Pursuit & Behavior), Nicotine, Cocaine, Amphetamine, Exercise What sorts of things increase dopamine and by how much? Recall that we all have a baseline level of dopamine, but your level of dopamine has as much to do with what you've experienced in the previous days and months etc. When you do/ingest certain things your levels of dopamine can rise above baseline transiently. Depending on what you do/ingest it can rise either more or less, or it will be very brief or last a long time. Some of the typical things that people do or eat that increase dopamine with some average measurements from microdialysis studies in animals or from serum measurements in humans Chocolate: will increase your baseline level of dopamine 1.5x, transiently for either a few minutes or even a few seconds. Sex: both the pursuit and the act of sex increase dopamine 2x on average. The different aspects of sex have different effects on dopamine levels, but for now, as a general activity, it roughly doubles the amount of dopamine in circulation. Nicotine (smoked): Increases dopamine 2.5x above baseline that is very short-lived which is understood by observing chain smokers. Cocaine: 2.5x above baseline Amphetamine: 10x above baseline (a tremendous increase) Exercise: Will have a different impact on the levels of dopamine depending on how much someone subjectively enjoys that exercise If you're somebody who LOVES running, the chances are it's going to increase your levels of dopamine 2x above baseline, not unlike sex. People who dislike exercise will achieve a lower or no dopamine increase as a result. If you like other forms of exercise like yoga, weightlifting, swimming, etc. the increase is going to vary depending on your subjective experience of those activities. This is important and brings us back to something we talked about earlier The 'cortical' part of the mesocorticolimbic pathway is important because the prefrontal cortex is the area of your brain involved in thinking planning and assigning rational explanations, and subjective experiences to things. e.g Huberman likes Pilot v5 pens, if he spent enough time thinking or talking about it he could probably get a dopamine increase from that alone. As we begin to engage with something more and more, what we say about it and what we encourage ourselves to think about it has a profound impact on its rewarding or non-rewarding properties. It's not simply the case that you can lie to yourself and tell yourself that you love something when you don't really love it and increase dopamine. However, if people journal about something or practice some form of appreciation for something and they think of some aspect of something they enjoy the amount of dopamine that behavior will evoke tends to go up. For people who hate exercise, you can think about some aspect of it that you genuinely enjoy. Don't tell yourself you hate something but that you love the reward you give yourself afterward! The reward given after displeasurable events can actually make the situation worse by undermining the dopamine release that would otherwise occur for that activity. Certain things have a universal effect in making people's dopamine levels go up such as sex, nicotine, cocaine, and amphetamines. The amount of dopamine released from things like exercise, studying, hard work, working through a challenge in a relationship, or something challenging of any kind is going to be subjective and vary from person to person. This subjective component will be explained in more detail later. 00:46:46 Tool 4 Caffeine Increases Dopamine Receptors Caffeine will increase dopamine slightly, but it's pretty modest compared to some of the things that have already been discussed. Regular ingestion of caffeine increases the upregulation of certain dopamine receptors, so caffeine makes you more sensitive to dopamines effects. Caffeine increases the number and density of the g-coupled protein receptors. You might think of people having a cigarette and a cup of coffee together, or smoking and drinking together, this is because different compounds or certain behaviors and compounds can synergize to give bigger dopamine increases. It's not uncommon for people to take things like pre-workout substances or energy drinks leading to big stimulating effects on dopamine and nor-epinephrine and then exercise to get an even greater dopaminergic experience out of the workout. This approach of simply trying to get your dopamine as high as you possibly can in order to get the most out of a particular experience is not optimal. Layering in multiple substances and activities that lead to big increases in dopamine can create severe issues with motivation and energy right after those experiences and even multiple days later. If you do this too often you'll find that your capacity to release dopamine and your level of motivation and drive overall will take a serious hit. 00:49:54 Pursuit, Excitement & Your “Dopamine Setpoint” From the beginning of the episode, the tonic and phasic release of dopamine has been discussed. We can now cover this in more depth in order to leverage it for our own purposes. In order to do this it's useful to ask why do we have a dopamine system like this, or why do we have this system at all? Our species like all species has a survival agenda to replicate as much of itself as possible. It's not just about sex and reproduction it's about foraging for resources; food, water, salt, shelter, and social connections. Dopamine is the universal currency of foraging and seeking things that provide sustenance and pleasure in the short term and will extend the species in the long term. Once we understand that dopamine is a driver for us to seek things, it makes perfect sense as to why we have a system with a baseline level and peaks that spike above that baseline and the peaks and baseline would be related in some direct way. Let's say you were alive 10,000 years ago and you woke up and realized you had very little water and food left with a child and a partner and you NEED things. You need to be able to generate the energy to go seeking those things. Chances are there were dangers in seeking those things e.g. storms, cold, injuries, predators, isolation, etc. This process of going out and foraging was driven by dopamine. Let's say you find a few berries, or you hunt an animal and kill it, or you find some meat and water somewhere; you will experience some sort of dopamine release (you've found the reward), but then it needs to return to some lower level that is still pushing you because if you just stayed there you would never continue to forage for more. What's very important to understand is that it doesn't just go back down to the level it was at before, it goes down to a level BELOW what it was before you went out seeking your needs. This is counterintuitive because we often think in terms of pursuing a win Run a marathon, cross the finish line, and feel great and you think ok, now I'm set for the entire year, I'm going to feel this amazing sense of accomplishment etc. This is not really what happens, you will experience a peak, but then your level of dopamine will drop below baseline. Eventually, it will ratchet back up, but 2 things are important The extent to which it drops below baseline is proportional to how high the peak was. If you cross the finish line mildly happy, it won't drop that much below baseline, if you cross the finish line ecstatic, a day or 2 later you will feel quite a bit lower than you might