Dopamine and The Search for Healthy Rewards

I’ve written before about the search for mental well-being, ancient practices, and functional patterns that humans have carried for thousands of years. Crafts. Tai chi. Things that feel old in the body, not just old in theory. Practices that seem to tune us back into something deeper, call it the Tao, call it nature, call it reality before distraction.

Punk rock played a role in that, too. It stripped things down. It cut through pretense and excess. It made me suspicious of systems that sell comfort, speed, and status while quietly hollowing people out.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about dopamine not in the internet pop-psych way, but in a practical, lived sense.

People talk about “good dopamine” and “bad dopamine,” but I don’t think that framing is quite right. What matters more is whether a reward is short-term and extractive or long-term and generative.

Dopamine itself isn’t the enemy. It’s a survival mechanism. Without it, organisms don’t move. They don’t leave the cave. They don’t hunt, build, explore, or learn. Dopamine is the internal signal that says, "This effort matters, do it again." 

The problem isn’t dopamine. The problem is how easily that system can be hijacked.

Some pursuits create a fast spike with no depth. Gambling is a good example. You don’t need much exposure for it to start damaging your life. A weekend can do real harm. Drugs can do even worse—sometimes in months, sometimes faster. The dose makes the poison, and the margin for error is thin.

Other pursuits are different.

Exercise is an interesting counterpoint. To become “addicted” to exercise in a way that truly harms you, the volume required is enormous. Elite endurance athletes might flirt with that edge, but most people will never get anywhere near it. The ceiling is high. The damage threshold is far away.

That matters.

It suggests that some reward loops are structurally safer than others. They demand effort. They build capacity. They return something tangible.

Hunting is another example. Skill. Patience. Movement. Failure. Learning. Food. There’s a feedback loop there that shaped humans for tens of thousands of years. The reward is real, but it’s earned—and it leaves you stronger, not emptier.

Bushcraft fits into this category for me.

You’re building skills. You’re making objects. You’re engaging with materials, tools, weather, and terrain. Even if those objects aren’t strictly necessary for survival anymore, they were for most of human history. The nervous system recognizes that. The body understands it at a level that doesn’t require explanation.

You’re not just consuming a hit of pleasure. You’re participating in a process.

Tai chi does the same thing in a quieter way. The movements are not arbitrary. They are old for a reason. They train balance, structure, breath, and awareness—things that once mattered directly to survival and still matter to health. You’re rehearsing patterns that kept people alive, even if you no longer need them to fight or flee.

That, to me, is the difference.

Healthy reward cycles don’t just feel good in the moment. They build something over time—skill, resilience, presence, capability. They feed the spirit and the body at the same time. They don’t collapse into compulsion because they’re anchored in effort, reality, and limits.

We need a reward to get off the couch. That’s not weakness—it’s biology. The task isn’t to eliminate dopamine, but to choose pursuits that deserve it.

Ancient practices, honest movement, craft, skill, and contact with the real world seem to do exactly that. They don’t numb you. They wake you up.

And once you feel that difference, it’s hard to unsee it.

The Shoulder: How Humans became The Most Lethal Animal on Earth

Before humans hurled spears, drew bows, or threw fastballs, our ancestors were tree-climbers. The freely rotating joint in the shoulder, which we take for granted every time we reach overhead or cast a stone, began as a brake system, not a weapon.

I’ve come to appreciate that more personally in recent months. A lingering shoulder injury pulled me into studying how this joint actually works — not just as a hinge of strength, but as a delicate instrument of balance and control. The more I learned, the more I realized that every ache or strain in my shoulder is a whisper from the past, reminding me that this joint carries the story of how we survived as a species.

According to research from Dartmouth College’s Department of Anthropology, our ancestors’ shoulders and elbows evolved to control descent from trees, not merely to climb up them. When an ape descends, gravity becomes the enemy. To lower a heavy body without falling, an animal needs tremendous rotational range, eccentric control, and flexible joints. The study showed that chimpanzees extend their shoulders and elbows far more when climbing down than monkeys do. Their joints act as shock absorbers, a living suspension system.

