Nicknamed the “happy hormone”, dopamine is a chemical in our body and brain that makes us feel happy and content. Neurotypical brains have enough dopamine to feel content merely existing – they are not dependent on anything in order to have the baseline amount of dopamine that is required to feel okay.

Humans with ADHD, and often other types of neurodivergence, experience something called a dopamine deficit. This means that our neurodivergent brains do not contain as much dopamine as a neurotypical brain does. Below are some of the reasons why scientists suspect that dopamine levels are less in ADHD brains:

People with a dopamine deficit rely on sensory experiences to generate more dopamine until they hit the baseline that a neurotypical individual naturally has. Dopamine-producing sensory experiences can be passive or active:

When an individual with dopamine deficit is unable to access a sensory experience that helps their brain/body produce enough dopamine to reach a neurotypical baseline, the person becomes depressed quickly. By depression I don’t mean “sad” – I mean the whole body feels heavy and lethargic, it feels like an elephant is standing on their chest, and it becomes nearly impossible to think productive and happy thoughts. I personally find it surprisingly easy to sob when my dopamine levels are too low.

So neurodivergent individuals with a dopamine deficit might exhibit addictive behaviors, obsession, and hyper-fixation as a desperate attempt to get their dopamine.

Dopamine deficit can affect how thought patterns form.

For example, if a student with ADHD is in a class and the teacher is talking, perhaps listening to the teacher drone on and one does not help the student produce enough dopamine to keep their brain and body not depressed. So the student’s mind might periodically switch to thinking about something interesting that is related to the teacher’s speech – this leads to nonlinear thinking, as described here. Or the student might drift off entirely to think about something else that has nothing to do with the teacher’s speech – this is often a behavior of inattentive type ADHD. Or the student might have a neurophysiological response that tells their body to move because movement produces dopamine – this is often a behavior of hyperactive type ADHD.

Dopamine deficit also affect how an ADHD child when they cannot figure out something that feels good to do (i.e. gives their brain dopamine).

For instance, a kid chanting “I’m bored! I’m bored! I’m bored! I’m bored!” at its mother for an hour is often an ADHD behavior. The kid is really saying “I don’t particularly enjoy being alive right now, please help!” but unable to articulate it accurately. So the mother, exasperated, suggests to then kid that they do a chore because the mother thinks that is something productive for the kid to do. But the chore is boring and is not a source of dopamine, and the kid’s brain automatically knows that the chore is not going to solve the actual neurochemical problem at hand. So the kid says “No, that’s boring!” and then continues to desperately chant, “I’m bored!” over and over again.

There are ways to use the dopamine deficit to our advantage.

Method 1: Charge up on a ton of dopamine before doing a boring activity.

There are many, many ways to charge up on dopamine. I personally like to use exercise. Specifically, I like to rock climb. I’ve been a rock climber for ~10 years now. I am an adaptive climber, which means that I use slightly different methods of getting up the wall than most people do. This is because I have a neuromuscular disorder so I naturally move differently.

When I was finishing up my undergraduate degree, there was a class called Complex Analysis that I decided to take. Complex analysis is a type of math that is really useful in certain branches of physics. It also involves a lot ofweird drawings, which I liked. Anyway, this complex analysis class had lecture at 11 am in the mornings. I hate going to lecture because it is so hard to force myself to sit still and just stare at somebody else doing something for hours on end, that my whole body hurts and I end up with a pulsing headache at the end. Lectures always make me want to cry.

I had a friend in the class who was a climber like me – he asked if I wanted to climb in the mornings before our lectures. I said ohmygod, yes please, and we started climbing in the mornings. We’s wake up at 8 am, drive 30 minutes to the gym, rock climb together for 2 hours, then drive 30 minutes to lecture, and then attend class. I didn’t know I had ADHD at the time. But I remember the first day we climbed, lecture was so fun. Back then, I reasoned that exercise feels good and that I was just super content because I got to do something that I wanted (the rock climbing), before doing something that others wanted of me (which was lecture). I reasoned that I was just happy I got what I wanted, first.

In reality, what I think was going on was that I was charging up my body with dopamine hormone by doing exercise, and then just riding that dopamine high all through lecture.

I think there were other times when I adopted the same approach of charging up on dopamine and then riding the dopamine high through a boring activity. Up until high school I hated math. My dad had made me practice math after school every day for ~2 hours since age 6, so I was good at math but I thought it was the most boring subject in school. I liked art. I wanted to be an artist, but I had learned not to tell my Asian parents that because I’d hear an earful on how being an artist isn’t a way to stay out of poverty.

So when I took my first physics class in 9th grade, I suddenly discovered a class in which answering every single question required me to draw something, and then do math. It was always draw something, and then do the math. I realized quickly that I liked physics because I got to do something I liked first, before doing something the adults wanted me to do. It felt like a really good bargain.