have otherwise. Post-partum depression that people experience after giving birth or after a big win like a graduation etc. is heavily influenced by the drop in baseline levels of dopamine. This happens on very rapid timescales and can last quite a long time as well. This also explains how if we continue to engage with things we enjoy over and over again they begin to lose their edge over various timescales. Some of us experience this drop in excitement more quickly and severely than others. This has direct roots in these evolutionarily conserved circuits. Some people may feel the illusion they're simply riding higher and higher all the time. Often times we are feeling good because we are layering in different aspects of life, doing and consuming things that are increasing our levels of dopamine giving us those peaks Afterward, the drop in baseline occurs and it always takes a little while to get back to our stable baseline. We all have a dopamine 'set point' If we continue to indulge in these same behaviors that continue to increase our peaks in dopamine we won't experience the same level of joy from those behaviors or from anything at all. This is what addiction is. Even for people who aren't 'addicted' or have an attachment to any specific substance or behavior, the drop below baseline is substantial and it governs whether or not we will be able to pursue other things. There is a way for us to work with this system such that we can experience peaks while keeping the baseline at an appropriate healthy level. 00:56:46 Your Pleasure-Pain Balance & Defining “Pain” Dr. Anna Lembke was a previous guest on the Huberman podcast, she's head of the addiction dual diagnosis clinic at Stanford and is the author of 'Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity--and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race is another terrific book about dopamine. Both books focus on dopamine schedules and the relationship between these peaks and baselines of dopamine. Dr. Lembke talks about this pleasure-pain balance that occurs when we seek or experience something we really like. We gain a little bit of pleasure (e.g. eating chocolate) then there is a little bit of pain that subtly exceeds the amount of pleasure. We experience it as wanting more of that thing. There is a pleasure-pain balance that is governed by dopamine to some extent. The pain comes from the lack of dopamine that we experience after a peak. Earlier we talked about how dopamine is released into synapses where it can activate postsynaptic neurons, or it can be released volumetrically over many neurons, in both cases, it's released in synaptic vesicles and these vesicles get depleted. The total amount of dopamine in vesicles that are available to be released is what synaptic physiologists call the 'readily releasable pool of dopamine'. We can only deploy dopamine that is packaged in these little vesicles and is ready to be released. The pleasure-pain balance doesn't only hinge on the readily releasable pool of dopamine but a large part of it does. Now it should make sense why if you take/do something that leads to huge increases in dopamine, afterward your baseline should drop. 01:00:00 Addiction, Dopamine Depletion, & Replenishing Dopamine Fortunately, most people do not pursue things that lead to these enormous increases in dopamine and drops below baseline. Addicts do however and make the mistake of pursuing the dopamine-evoking activity/substance again to feel better. This only drives their baseline lower and lower. When people are truly addicted to something then they won't receive much pleasure from anything at all. You can see this with Videogames where people start out enjoying it, and they keep playing and playing and playing until one of 2 things happens (or both). A narrowing of things that can bring you pleasure, people start losing interest in school, relationships, fitness, wellbeing etc. They stop getting dopamine releases from the addictive behaviors and drop into potentially serious states of depression leading to suicide. The more typical scenario of someone who is really good at working through the week with some exercise throughout and with drinks on the weekends who can develop depression, burnout, and drops in motivation: This person will only be drinking 1-2 nights per week but may be spiking their dopamine with food during the middle of the week, swimming in the ocean in the middle of the week as well going out dancing on the weekend. On the surface, it sounds like a pretty balanced life. The problem is that dopamine is not just evoked by one of these activities but by all of them. Dopamine is one currency of craving motivation and desire and pleasure. Looking at the activities at face value and saying the drinking is just on the weekends, the food is only in the middle of the week as is the dancing and ocean swimming doesn't reveal what's really going on. Looking at dopamine simply as a function of peaks and baseline it makes sense why this person after several years of this work hard play hard lifestyle would say they're feeling quite burnt out. There are age-related reasons for why people can experience drops in energy but often they're spiking their dopamine through so many different activities throughout the week that their baseline is progressively dropping. This drop in baseline can be very subtle and sinister in that it's imperceptible until it reaches a threshold of low dopamine where we feel we can't really get pleasure from anything anymore. This begins to look the same as more severe and acute addictions to things like cocaine and amphetamine. We should all of course engage in activities we enjoy, it's a huge part of life, the key thing is to understand this relationship between peaks and baseline and how they influence one another. Once you understand this you can begin making really good choices in the short and long term to maintain or raise your dopamine baseline and still have peaks with feelings of elevated motivation, desire, and craving. Those peaks and having a sufficiently high baseline are what drove the evolution of our species as well as the evolution of any individual's life progression. What should you do if you've experienced a drop in your baseline level of dopamine because of engaging in activities or substances that led to big peaks over prolonged periods of time? The child of one of Huberman's friends after becoming addicted to video games decided to do a 30-day fast from his phone, video games, and social media of all kinds. He's now at day 29 and not incidentally his levels of concentration and mood have improved. This is hard to do, particularly in the first 14 days but the way you replenish this releasable pool of dopamine is to not engage in these dopaminergic seeking behaviors for a substantial period of time. He thought initially that he had ADHD and was being treated for it, while there are many people with ADHD it is likely that many people are simply suffering from low dopamine levels and cannot concentrate adequately or have appropriate levels of motivation. Tapering or quitting the dopamine-evoking behaviors is the best strategy to adopt. 