Once our ancestors left the forest, that same anatomy, shallow shoulder sockets, mobile scapulae, shortened elbow levers, was repurposed for something far more lethal: throwing.

The shoulder that once eased us down tree trunks became capable of storing and releasing explosive energy.

No other animal can generate such coordinated rotational torque across the torso, shoulder, and arm. When you throw, you’re using a 2-million-year-old arboreal braking system in reverse: winding it up, loading elastic energy through the fascia, and snapping it forward with devastating speed.

That shift from climbing to throwing was the beginning of distance killing.

A shoulder adapted for controlled descent made humans the first primates able to strike from afar. Spears, stones, and projectiles allowed early hunters to kill without risking close contact. That changed everything.

For the first time, food could be obtained and enemies neutralized from a distance. The survival advantage was enormous. Evolution didn’t need claws or fangs; it had found something subtler: precision and power through motion.

Every time a baseball player throws a pitch, a boxer throws a straight right, or a child hurls a rock into a lake, they’re channeling that same lineage. Even in Tai Chi or weight training, in the controlled rise and fall of the shoulder, the spiral through the elbow, you’re engaging an ancient system designed to modulate gravity.

To move well is to respect that ancestry. When you train the shoulder through full range, not just pressing up, but lowering down, stabilizing, and rotating, you awaken the ghost of the climber who once learned to descend, without falling to its death.

Our shoulders made us what we are: a species defined not by tooth or claw, but by motion. It is the joint that lets us descend safely, hunt effectively, and eventually shape the world.

What began as a brake became a weapon.
And it remains, to this day, the most adaptable and dangerous articulation in nature, the point where balance, force, and intelligence meet.

A Conversation With a Taos Pueblo Member That Changed Everything

 

When I first moved to Taos, I thought I was just moving closer to the mountains. I hadn’t grown up camping or hunting—city life had kept me far away from those things. I loved the outdoors, but when it came to animals, I had always drawn a hard line. Killing them? Absolutely not. Eating them? Well, that was different.

At least, I thought it was.

On a construction site in Taos, I worked under a site supervisor from Taos Pueblo. We often talked while we worked—about life, about the land, about traditions. One day, our talk turned to killing animals. I argued fiercely against it, but he didn’t let me off easy. He confronted me directly, "If you were starving and you saw a rabbit, would you kill it?" I said, "No".

“You eat meat, don’t you?” he asked.

The question hung heavy in the air. In that moment, I knew he had me cornered. Either I stopped eating meat altogether or I admitted that I was benefitting from something I didn’t have the stomach to face.

That conversation never left me.

Not long after, in Canada, I found myself with a group of hunters. They handed me a shotgun and welcomed me into their world. When one of them shot a deer and it still moved on the ground, instinct—or maybe courage—pushed me forward. I took out a knife and cut its throat. The others nodded in respect. Then came the ritual: slicing open the chest, taking a bite of the heart. That was my initiation. Read the full story here.

From then on, I understood hunting as more than just pulling a trigger. It was navigation, patience, teamwork, carrying heavy loads, and—most of all—respect for the animal that gave its life. I hunted a bit in Mississippi, got lost in the woods once, and discovered firsthand how steep the learning curve really was.

But whether or not I hunted often, I found my place with hunters. Around the fire, cutting up meat, cooking it, sharing stories—I felt at home. Hunters, I discovered, are grounded people. Skilled, resourceful, and bound together by something old and primal.

For me, hunting became more than a hobby. It became a way of reconnecting with something my DNA seemed to remember—a way of life older than cities, older than stress, older than all the anxieties of modern life. In the act of hunting and cooking, I felt healed, as though I had finally stepped back into rhythm with the world.

