Is dopamine the neurochemical that makes you feel 'excited'?

It’s mainly the dopamine system and the noradrenaline system in your body that contributes to the feeling of excitement. Dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter related to reward and pleasure in activities. It does play a big part in being excited as it is an excitatory nuerotransmitter, but there are other ones that contribute like norepinephrine, and epinephrine, which are also excitatory neurotransmitters.

 

I actually got a neurotransmitter lab test done a while back so I guess I know exactly what happens! But this was for me in particular:

I thought my dopamine levels would be the lowest but surprisingly my norepinephrine level was basically at zero, and every other neurotransmitter was on the low end.

Pmo downregulates your pleasure receptors so normal things in life, like watching a sunset, does not feel as good as it use to. I haven’t studied specifically on the effects of the noredrenaline system to give a good scientific answer, but in my experience pmo dulls those neurochemicals a lot.
Symptoms I had were: no emotions, no pleasure or excitement for anything, I couldn’t even feel anxiety anymore, I just felt numb about everything with lack of motivation.
Hope that helps.

 

Its probably the main cause, but I also should add any other excessive dopamine producing habit like, video games, tv, junk food, will also contribute to lack of excitement for life.

 

Sexual addiction, much like any other addiction forces a person to raise their dopamine baseline. The dopamine baseline is an arbitrary threshold of how much dopamine the brain needs to experience in order to cascade feelings of pleasure, euphoria, etc. Recreational drugs heavily affect the dopamine baseline, which is one of the reasons why people become addicted. When the dopamine baseline is inflated artificially with a large and consistent amount of substance abuse, the brain struggles to reach the same level of pleasure each time, and therefore asks for more and stronger highs to match up to the last experience.
In turn, porn works the same way. The feelings of excitement, or 'high' and surge of feel-good chemicals during masturbation and orgasm mimic the effects of recreational drugs to some degree. This therefore raises the dopamine baseline, leading to decreased sensitivity and pleasure and increased risk of withdrawal and depression.

Norepinephrine and epinephrine (also known as noradrenaline and adrenaline respectively) with in tandem with the autonomic nervous system, but also with the amygdala (region of brain heavily influencing feelings of fear, excitement, anger) and frontal cortex (region which controls personality, higher cognition, and most other things that qualify us as "human"). Increased adrenaline levels, which does tend to come from experiencing pornography and engaging in the physical activity of masturbation engages the fight-flight response, and can have adverse effects on the functioning of the nervous system. This is part of the reason why people develop anxiety. Conversely, inappropriate levels of noradrenaline does not allow the body to return to a normal level of homeostasis and is directly linked to depression and anxiety.

I would harbor a guess that you are desensitised, as you said, you can't get excited personally nor sexually anymore. Not trying to fearmonger, but this can be dangerous and some people do fall into engaging in destructive activity, not just limited to drugs.
If you are still curious about neurochemicals and the reward system, I'd suggest engaging in your own research and talking to a psychologist/psychiatrist. You can also PM me if you like, but I only have a limited amount of knowledge, and I'm certainly not a qualified professional.

 

Yes, I’m in the U.S. I don’t think it was too expensive I got mine from a naturopathic doctor, but you can search around and find someone who does them, maybe even order a kit online idk. I think it’s not going to do much for you though, it’ll just show you how messed up your brain is, The real solution is to stop all the brain damaging habits, so that your neurotransmitters can heal, that should be the focus.

 

Well, not necessarily that you shouldn't bother. It could be useful if you would like to be placed on medication to help out with resetting the chemicals to the proper amount. For example, if your serotonin levels are fine but your noradrenaline is abnormal, then it would make more sense for you to be placed on an SNRI rather than an SSRI.
I'd say it's useful information to have, and you can work accordingly with professionals and your own lifestyle choices to tackle the specific issues.

 

There's also glutamate. GABA is its calming counterpart and made directly from it.

 

Potentially. There are also differences between specific drugs within those classes, such as dosage and for how long you were on them. For example, sertraline takes anywhere from 6-8 weeks to build up a noticeable effect, whereas other drugs may take varying amounts of times, and it also depends on the person. There are several other classes as well, which may work more effectively in your case. Additionally, drugs can only help so far. Realistically, the best "cure" for depression is to change your lifestyle and environment, whilst using psychotropic drugs to help you through that process.

 

Well, it would be very unlikely for one psychotropic to work for more than a few years at a time. Zoloft is also an SSRI, which may not be the solution at this time, unlike ten years ago. It is also possible to build up resistances to drugs with prolonged use, and if you were to use Zoloft (sertraline) again, then perhaps you need a higher dose for it to work effectively.
I highly recommend you talk to a psychiatrist about this, as you seem very curious about psychotropic medication, and you seem pretty adamant about helping your depression. Talk to them about your Zoloft history (as well as any other drugs) and explain how it doesn't work to them. They will be able to help you out and evaluate what treatment plan is necessary.

 

I would not mess with those drugs, such as ssri ones, before i google what is "Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction". Peace.

 

I believe so