01:07:50 Tool 5 Ensure Your Best (Healthy) Dopamine Release Certain substances like cocaine and amphetamine should be avoided and categorized as unhealthy Other things like food, chocolate, coffee, sex, etc. are all a part of life and aren't 'bad' per se but need to be engaged with appropriately. How can we achieve the peaks that are an essential component of our enjoyment of life without dropping our baseline? The key lies in the intermittent release of dopamine Do not expect or chase high levels of dopamine every time we engage in these activities. Intermittent rewards schedules are the central schedules by which casinos keep you gambling, elusive partners keep you pursuing and texting (on either side of the relationship), and the internet, social media, and all highly engaging activities keep you motivated and in pursuit. Thinking back evolutionarily, not every trail, pursuit, or hunch about where to find rewards would have played out successfully. There is something called dopamine reward prediction error. When we expect something to happen we are highly motivated to pursue it. If it happens, great! We get various chemical rewards including dopamine and we are more likely to engage in that behavior again. You'll find there is something you are probably addicted to due to an intermittent schedule by which dopamine sometimes arrives in various amounts. This is the best schedule to export to other activities. How do you do this? If you are engaged in activities like school, sports relationships, etc. where you experience a win, you should be very careful about allowing yourself to experience huge peaks in dopamine unless you're willing to suffer the crash that follows. In the practical sense, this might look like having coffee or pre-workout or music with your exercise regiment at random intervals. You just do the exercise on its own sometimes without increasing dopamine through exogenous sources as well. If you want to maintain motivation for school, exercise, sports, and relationships for any duration the key thing is to make sure that the peak in dopamine (if high) doesn't occur very often, and if it does occurs often you vary how much dopamine you experience with each engagement in that activity. Some activities naturally have this intermittent property woven into them. Sometimes we have classes we like and others we don't We don't always get straight A's, or the perfect relationship outcome, etc. How much motivation and pleasure you derive from what comes next is dictated by how much motivation and pleasure you experienced prior. You can't give a very specific protocol like delete or limit dopamine every third time is that it wouldn't be intermittent. It should be random and unpredictable. 01:15:28 Smart Phones: How They Alter Our Dopamine Circuits The Smartphone is a very interesting tool for dopamine in light of all this It's extremely common to see people using their smartphones for various things while they're engaged in other activities. This doesn't just affect our level of focus and engagement with any particular activity, but it's also a way of layering in dopamine and it's no surprise that levels of depression and lack of motivation are really on the increase. Everything discussed up to this point sets up an explanation or interpretation of why interacting with digital technologies can potentially lead to disruptions in our baseline levels of dopamine. Huberman noticed that if he brought his phone to his workouts, not only was he slightly more distracted, but also he lost interest in what he was doing, it didn't feel as pleasurable. As he started learning more about this relationship between peaks and baseline levels of dopamine, he realized some time ago he probably experienced an incredible increase in his level of dopamine during one of his workouts while working out and listening to music, or podcasts, and communicating with people. He had layered in too many of them too many times and eventually it wasn't working for him anymore. We often interpret this increase in phone usage as an inability to be alone nowadays, but in Huberman's opinion, we have simply achieved a great increase in dopamine levels through technology and are now addicted to the point of constantly needing the next hit without ever achieving the same levels of fulfillment as in the past. Try to remove multiple sources of dopamine release from activities that you want to continue to enjoy or to enjoy more. This can be very challenging during the first week or so. 01:19:45 Stimulants & Spiking Dopamine: Counterproductive for Work, Exercise & Attention For this very same reason, it's wise to avoid using stimulants every time you study, workout, or do anything that you want to continue to enjoy or be motivated towards. Caffeine is an exception because it can make whatever dopamine is released by an activity more accessible to your neurons without affecting your baseline too much. However, a number of energy drinks and pre-workout supplements contain things that are precursors to dopamine and do cause the release of dopamine to a substantial degree. Over time this will deplete your dopamine levels. Taking stimulants and then engaging in activities will inevitably result in challenges with motivation and drive related to those activities. Intermittent dopamine spiking schedules are the way to go if you do it at all, chronically doing so in order to enhance your focus motivation, and drive will absolutely undermine your motivation focus and drive in the long run. 01:22:20 Caffeine Sources Matter: Yerba Mate & Dopamine Neuron Protection Caffeine is something of an exception because it increases the density and efficacy of dopamine receptors. The source of caffeine could be important. Yerba Mate, contains caffeine, is high in antioxidants, and contains something called GLP-1 which is useful for the management of blood sugar levels. It has also been found to be neuroprotective, specifically for dopaminergic neurons (only a few studies have been done) in both the movement and motivation-related pathways. 01:24:20 Caffeine & Neurotoxicity of MDMA MDMA is under investigation for its potential to treat trauma and depression in various clinical studies, it's also a drug that's used recreationally and illegally. Whether or not MDMA is neurotoxic has been quite controversial, early on it was thought to destroy serotonergic neurons. One of the early papers making this claim was retracted as the study mistakenly used methamphetamine instead of MDMA. Caffeine however has been found to increase the toxicity of MDMA due to its upregulation of these dopamine receptors and can be dangerous in this context, while beneficial in another context. 01:26:15 Amphetamine, Cocaine & Detrimental Rewiring of Dopamine Circuits Amphetamine and cocaine can cause long-term problems with the dopaminergic pathways. Paper Amphetamine or cocaine limits the ability of later experience to promote structural plasticity in the neocortex and nucleus accumbens Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change and adapt and is the basis of learning, memory, and remodeling of our neurocircuitry in positive ways. This study was one of the first to show that ingesting amphetamine and cocaine because of the high peaks and low dopamine baselines that they generate limits plasticity and learning. This was shown to be a long-lasting effect, unlikely permanent but should serve as a serious cautionary note that amphetamine and cocaine not only can drop baseline levels of dopamine but limits the brain's ability to learn and change itself to get better at least for some period of time. 01:27:57 Ritalin, Adderall, (Ar)Modafinil: ADHD versus non-Prescription Uses A previous episode on ADHD talked about the widespread use of drugs like Adderall, Ritalin, modafinil, and armodafinil which all lead to very large increases in dopamine. For people with ADHD, this can really improve their symptoms. There is a lot of non-prescription and non-clinical use of these substances as well. It stands to reason that the use of these substances could provide the same blockade of plasticity that cocaine and amphetamine do because the amount of dopamine release that's triggered by these compounds is comparable. 