And to think, it all started with one conversation, thirty-five years ago, with a man from Taos Pueblo who probably never knew he changed the course of my life.

Survival Knife! Learning the hard way

On a plane heading to some islands off the Western coast of Canada, I met some guys who worked for a moving company. They had a large office move contract and offered me some work. I agreed, and when the job was completed, they asked me to come work with them in Vancouver, BC. I ended up working for them for 6 months. After a few months of working with them, I did not meet many people, so I was excited when my boss at the moving company asked me to go hunting with him and a few of his friends.

We drove many hours to a place called “Hundred Mile House.” During the drive, we were drinking beer and listening to Metallica's Black Album and being rowdy. On our drive, we were pulled over by a policeman. As the policeman approached our vehicle, the driver (my boss), who had previously rolled his large pickup truck over a few months ago, totally cracking the windshield, greeted the police officer. I distinctly remember the policeman telling him that it was illegal to drive with a windshield that had a crack longer than 12.” My boss, said, “sir, I don’t think there is one crack longer than 12” on the whole windshield.” We all burst out laughing. The whole windshield was like a spiderweb of tiny cracks. He let us go with a warning to fix the windshield. We began drinking beer again. Someone in the car said they left their flask in the back bed. I volunteered to climb out of the moving vehicle and retrieve it. Driving at night in the woods, I climbed out of the window and jumped into the back bed, grabbed the flask in his bag, and climbed back in. We finally and uneventfully pulled up to our motel. We were all pretty drunk. Next thing, I remember we were up at 4 am getting dressed and heading out into the woods.

It was a very cold, rainy November morning. My boss gave me a shotgun, pointed in a particular direction, and told me go out there and if I see a deer, shoot it. I had never been hunting before. I had been walking for a hour or so when I heard a shot. I walked over and my boss had just killed a deer. As I approached, I could tell the deer was still moving so I took out my knife and stabbed it in the throat. He was so impressed by that, he cut the deer open and removed its heart, and said I had to take a bite because it was my first kill. I balked, but he was insistent, so I reluctantly bit a chunk of the warm muscle. I immediately felt an adrenaline rush deep in my body. I now wanted to get my own true kill. Like a bloodhound in search of a fugitive, I charged off following deer tracks without taking my eye off the ground. I really do not remember how long I was searching, but when I looked up, the sun was just about to set.

An eerie chill went through my spine as the trees looked black and gnarled against the smoky pink sky. I simply didn’t notice where I was or what was happening weather-wise. My cotton jacket had a shell of ice from the rain, and the snow turned to sleet. The winds picked up, and I started screaming for help. Realizing I was totally screwed, I frantically yelled, but no one could hear me. I yelled till my voice was hoarse, and then I cried hard. The winds were so loud that it was useless even trying.

After a good bit of crying, A great fear hit me, I realized that wolves and bears could be out there stalking me. I searched for a clearing in the dark, and I took a long hard look around and realized I needed some protection from the elements. I started to get cold, really cold, and I remembered I had some power bars on me. I knew if I ate them, it would generate some body heat. I think I ate three. I felt around in the dark for a tree and cut off some cedar boughs with my Cold Steel SRK knife. It had a 6” blade and barely enough to cut through the boughs. I really had to use force. I remember the impact of those cuts on my wrist. As I started to make a crude shelter from the freezing rain, I found a piece of corrugated metal that was just lying a few feet away, and I surrounded myself by it and the boughs. I was still cold, so I would periodically get up and do some jumping jacks, and martial arts strikes. Those martial arts strikes really felt empowering in that dark, icy forest.

