I have an addiction

For 25 years, I’ve kept the same tradition: every summer, my college buddies and I head into the middle of the desert and play 36 holes of golf each day, five or six days straight.

And every year, it happens. Usually late in the first round, after a day of shots that look like a buffet of possibilities. One swing. Pure. The ball does exactly what I pictured in my head. I should have gone pro.

And just like that, I’m already booking next year’s trip in my mind.

Golfers have a saying: one good shot brings you back. I always thought that was about hope. Turns out it’s about chemistry.

The Dopamine Drug

There’s a book on my shelf called The Molecule of More. The psychiatrist who wrote it, Daniel Lieberman, explains something that rearranged how I think about my own brain: dopamine isn’t the pleasure chemical. It’s the anticipation chemical.

It doesn’t fire when you get the thing. It fires when you might. It’s why some women are addicted to abusive men - those men drop some love bombing here and there.

Scientists call it reward prediction error — and what dopamine loves more than anything is exactly that: the discovery that something turned out better than you expected.

Better than you expected. That’s the secret sauce. Not the reward. The surprise. So pull back the curtain and come with me into why things get addictive.

Golf is a reward-prediction-error machine. You never know which swing is going to be the pure one. So you keep swinging. Out in the sun. Questioning your life choices. Swinging again.

Thankfully, this chase is mostly harmless — except to my ego. But what happens when the chase is engineered on purpose, and pointed straight at you? Whole industries have bottled this exact mechanism. And they’ve aimed it largely at men.

The engineered chase

Start with sports betting.

Since it was legalized in 2018, what Americans wager every year has gone from under $5 billion to $150 billion — what one writer at STAT calls a public health crisis with young men as the casualties. Among men 18 to 30, about 10% now show signs of problem gambling — more than triple the rate of the general population.

Then pornography.

Roughly 78% of men use it to some degree. And researchers have found that heavy use dulls the brain’s response — it takes more extreme material to get the same hit, while real intimacy starts to feel flat.

By real intimacy I mean the orgasm gap. Most men think penetration equals success and happiness for both partners. But the Designer of the female anatomy made a clitoris on the outside with no purpose but pleasure – and yes some of the nerves are internal but I digress…

And I think this is a driver for why there’s a real orgasm gap: in one large national survey, straight men climaxed almost every time (95%), while straight women landed around two in three (65%).

And if you’re a Christian woman?

Bad News.

A survey of more than 20,000 Christian women — the research behind The Great Sex Rescue — found it’s even worse for them: just 48% experience orgasm – a fraction of those through penetration. Ok enough with our anatomy lesson for today.

Then video games.

Gaming disorder is now a real condition the World Health Organization recognizes. Designers engineer surprise rewards at carefully tuned intervals. Lieberman lays out the science: the treasure chest can’t hand you the same thing every time. About a quarter of the time, it has to surprise you. It’s a slot machine with a story.

Notice the pattern. Betting, porn, games — none of them are selling you the reward. They’re selling you the maybe. The next bet. The next click. The next loot drop. They’ve turned your anticipation chemical into a business model.

Why men, especially?

Part of it is timing. The part of your brain that says wait, think, what’s this going to cost me — the prefrontal cortex — doesn’t fully wire up until your mid-20s or later for men. The wanting shows up years before the brakes do.

I think sex belongs in this dopamine category too — but not as a feel-good escape. Sex is different every time. You can run the same mechanics and get a different outcome, depending on the time of day, the time of the month, the time of life.

The chase chemistry is the same one I feel on the tee box. The difference is who designed the system — and whether it gives or takes.

Here’s what I think matters. The dopamine desire circuit triggers energy, enthusiasm, and hope. It fires up the imagination and paints a rosy future. So I wonder: is that why we’re seeing less ambition in the world — especially in men? Are they spending all their dopamine in all the wrong places?

Do men today have less energy, less enthusiasm, less hope than they used to? Are they less happy than men a century ago? And is that part of why so many are chasing the hit in all the wrong places — more than women are?