01:28:45 Tool 6 Stimulating Long-Lasting Increases in Baseline Dopamine Having covered some of the darker aspects of dopamine and how getting big peaks can be detrimental, it's time to acknowledge its virtues and how good it makes us feel. Being in pursuit and motivated and craving things feels wonderful, and shouldn't be demonized. There are activities that we can do that will give us healthy, sustained increases in both the peaks and the baseline levels of dopamine. In recent years there has been a trend of more people doing cold exposure in part popularised by Wim Hof, cold showers, icebaths exposing oneself to cold water of various kinds can in fact increase our level of dopamine and norepinephrine. This is not a new phenomenon, in the 1920's Vincent Priessnitz was one of the first people to popularise and formalize cold water therapies. He was an advocate of cold water exposure to boost the immune system and increase feelings of well-being. Safety parameters should be established first. Getting into very cold water at 30-40F can put people into a state of cold water shock leading to death. For most people getting into 50-60F water or if you're acclimated to 30-40F water can have tremendously beneficial effects on your neuromodulator systems including dopamine. What temperature of water you can tolerate will depend on how adapted you are and how familiar you are with the experience of getting into cold water. There is never a case in which getting into cold water does not release a dose of epinephrine The quickening of the breath, widening of the eyes, and the feeling of being breathless happens almost every time for everyone. This wall is always coming and there isn't really a way of getting around it. Study published in the European Journal of applied physiology looked at people getting into water that was warm moderately cold or very cold. 32C 20C or 14C and the concentrations of epinephrine and dopamine. Upon getting into cold water the changes in adrenaline and noradrenaline were immediate and large, interestingly however dopamine levels started to rise slowly and then continued to rise and reach levels as high as 2.5 times above baseline. This is comparable to what one sees in cocaine use, except in this case it wasn't a rise and crash. It was a sustained increase that took a very long time (up to 3 hours to come back to baseline) which is really remarkable. This explains some of the positive mental and physical effects that people report after doing cold water exposure. There was an increase in stress hormone release in cold water exposure but what was interesting was that it was transitory. There are two different approaches to remaining in the cold when it's uncomfortable 1 is to try and relax, practice slow breathing dilate your gaze 2 increase your level of autonomic arousal and force yourself into it The approach to getting into the water doesn't matter for the sake of dopamine release. In the study people stayed in the cold for an hour, this could be dangerous at low water temperatures and could lead to hypothermia. It's well established that getting into cold water whether it's a shower, ice bath, circulating cold water, stream, etc. evokes the norepinephrine release immediately and the long arch of dopamine release. This is good because it appears to raise the baseline of dopamine release for substantial periods of time and most people report feeling a heightened level of calm and focus after getting out of cold water. Once doing this begins to feel comfortable then it doesn’t appear to evoke this release, there seems to be something in the pathway from cold water exposure through the norepinephrine pathway and into the mesolimbic brainstem that causes this release in dopamine. It's basically a zero-cost way of triggering a long-lasting release of dopamine without ingesting anything. Approach it with safety and caution in mind. 01:37:55 Tool 7 Tuning Your Dopamine for Ongoing Motivation The positive and negative aspects of rewards from behaviors can illuminate a better approach to achieving a better relationship between your activities and the dopamine system, enabling you to tune it up for discipline, hard work, and motivation. Hard work is hard and is something that most people don't generally like. Most people work hard in order to achieve some end goal. End goals and rewards are terrific whether or not they are monetary, social Because dopamine relates to our perception of time, working hard at something for the sake of a reward that comes afterward can make it much more challenging and make us much less likely to lean into hard work in the future. Researchers took children who enjoyed drawing and began giving them rewards for drawing, then stopped giving them the rewards and found the children had a much lower tendency to draw on their own. This relates to intrinsic vs extrinsic reinforcements Prior to receiving these rewards, these children were intrinsically motivated to draw. When we receive rewards for something, even when we give ourselves rewards, we tend to associate less pleasure with the activity itself. This seems counterintuitive but its bases on the peaks and baseline relationships in dopamine levels. If you get a peak of dopamine from a reward, it will lower your baseline and the cognitive interpretation is that you didn't really do the activity because you enjoy it, you did it for the reward. It's important to understand that dopamine controls our perception of time. When and how much dopamine we experience is the way we carve up our subjective experience of time. When we engage in hard work of any kind, because of the reward we are going to give ourselves at the end we actually extend the time bin over which we are perceiving that experience of work. Because the reward comes at the end we start to dissociate the circuits for dopamine reward that would have normally been active during the activity and because it all arrives at the end, over time we have the experience of less and less pleasure from that particular activity while engaged in it. This is the antithesis of the 'growth mindset' Caroll Dweck came up with this principle of striving to be better where striving itself is the end goal and this delivers tremendous performance long term. People who have the growth mindset have been observed to end up performing very well because they're focused on the effort itself. All of us can cultivate a growth mindset The neural mechanism of cultivating the growth mindset involves learning to access the rewards from effort and doing. This is hard to do because you have to engage the prefrontal component of the mesocorticolimbic circuit, telling yourself the effort is great, and pleasurable, even though you might be in a state of discomfort. You can find over time that you can begin to evoke dopamine release from the friction and challenge you find yourself in. You completely eliminate the ability to generate those circuits and the process of being able to reward friction while in the effort if you are focused only on the goal at the