It's really important for everyone to understand the point of the middle of this article which can be summarized as: "dopamine is not a reward, it is the expect

It's really important for everyone to understand the point of the middle of this article which can be summarized as: "dopamine is not a reward, it is the expectation of a reward". However, this doesn't mean that one cannot be addicted to dopamine. Lab rats will submit themselves to physical harm to get more dopamine and humans given a dopamine button keep pressing it for more. This is explained in the book "The Willpower Instinct". It's probably the case though that you would only see a psychologist like the author of this article for an addiction to a true reward chemical (like opioids). A dopamine addiction is more likely to be something like checking your phone for messages every few minutes. The usefulness of dopamine is to provide motivation. So unfortunately the solution to a perceived dopamine problem isn't to broadly have less dopamine (then you won't want to get off the couch), but to somehow have less associated with the activity you don't want to do and more associated with the activity you do want to do.