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Every cheap dopamine hit is paid back with interest. Andrew Huberman put the rates on paper. Chocolate 55% above baseline. Sex 100%. Nicotine 100%. Cocaine 225%. Amphetamine 1000%. Read that list as the size of the interest payment that follows each one. Dopamine operates on a peak-trough system. Every spike above baseline is paid back with a dip below it. The bigger the peak, the deeper and longer the trough. Your brain is defending equilibrium. A cocaine hit at 225% above baseline produces a physiological deficit below baseline when it wears off. Normal rewards can't clear the new floor. Then the receptors downregulate. D2 density drops with repeated exposure. You have fewer receivers. The next hit registers at a smaller fraction above a lower baseline. Same money, less feeling, deeper crash. Compound interest on the original spike. Now the "cheap" part, which is the whole mechanism. The dopamine release curve has two phases: anticipation and consumption. Earning something loads most of the dopamine into anticipation, spread across hours or days. Your brain evolved for that curve. Anticipation IS the reward architecture. Scrolling, porn, pills, and slot machines collapse anticipation to zero. The full curve compresses into a single sharp spike. Same total dopamine, completely different shape. The compressed shape triggers receptor downregulation. Huberman's line: any high amount of dopamine that comes to you without effort will eventually destroy you. The mechanism explains why. Effort is the biological rate limiter that keeps dopamine release slow enough for baseline to survive. Take the rate limiter off, and your baseline is the currency cheap dopamine actually costs.