end, because of the way that dopamine marks time. If you say you're going to do this hard thing and push and push and push for the end goal, not only do you enjoy the process less, you make it more painful while you are engaged in it, and less efficient at it because dopamine levels will be lower and dopamine has these incredibly stimulating effects for our mind and bodies, and you undermine your ability to lean back into this activity the next time. Next time you need twice as much coffee and three times as much music and the social connection just to get out the door and do what you need to do. What serves as a tremendous amplifier on all endeavors that you engage in, especially hard endeavors is to stop layering in exogenous sources of dopamine to get to the starting line and to continue, but rather to subjectively start to attach the feeling of friction and effort to an internally generated reward system. This is not meant to be vague, it exists in your mind and biology and has existed in humans for hundreds of thousands of years. You are not just pursuing things that are innately pleasurable, food, sex, warmth, water etc. but the beauty of the mesocorticolimbic pathway is that it includes the forebrain and you can tell yourself the effort part is the good part. What's beautiful about this system is that it begins to become reflexive for all types of effort. In those moments of the most intense friction you tell yourself 'this is very painful and because it's painful it will evoke an increase in dopamine release later, but that in that moment you are doing it by choice and because you love it' In some ways, this is lying to yourself but it's lying to yourself in the context of a truth which is that you want it to feel better, you want it to feel pleasurable. This is very different from thinking of the reward that comes at the end. We revere people who are capable of doing this David Goggins comes to mind as an example, many people are probably familiar with. There's no question that in the past we revered people who were willing to go out and forage and hunt and gather and caretake in ways that other members of our species would rather have avoided. The ability to access this pleasure from the effort aspect of our dopaminergic circuitry is without question the most powerful aspect of dopamine and our biology of it. The beautiful thing is that it's accessible to all of us. Don't spike dopamine prior to engaging in effort, and don’t' spike dopamine after engaging in effort, learn to spike it from the effort itself. 01:47:40 Tool 8 Intermittent Fasting: Effects on Dopamine Intermittent fasting is an example of people attaching dopamine to effort and strain as opposed to a process or reward that naturally evokes dopamine release. This is popular nowadays with various time intervals that people adopt. Many people find it easier to not eat at all than to eat small portions of food, this has everything to do with the dopamine-rewarding properties of food. When we ingest food our dopamine levels rise and typically can cause cravings for more. Fasting from the perspective of dopamine schedules Typically when we eat we get dopamine release, especially when we are very hungry because deprivation states influence the way that our reward circuitry works. Our experience of dopamine is heightened when our receptors haven't received much of it recently. When you fast and then finally eat, it evokes more dopamine release and heightened sensitivity to that reward. People also begin to evoke dopamine release from the effort of fasting itself This is likely why fasting has been practiced for so long because it increases the rewarding properties of food as well as those of deprivation. A lot of the knowledge of the benefits of fasting serve as reinforcing and amplifying aspects to the rewarding aspects of fasting. If people are deep into their fast and are telling themselves their blood lipid profiles are improving along with their insulin sensitivity, longevity etc. they are enhancing the rewarding properties of the behaviour of fasting. This is a salient example of where 'knowledge of knowledge' can help us change these deep primitive circuits related to dopamine and how the forebrain can be used to shape the very circuits that are involved in generating reward for what otherwise would just be primitive hardwired behaviors. Rewards are not only attached to more primitive drives like food or sex or warmth but also to things we decide are good for us. 01:53:09 Validation of Your Pre-Existing Beliefs Increases Dopamine Hearing something that reinforces one's prior beliefs actually can evoke dopamine release. The dopamine pathway is so vulnerable to subjective interpretation that it actually makes it such that when we see or hear something that validates a belief we already have we experience pleasure and reward. 01:53:50 Tool 9 Quitting Sugar & Highly Palatable Foods: 48 Hours If you ingest something you like and then something even sweeter or more savory then you go back to the food you ate previously you won't like it as much. This shift in perception can be stopped by blocking the shift in dopamine This really speaks to the experience of the peaks and valleys of dopamine where the pleasure you derive from anything is going to depend on your prior experience of things that evoke dopamine. A big dopamine release makes it more challenging to experience big dopamine releases in the future. Dopamine is one of those things you don't want too high or too low for too long. Highly palatable foods will make whole foods taste much less rewarding for at least a period of a few days. This speaks to dopamine being a universal currency of pleasure that establishes value not just on what you are experiencing in the moment, but what you experienced in the days and minutes before. 01:55:36 Pornography Now you understand how your current level relates to your previous experience of dopamine and how it will connect to your future level of dopamine. It should become obvious why things such as pornography, its accessibility, and its intensity can negatively shape real-world romantic and sexual interactions. This is a serious concern and the underlying neurobiological mechanisms you now understand. Any activity that evokes a lot of dopamine release will make it harder to achieve the same level and greater level of dopamine through a subsequent interaction. Many people are addicted to pornography and many people who regularly engage in it experience challenges in real-world romantic interactions. 01:56:50 Wellbutrin & Depression & Anxiety There are circumstances in which increasing dopamine levels is desirable, advantageous, and clinically helpful. Wellbutrin also called Bupropion increases dopamine and nor-epinephrine. It was developed as an alternative treatment for depression because some people who take SSRI's suffer from serotonin-related side effects like decreased appetite, libido, or increased appetite, etc. Wellbutrin seems to avoid the sexual side effects, it can blunt appetite because of the increases in norepinephrine and dopamine increases motivation and craving but also creates a state of alertness that can sometimes get in the way of healthy eating. It can increase anxiety because of the way that dopamine and nor-epinephrine are stimulating and tend to place people into heightened levels of alertness. 