The trends give those questions teeth. Young men are participating in the workforce at lower rates than past generations, more are drifting from work and school, and the share of men with close friends has collapsed — from 55% in 1990 to 27% today.

There’s another way the chase wins. Want to hijack the calm, cool, collected control circuit? Try emotion. Lieberman says it overwhelms caution and calculation (p. 89). The people who can hold their emotions steady — like riding a powerful horse through chaos — are the ones who master the moment instead of being mastered by it.

But willpower isn’t the only tool. As Lieberman puts it, the control circuit can also use “planning, strategy and abstraction, such as the ability to imagine the long-term consequences of alternate choices” (p. 97).

How to Flourish

1. Name your slot machines. Where in your life are you chasing a maybe? Be honest. Some chases build you — a craft, a business, a golf swing you’ve worked on for 25 years. Some are engineered to drain you. The chase isn’t the problem. Not knowing which kind you’re in is. Mine is this par 4 on the back nine at Troon North Monument that tempts me to use my driver every time.

2. Make something with your hands. Build, garden, fix, plant, cook. Creating runs on the same anticipation circuit — Lieberman points out that making things lights up dopamine too. Nature does it. Finishing a task does it. Woodworking, knitting, painting, gardening — all of it. But here the reward is real, and it’s yours.

3. Feed the other chemistry. Dopamine is the wanting molecule. There’s a whole other set — the “here and now” chemicals — that you only feel in presence, gratitude, a slow meal, time outside, an unhurried hour with people you love. Engineered chases can’t touch those. One day a week fully offline is where I relearn this, every single time.

Here’s the hopeful part: managed well, dopamine works in your favor. The control circuit is what lets you delay gratification for something better down the road — skip the donut now so you’re happier later. It lives in the frontal lobes, the part of the brain that healthy habits strengthen. And what keeps those frontal lobes strong? Sleep. Exercise. Healthy eating. Positive thinking. The very things these addictions quietly undermine.

Your urges and cravings come from the desire circuit — what Lieberman calls the mesolimbic circuit. Your planning and calculation come from the control circuit, the mesocortical circuit (p. 62). I think of that control circuit as the higher nature. It’s where imagination and future-thinking live; it lets you look down the road and weigh the cost of a choice you’re about to make today. The desire circuit ends in the part of the brain that lights up with excitement. The control circuit runs to the frontal lobes — the home of conscience, morality, and the filter you see the world through.

Picture it: your desire circuit is you in the candy aisle grabbing everything in reach, while your control circuit says, “I don’t want to get sick,” or “sugar isn’t great for me.” Reasonable. Maybe a little boring. But that’s the voice worth strengthening.

So you keep reaching for the bag of chips late at night. Why? Your circuits are out of balance. You’re feeding the lower nature, and the higher nature isn’t strong enough yet to overrule the urge.

Addiction grows from the chemical cultivation of desire. We till that soil in the mind — thinking about it, feeling it, then liking it — until it takes root. And what springs up can be hard to pull out.

And like every dopamine high, it fades unless you raise the dose: more hardcore porn, a more intense game, more alcohol, more gambling. The chase always asks for more.

The chase isn’t the enemy.

It’s the engine. The question is just whether you’re the one holding the wheel — or whether someone else is steering and charging you for the ride.

What’s the chase you need to walk away from — and the one you need to lean into?

Hit reply and tell me.

One more thing:

I’ve had some inquiries lately from people looking for help building a plan to take their health and happiness to the next level. If that’s you, I’d love to help. Message me and I’ll share what that looks like. Hit reply or text me anytime at (310) 879-8441.

-Jared

P.S. - My wife Baddie Crocker has a beautiful newsletter where she shares her perspectives on tending the land, recipes, women’s health and more.

This newsletter does not provide medical advice. The content, such as graphics, images, text, and all other materials, is provided for reference and educational purposes only. The content is not meant to be complete or exhaustive or to be applicable to any specific individual's medical condition.