Andrew Huberman: The Dopamine Crash Below Baseline Explained 📉

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Now that has a name, it's called addiction, but even for people who aren't addicted, even for people don't have an attachment to any specific substance or behavior, this drop in below baseline after any peak in dopamine is substantial and it governs whether or not we are going to feel motivated to continue to pursue other things. Earlier we were talking about how dopamine is released between neurons and I mentioned two ways. One is into the synapse where it can activate the postsynaptic neuron and the other was what I called volumetric release where it is distributed more broadly. It's released out over a bunch of neurons.

[00:00:36]In both cases, it's released from these things we call synaptic vesicles, literally little bubbles, tiny tiny little bubbles that contain dopamine.

[00:00:44]They get vomited out into the area or into the synapse.

[00:00:48]We can only deploy dopamine that is ready to be deployed, that's packaged in those little vesicles and ready to go.

[00:00:55]It's just the readily releasable pool.

[00:00:57]And now it should make perfect sense why if you take something or do something that leads to huge increases in dopamine, afterward your baseline should drop because there isn't a lot of dopamine around to keep your baseline going.