Hello, readers! First of all, I want to congratulate you on getting healthy dopamine from reading this article. Who knows, maybe it will be your first step to a dopamine detox routine.
You would need one because it's one of the first and major steps to achieving success in this life. We will be talking about the dopamine baseline, how to maintain it intact and why synthesised sugar is devastating for your mental health.
Today's topic is dopamine, a neurotransmitter in our brain. In English, that would mean a thing that helps the brain say ‘Mate we are happy!’ to you. For short, I will call it “mwah.” Your brain “mwah” you, and you are happy.
It doesn’t, and you aren’t happy. That should be easy to comprehend.
Now what happens when you constantly experience mwah, like kisses from your girlfriend/boyfriend, is you get used to it and include it into your routine. Any non-first kiss won't feel like the first one anymore.That is because, your brain gave you so much “mwah” that it just doesn’t feel right anymore, which may seem like a complicated topic to grasp at first but it is the foundation of our quick-fix dopamine addiction. We will need this concept of adjusting to this hypothetical “mwah” later.
Now let’s paint a picture of a hero-villain fight. First, the dopamine baseline, a graph that shows your mood at the moment. Graph going low/high? Mood going low/high as well.

Credit to Vlas Vigilianskii
Although dopamine was probably granted to the human kind in order to keep us away from things that hurt, in post-industrial society, a villain, the cheap dopamine, has appeared. Cheap dopamine would be anything that makes you happy momentarily, yet once you reach the peak, it drops down even lower than before and makes you feel bad just as fast as it makes you happy. The two most common examples would be video games and synthesised sugar. There are also addictions, but that’s a different story.

Credit to Vlas Vigilianskii
Now let’s see the hero of today’s programme: Healthy dopamine. Although it’s not as easy as eating a piece of chocolate, sometimes it makes you feel worse in the process… but in the end, it gives you that one mood boost, but for a longer time, stopping the drop on an even higher line than before. Reading books or going to the gym are two perfect examples of healthy dopamine.

Credit to Vlas Vigilianskii
Everybody has this fight going on inside them daily. Moreover, if you look around, so many people are giving a win to the villain. Perhaps it is to no realisation that a low dopamine baseline makes you feel bad throughout the whole day.
You would feel not energised enough to start acting, feeling "not in the mood" enough to act. To be honest, even I was giving a win to the cheap dopamine until I realised what was happening. Cheap is a villain not because somebody just said so, he is a villain because he makes you a servant of those activities that don't bring you long-term joy and wellbeing.
Now, sometimes, the fight has went so far that the only thing you can do is take out your discipline and go onto a dopamine detox for some time. Maybe you have heard of it already, but I will explain with brevity. Dopamine detox is when you get rid of all the cheap dopamine in your life for some time and replace it with healthier habits.
It is an extreme way of dealing with a low dopamine baseline, and it requires a lot of discipline. I personally have never done a dopamine detox because I simply didn’t need it - after I included healthy activities into my schedule, I instantly felt better.
In conclusion, I would like to restate all my points. There is the dopamine baseline, which is equal to your mood. There is also cheap dopamine that destroys your mood long-term, while boosting it short-term.
Healthy dopamine is most desirable, which drops your mood short-term while benefiting after the healthy activities you took and in the long run as well. If too far into cheap dopamine, go onto a dopamine detox. That is all for today, stay good-mood!