01:58:30 Tool 10 Mucuna Pruriens, Prolactin, Sperm, Crash Warning There are many people who are seeking to increase their baseline levels of dopamine without taking any prescription pharmaceutical compounds. There are many supplements that now exist to achieve this. Mucuna Puriens is from a velvety bean whose contents are l-dopa which is the precursor to dopamine. If you take it you will experience very large increases in dopamine that are transient The constellations of effects look a lot like the effects of l-dopa The most obvious use is in the context of Parkinson's, at least 5 studies have shown that they can reduce the symptoms of Parkinsons much in the same way l-dopa does It can reduce a hormone called prolactin which tends to be in a push-pull relationship with dopamine. Prolactin is involved in the milk letdown of women and the refractory period for sex after ejaculation in males. It has a number of other effects that lie in the sex and reproduction pathway that are worth noting It increases sperm concentrations and quality (4 studies) Useful for people seeking to conceive children with nonprescription compounds It's important to be aware that almost every time you consume a substance that increases dopamine by being a precursor to dopamine there is almost inevitably a crash or reduction in the baseline that we referred to previously. For this reason, many people have turned to L-tyrosine. 02:01:45 Tool 11 L-Tyrosine: Dosages, Duration of Effects & Specificity L-tyrosine is an amino acid precursor to l-dopa so it lies further up the dopamine synthesis pathway and it's very common that people take it to feel more energized alert and focused. There are data that show it will accomplish that It's typically taken in capsule or powder form in anywhere from 500-1000mg It is a potent stimulus for increasing dopamine and the timescale for that increase is about 30-45 minutes after ingestion, and after about 30 minutes the effects dissipated. 02:05:20 Tool 12 Avoiding Melatonin Supplementation, & Avoiding Light 10pm-4am Things that can reduce your baseline levels of dopamine should also be mentioned One that is rarely discussed is melatonin Melatonin can help one get to sleep but not stay asleep Dr. Matt Walker, in their discussion of melatonin, has generally stated that the use of melatonin except for the treatment of jet lag is not really a good idea. It's not often thought about as impacting the dopamine pathway, however, there is at least one study Michiama 2001 Acute effects of melatonin administration on cardiovascular autonomic regulation in healthy men - K Nishiyama et. al found a statistically significant decrease in dopamine 60 minutes after melatonin administration. Viewing bright lights between 10 pm and 4 am has been shown to reduce dopamine levels for several days after that light exposure. 02:07:00 Tool 13 Phenylethylamine (with Alpha-GPC) For Dopamine Focus/Energy PEA is a compound that you've probably taken without realizing it that increases dopamine It's found in various foods (e.g. chocolate) and can increase synaptic levels of dopamine. Huberman takes 500mg of PEA every once in a while as a work aide with 300mg of alpha-GPC, leading to a sharp but transitory increase in dopamine that he's found to be much more regulated and even than something like l-tyrosine and certainly something like mucuna purines. 02:08:20 Tool 14 Huperzine A Huperzine A is a compound that's gaining popularity as a so-called neutropic It's a compound sold over the counter in the USA that can increase Achetyl choline transmission (a different neuromodulator entirely) Interestingly it somehow by way of interaction between the cholinergic system and the dopaminergic system leads to increases in dopamine in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Huberman recommends against people simply diving in and consuming things without gaining knowledge about how they function and whether or not their appropriate for you as an individual. In the years to come, we are likely to see a lot more of l-tyrosine, PEA, and Huperzine A as a way of tapping into the dopaminergic and cholinergic circuits along with things like Alpha-gpc as nonprescription short-lived milder alternatives to things that really spike dopamine like Adderall, Ritalin, modafinil, armodafinil etc. 02:10:02 Social Connections, Oxytocin & Dopamine Release One more result that's not related to pharmacology but for behaviors and social interactions A very interesting and important finding made a few years ago by Rob Melanka showed that oxytocin and social connections are directly stimulating the dopamine pathway. For many years the scientific community at large would hear and think that oxytocin was in the serotonergic pathway, that it was about pair-bonding and that some of the neuromodulators that were more associated with things related to feeling good with what we have in the 'present moment' which is typically what we think of with regards the opioid or serotonergic system. The dopamine system is about seeking and reward. Paper published in 2017 in the journal Science, Gating of social reward by oxytocin in the ventral tegmental area - Malenka et. al. found that oxytocin social connection and pair bonding itself triggers dopamine release, For the evolution of our species and any species where social connections are important, it's also important to go and seek social connections. While it's fun to think about pharmacology and underlying neurobiology, neurocircuitry and cold water baths, dopamine schedules and rewards mechanisms attaching a reward to effort, and the various things we've talked about today in terms of various scientific tools and protocols, it would be to remiss not to emphasize those close social connections that evoke oxytocin release (romantic, parent-child, friendships, and friends at a distance) are central to stimulating the dopamine pathways. The take-home message is quite simple, engage in and pursue quality, healthy social interactions. 02:12:20 Direct & Indirect Effects: e.g., Maca; Synthesis & Application A lot of things have been covered today with a focus on a lot of things that lie directly within the dopamine pathway and circuitries as well as the things that directly stimulate those pathways and circuitries. What hasn't been covered are things that indirectly serve those pathways. On the internet and the literature, you will find that things like maca root and the gut microbiome can increase dopamine They do by creating an environment in which dopamine and dopamine circuits can flourish. Maca is a good example of this as it will reduce cortisol and through some indirect pathways related to cortisol can increase dopamine but it's not a direct increase in dopamine, as a consequence it's rather subtle compared to the various compounds and behaviors that have been discussed. Cold water exposure for example leads to huge and sustained increases in dopamine. There is lot of information that might be overwhelming but the most important thing to understand is that these dopamine pathways really are under your control. The locus of control resides in the fact that your previous levels of dopamine are influencing your levels of dopamine right now and your current levels of dopamine and where you take them next will influence your dopamine levels in the days and weeks to come. With the mechanisms that you now have learned and some of the tools to tap into the dopaminergic system, both behavioral, and pharmacological that you'll have a better understanding of your dopaminergic system with a greater ability to control it.

