Do you find yourself gravitating towards increasingly stronger methods of activating dopamine spikes?

You may benefit from exploring dopamine regulation. The brain has two ways to release dopamine:

1. "Tonic" dopamine represents the baseline dopamine levels in your brain, which are typically steady but vary somewhat throughout the day

2. "Phasic" dopamine bursts are active spikes released in response to events

High parasympathetic tone helps your brain maintain healthy "tonic" baseline dopamine levels. Low baseline levels can cause reduced motivation or depression. Stress activates your sympathetic nervous system, causing hyper-reactive phasic dopamine spikes. (Chronic stress and chronic hypervigilance, like C-PTSD, can cause even weirder behaviors like depressed cortisol levels that I'm far from qualified to describe or explain.)

Intentionally being self-aware and mindful in how you engage in self-regulation and co-regulation will activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which supports dopamine regulation. In particular, it increases dopamine sensitivity (reward sensitivity), which means that you feel satisfied by smaller quantities of dopamine, rather than needing high-intensity activities to release stronger dopamine spikes.