But thinking back on it now, I think what was happening was that I would charge up a tiny hit of dopamine while drawing, and then ride that dopamine high through the math. When my dopamine ran out, it was time to draw again, for the next physics problem. I’d get another little hit of dopamine, and then ride that dopamine high through the math. I think I just kept doing this for problem after problem after problem, and I never got depressed. I got dopamine from the activity that I really enjoyed (which was drawing) and then used that collected dopamine in my brain to help me do the math without getting depressed.

I also realize only as I write this that I charged up on dopamine one year when I had to do my taxes. I went to the beach and spent time just sort of sitting in the ocean, now really swimming or surfing, just feeling the water flow on my skin. I think being in a pool or in the ocean – so being in water – is a huge dopamine boost for me. I honestly wish I were a mermaid. I prefer being underwater to being above ground. I like how the sound distorts underwater, and so does light. Everything looks so much more beautiful and calm, and my whole body feels lighter because of the buoyant force counteracting gravity, and I can kind of just float, without thinking. The ocean is definitely my charging source.

Method 2: Get a slow, dopamine drip throughout the boring activity.

Dopamine is produced in the body by sensory experiences that feel good or make us happy. When I have to attend a meeting or a seminar that I know will be boring, I make or buy something I want right in that moment to sip on during class. I usually get something like hot cocoa or a smoothie. When I was in graduate school I had class lectures that were scheduled way to0 early in the morning for my brain. I couldn’t go climbing that early in the morning and so I had to figure out another way to stay awake while the teacher droned on and on. I almost always brought a snack, something to drink, and a grip-strengthening device (drawn below) to lecture. I also usually stood in the back of the room so that I could pace around and do squats and calf-raises to keep my brain-dopamine plummeting.

I also find, to this day, that doing my work outside in the sunshine and fresh air is way more productive than trying to work inside. A cubicle job sounds like a living nightmare. UV-light exposure and smooth air flow on the skin are sensory experiences that often help the body to produce dopamine. And I like to sit on the ground, rather than in a chair. When I was doing my NASA research, I would take my lightweight coffee table and bring it outside onto the patio with me. Then I’d pile two of the cushions from the outdoor patio couch in the ground beside the table, and sit on them. I always kept my back to the sun so that my face didn’t get sunburned, and I had another chair on the patio that I used to create a shadow that fell just right on my laptop screen so that I could see stuff on it even while sitting in the sunlight. If I tried to do my work indoors, even in a house that was full of windows and natural light, I just felt like crying after about ~30 minutes. It was so weird. But when I would force myself to go outside and work on the patio, after another ~5 minutes, I could feel my whole body sort of un-scrunch, and I started to feel so bright and happy again. The effect was so visceral, and I only recently realized that it was because of a dopamine deficit. I was just noticing that I liked being outside and the sunshine and windy air made my brain fog go away.

I think it is super important for students to know that they are allowed to move, drink, and eat for their brain to work. I teach students with ADHD to identify what things they can do in class that will help their brain work and stay happy, and then keep telling them to do it, even if everybody else thinks it’s weird. I’ve listed all of the dopamine-lifting strategies that I use and tell students about below – I will add to this list as my students come up with their own ideas, so that we have a huge database of dopamine-lifting strategies:

1. sip on something during class that is simultaneously good for your brain and makes you super calm or super happy – this is usually my thing:

• hot cocoa
• tea
• smoothie
• protein shake

2. snack on something during class that is simultaneously good for your brain and makes you super calm or super happy – this is usually my thing:

• dark chocolate covered almonds
• cara-cara x navel crossover oranges
• honeycrisp apple
• popped lotus seeds (it’s like popcorn that doesn’t get stuck in your teeth)
• salted roasted pistachios
• greek yogurt (preferably with dark chocolate chips)

3. sit outside when you study – the sunlight and fresh air are really helpful to get your brain to not become depressed and stay happy

4. sit on the ground when you can – studies have shown that sitting on the ground instead of in a chair or a couch helps regulate anxiety and keeps the brain from getting foggy due to stress

• as a person with ADHD, it’s easier to solve hard math and physics problems sitting on the floor, using them couch as your desk, than sitting on the couch, using your thighs as your desk

5. switch study spots in a way that requires walking outside from one physical location to another an campus, at regular intervals to recharge your dopamine levels periodically – try to switch study locations:

• every 30 minutes | if you’re studying something you find super boring
• every 1.5 hours | if you’re studying something you find sort of interesting that day, but it’s not your favorite class
• every 2.5 hours | if you’re studying something for your favorite subject

– so the more boring the study task is, the shorter intervals of time you can spend at each study spot. This is why is really, really important for students with ADHD to explore their school campus and surrounding city area to discover potential study locations they just can feel the dopamine rushing into their brain, what walking routes they like to take between potential locations, and how long those routes take. Understanding our ecosystem is a huge part of dealing with ADHD – we need to actively place ourselves in spaces where we have access to the sensory stimuli that will help us keep our brain dopamine levels up high enough to hit that neurotypical threshold, before we sit down to study something that might be boring or challenging. that way, we don’t get frustrated or depressed by the boredom or challenge. We actually can stay happy, even if the task in itself is kind of dull.