@Phil777 I agree with you, anyone can do more or less whatever they want online. However given that this particular space of content creators and forum users has an above average tendency to randomly go off the rails, and in some cases commit suicide, spontaneous changes in behaviour can be worrying It’s better to err on the side of caution and check in with people who suddenly change their behaviour in general, but in particular in this space on the internet I certainly don’t think it was unwarranted to at least be slightly confused or concerned that something had happened

Looking at childhood pictures, watching your favorite movie, eating your favorite ice cream after having not eaten any junk food for years, posing with a gun; throw a vaporizer with unlimited amounts of highly potent psychedelics in the mix and you have your 21st century schizoid men suicide starterpack. You can always turn around. I hope he realises this in time.

Yes, I feel the same. It feels very different and very sudden. But maybe like @Vynce and @LSD-Rumi said - he wouldn't just go straight to insane/suicidal in one day, but it would have shown earlier. But I don't know, when did he post all those netflix post on the blog. usually, he doesn't post mutually posts there on the same day, right? It's just when Wave became manic before his suicide one sign was that he posted weird things all the time, every hour. So that's why I'm thinking like this. but maybe it is just projections. I would just really hate it if something is actually wrong. But we can't really do anything when we are not his friends irl, so it's so frustrating right now. I wish I could just call him.

Okay. That's a good way to look at it, if it went really bad it would be going on for longer. Okay. Yes, I'm probably projecting my insecurities, you are right. I just felt I had to express my thoughts to you. Because of what I wrote earlier, I would feel really bad if he did it and I hadn't expressed my worries. Even though you are correct, since you have had God's realizations, I don't get why you wouldn't communicate in a more loving manner to me when I clearly feel anxious? - projections or not. It's not just "wtf" people actually do commit suicide sometimes just from one day to another <3

The point of this work should not be to one-up each other on who went "deeper." This will inevitably end in the psychward or in suicide. I think we all lost our way to some degree, as to what we are actually in this for. We are the leading edge of evolution and I don't think we are taking enough responsibility for this currently (that is if you care about humanity and this world at all).

It could be social acceptance, but I intuit that to be not the case. I don't see why acceptance in particular would only apply to females, but I can think of reasons for why females might fall for these kinds of ideologies. We know suicide rates for young teenage girls has skyrocketed since the advent of social media, and it seems that there is a particular effect it has on them. We are also creating a kind shadow out of femininity culturally speaking, and the arguments provided by the woman in the video seem valid to me, with the psychology of teenage girls working different from boys (with the cutting aspect for example). Women already feel disadvantaged in society due to them being women, and we are continually spreading the message that to be a woman means to be fundamentally oppressed, and to be a man is to be fundamentally privileged and oppressive. And when we are talking about child history of dysphoria, I am assuming they mean that the teenagers themselves, who want to transition, do not report any child history of dysphoria, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to assert that there is no child history of dysphoria. I think MrGirl is almost spot on as far as this question goes, and people who are in denial about this seem to be borderline delusional to me. Certainly we cannot justify the confidence with which current claims about the underlying reality of this phenomena are made, yet when that confidence is questioned, you are automatically viewed as bigoted and transphobic. That alone should be a huge red flag. If I use my empathy, and I try to put myself in the position of a young teenage girl, I can see why I would want to change my gender. Let's say I am not on the level of attractivness as other women are, and with social media, I am constantly confronted about this. I already hate my body because I am going through puberty, society is telling me that women are oppressed, and not only that, the culture I live in communicates to me that being cys is being boring. I can see my friends on social media making fun of cys people, and trying to differentiate themselves from the white "normies", which is basically considered the bigotted oppressor class. So, I am depressed, I probably hate my body, I hate my role in society because everyone talks about victimhood, and I now have the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and become special just by claiming that I am non-binary, or whatever else. Once I am, I not only have found an explanation for why I feel like I do not fit into society, I now am part of another group which will respect my identity as it is fundamentally protected within that culture. In fact, I would be very surprised, with my knowledge of how teenagers work, if it was not that case that a significant portion would be doing the gender thing in the same exact manner as people did with the emo, goth and so forth movements when we were young. That's just what teenagers do, especially the ones who are outcasts in society. The fact that the advocacy is moving towards self-ID just further indicates to me that this is not really grounded in the phenomena of gender dysphoria. Combine this with the fact that people can create their own echo chambers today, and can receive significant social validation for what they do, and you basically harm individuals because, something which should have been just an exploration of identity, suddenly becomes a dysfunction they carry into their adulthood. Remember, we didn't have that as children, because we didn't have social media. When we were being stupid teenagers, we didn't get world-wide validation from it, we didn't get to feel incredibly special, with people incentivized to signal to us their support and love for our delusions. As a teenager I had a phase where I bought into conspiracy theories, imagine if I had social media back then, with an endless ocean of people trying to validate what I am saying. Rather than a phase, it could have become a permanent part of my identity, that's the danger of social media. The issue I have is that, teenagers, and young adults, have all sorts of reasons for adopting certain identities, but the only reason that you are allowed to consider is whatever falls in line with the cultural dogma. You can't doubt their motivations, as if teenagers and children we wise. Teenagers and children are extremely impressionable, they are very susceptible to these kinds of cultural movements. But of course, if you lack genuine empathy for individuals, you don't care what will happen to them. It's far more comfortable to go along with the cultural dogma, and not to question it at all. In my eyes, most of what is happening within this sphere is extremely toxic, it's precisely the opposite of growth. It's so sad because, we realized that identities are constructed, and instead of realizing that we ought not to be so attached to them, we instead did the precise opposite. We created new categories, new identities, and we are more attached to them than we have ever been before. There is so much self delusion too, people genuinely think they are gaining happiness from constructing these identities. But we all know that once you threaten them, they will flail around in fear, because of how attached and needy their are towards that contracted identity. They are like hyper-masochistic guys, all you need to do to threaten their entire existence is to question their identity. This of course will lead to suffering, and that suffering eventually will lead to wisdom. But it will be easier for those individuals if they have people who can lead them towards the next steps, because with no alternative, wisdom is not guaranteed.

