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You know dopamine, the brain chemical that makes us feel good?

It does a bunch of jobs as part of our inbuilt reward system, but sometimes it's not so good for us.

Often, not always, but often these dopamine-driven

behaviours can be at odds with what our values are and what our values are kind of

directing us to do. We can build a tolerance to the thing that was once kind of

pleasurable and exciting so that our brain wants to seek out kind of new and more exciting things.

Dr. Anastasia Hironis is a clinical psychologist and author of the new book, The Dopamine Brain.

So in today's episode, we're going on a deep dive into all things dopamine, from detoxes.

So it's like no music, no exercise, no talking to friends. Like people

really kind of take it to the extreme. To donuts? Yes, yum, this is delicious. We want to do more of

this. That's today on All in the Mind with me, Sana Khadar. You open the book with a story about donuts.

And I want to start there too because donuts are great.

What happened in May 2023?

Yeah, I love a donut.

So May last year was a memorable time of year for me.

So the office that I work at is in a sort of office building and downstairs a new cafe opened. And it was fantastic because it was much closer

than the previous cafe that we all used to go to. But the best thing about it is that it's run

by this Italian pastry chef. So, yeah, he's from

Italy, he's trained there. He makes all these wonderful sort of sweets and desserts, but also

like bread and ficascia and delicious, delicious things. So it's an absolute treat to go to,

but I distinctly remember the first

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