The thought of making a fire never entered my head. I think back then, I knew so little that the fact it was raining, with snow everywhere, meant it was impossible to make a fire. I am not even sure I had matches on me. I seriously doubt I would have made it through the night without becoming hypothermic. Luckily, after 6 hours or so, the winds died down, and I figured it would be a good time to fire the shotgun into the air as a signal device. After a short pause, I heard a shot. We continued to communicate with each other through gunshots, and I was finally able to find my way to them in the pitch dark. It was about 11 p.m., and they said they were just about to leave and notify someone. I can’t express how happy I was when I finally burst through that dense icy forest into an opening where my boss and his friends were.

Lessons Learned

Obviously, an experience like this is life-changing. I couldn’t help but think of how naive I was going into the woods and all the thoughtless decisions I made that led me into a life-threatening situation. There was a temptation to beat myself up; there was also a temptation to eschew ever going into the wilderness again. But as I thought it through, I realized who I was, and I used it as a way to improve myself.

So I set out to take my outdoor skills to a deeper level. After much reflection, three major areas can get you into and out of a survival situation: Decisions, Knowledge and Skills, and Tools.

Decisions

After being a father of two young boys, I realized just how stupid it was to get into a car that was already damaged from a previous drinking and driving accident. There was also the fact that I chose to walk out into a very unfamiliar forest in poor weather conditions without any training whatsoever. I am not beating myself up here, but I am examining some of the decisions I made leading up to my survival situation. Prior to that experience, I hadn’t spent too much time in the woods. Being a city boy, I didn’t grow up learning how to survive in the woods. This is why we can’t always make the right decision. I had always desired to go hunting but never knew anyone that did it. So I overlooked the bad cues because I really wanted to get out there and hunt. Still today, many people go for a hike and don’t even bring a water bottle or even carry a swiss army knife.

Knowledge and Skills

In short, I had none of either. Although I had never heard of hypothermia, I did know enough to keep my wits about me. I was fit; my martial arts background had given me a way to keep my body heated up. Eating something really helped me with increasing body heat, comfort, and keeping a positive outlook. Also, I intuitively knew I should cut some cedar boughs down to protect me from the icy rain. I had zero knowledge of shelter building, but somehow, I made a crude shelter in the night without a flashlight. I also didn’t know anything about navigation, and I lost contact with my hunting party. I am not sure I would have survived the night. I have not dressed appropriately for the weather. Back then, I knew nothing about gore-tex and the difference between waterproofing and water resistance. Most wilderness survival sites and instructors will tell you that knowledge and training are the two most important things to keep you from becoming a tragic news story, and I also endorse that thinking here. There is a wise saying in the survival world, “the more you know, the less you carry.“

Tools

If you search "survival situation preparedness”, you will find a ton of survival kits that talk about the gear you need. There is certainly a bunch of things I lacked in that situation. However, I did get four things right: I had a shotgun and shells, a decent-sized fixed-blade knife, really good boots, and those power bars. I lacked a proper jacket, a fire-starting kit, a whistle, a flashlight, and an emergency blanket. If I had all of those, I could have easily spent the night out there in the woods. I neglected to include a cell phone since this occurred way before the days' cell phones were carried regularly. If I had one, I would have called my boss, and we would have found each other in probably 20 or so minutes. But it is important to remember that a cell phone doesn’t not obviate the need for solid skills and training; batteries run out, and signals can be hard to come by in remote areas.

Going Forward

I should also mention that my experience was, typical of most survival experiences, a lost hunter, which is similar to getting lost hiking or fishing. It is important to acknowledge that while my experience was very challenging, it wasn’t as hardcore as Robinson Crusoe or plain crash survivors in the Andes. So I never would equate my 6-hour or so experience with people who were lost for days on end. But it does bring modest insights into the harshness of nature and what it takes to survive. I hope reading about my experience, you learn from my mistake and get inspired to learn a few skills and ensure that you have at least a few items in your bag to prevent you from getting into a survival situation. And if you are an experienced outdoorsman, look to my experience as a person who did not have many opportunities to get out in the woods and jumped at the first opportunity to get out there way too early and reflect on possibilities to share your skills with people who do not have opportunities to get out there.