Okay, I'm just extra watchful of this because I lost someone to suicide who behaved like this, very deep ecstasy can be dangerous. But I see your point. I guess it's a matter of it continuing or not.

Well, maybe you are right, but then we should be worried. His behavior of posting weird stuff every hour seems like a manic episode to me. In the worst-case scenario, it could result in suicide. Do we know if anyone in here is physically friends with him?

@Scholar I'm asking you a very cuthroat question and you're constantly trying to evade my argument. You haven't scientifically proved your point. Why should I believe you when you say it's unhealthy to want to be trans. But where is the Proof that it's unhealthy ? This is simply your opinion. You think it's unhealthy. But are there any studies to back up your claim ? Where is the valid proof that it's unhealthy to want to be another gender? Show me your claim. For example if I said that smoking is unhealthy for lungs, I'm making a legit claim. I can show you X ray scans of human lungs after years of smoking that show shriveling and degradation. Leading to death due to asphyxiation.. But where is the link between trans lifestyle and health degradation ? If a trans person committed suicide, it's generally not because they chose to be trans, but because they were frustrated that society didn't want to accept them and they felt like an outcast. and we all know that being discriminated or treated like an outcast can lead to feelings of unworthiness just like racism does.. So it's legit that a trans person would feel depressed and suicidal. These feelings have little to do with their choice of gender change and more to do with how society chooses to perceive them. Explain your argument please.

Great. And now my brother is suicidal. He has been thinking about suicide for over a year now. But every time he talks to me about it, it seems to be getting more serious in his mind than before. I don't know what to tell him. I try to comfort and take an understanding approach. It does not work well most of the times. The only thing that seems to be working is when I paint him a picture of a better future, where his problems might be solved and life is a little bit easier. Most recently, he told me some specific ideas about what he would want to happen after he commits suicide. He's looking for a way to make his body completely disappear so that nobody would have to deal with burial and that kind of stuff. He said he would also leave a note on what to do with his personal stuff. These are not good signs. He is not joking around. He's in great pain, and I know it. We live in the same room. We're basically together 24/7. I really don't know what to do in such situations. It seems impossible for me to talk any sense into him. Sometimes I tell him that my life is way more miserable than his, and that despite that I don't think about killing myself. I'm alluding to the possibility of ego death that I want him to see, but unfortunately he's unable to. He dismisses all of spirituality as hippy nonsense. Medication is not a solution for him either. He doesn't want to take anything, even for his OCD, which is milder but seems to be contributing to the overall problem. I don't particularly feel attached to him at this point. I have already accepted the fact that he might actually do it someday. If he kills himself, well then. But I still have a bias, and prefer if he stays alive.

Where'd you get that from?? According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-rate-by-country Finland has a suicide rate of 15.3, while the US has 16.1 As a Finnish person I hear this very often even in Finland. I'm not sure why it has stuck as a meme for so long that Finland has a very high suicide rate, even though it's actually not true. I think it just stuck from the 90's and early 00's since back then Finland actually had a really high suicide rate due to Nokia going bust and other stuff.

That is what you call freedom. That is unconditional love. God loves you regardless of what you do, no matter what you do. Why? Because God is you. There is one restriction God has....It is impossible for God to not love itself. The truth is, its also the same for you. It is impossible for you to not love yourself. You have never not loved yourself. Even Suicide is an expression of love. Suicide is the belief that you are separated from love (which is you) so you kill yourself because that is what you most desire. Without Love you cannot exist, so you kill yourself because you think you lack what you need to exist. Love is the answer to everything. There is nothing to do but love, there is nothing to be but love, and all things that ever happened have been love, love is all there is. Leo did a whole video on Self-Love being the highest teaching. How to know you are trapped in delusion/illusion? You are not embodying the highest expressions of love. Love and knowledge and wisdom are the same. So is will as well. So Love, Knowledge, Wisdom, Truth, Will all are the same. Leo should do a video on what is beauty and what is fun lol and maybe what is funny/comedy to god.