The research helps answer a question a recent Vermont opinion column raised for the public: could the drive to accumulate wealth far beyond what anyone needs function like an addiction, activating the same dopamine levels and brain chemistry that gambling, shopping, or substance do?
The Study Behind the Question
Columnist Bill Schubart, drawing on his own decades-long recovery from a food-related dependency, argued that obsessive wealth accumulation deserves the same scientific scrutiny already applied to behavioral addictions.
His column landed just weeks after a team of addiction researchers, including addiction psychiatrist Mark S. Gold, M.D., and neuroscientist Kenneth Blum, published a study in the journal Gene and Protein in Disease proposing that dopamine functions as a master regulator across the brain’s reward circuitry, one that helps explain vulnerability to both substance use disorders and non-substance addictive behaviors alike.
That research builds on Reward Deficiency Syndrome, a framework Blum first proposed decades ago suggesting that some people inherit a lower baseline level of dopamine signaling, making them more prone to seeking out intense rewards to compensate.
The framework is no longer a fringe idea. According to the researchers, more than 1,650 published studies now cite reward deficiency research, with 281 specifically examining Reward Deficiency Syndrome itself.
Recent genome-wide association studies spanning nearly 89 million subjects support dopamine dysregulation as a measurable, biological phenotype behind the syndrome, not just a theoretical construct.
What the Research Actually Shows
Addiction medicine has already formally recognized one behavioral addiction, gambling disorder, in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, placing it alongside substance use disorders for the first time.
The new dopamine research adds momentum to the idea that other compulsive, reward-driven behaviors, from shopping to gaming, may share the same underlying mechanism, even when they look nothing like drug or alcohol use from the outside.
Schubart’s column points to this same mechanism in financial decision-making. Mundane choices about money, he writes, can trigger a flood of dopamine, cortisol, and serotonin, the same neurochemical response documented in substance use disorders and other behavioral addictions.
The column also raises epigenetics, pointing to research on Holocaust survivors showing that trauma can leave measurable, heritable marks on stress-related genes, and asking whether early scarcity or trauma might similarly predispose some people toward compulsive wealth accumulation later in life.
That specific extension to wealth-seeking behavior remains speculative and has not been formally studied the way gambling disorder has, but it reflects a genuinely evolving area of addiction science, not an isolated theory.
The Brain Reward Cascade
The new research is careful to note that dopamine does not act alone. It operates within what researchers call the brain reward cascade, an interactive network involving at least seven other major neurotransmitters.
This matters clinically because it means addiction treatment that only addresses one neurotransmitter system in isolation is unlikely to address the full picture of why a person’s reward system misfires in the first place.
The researchers also point to work from former National Institute of Mental Health director Steven Hyman, whose Research Domain Criteria project reframed psychiatric conditions around shared brain-based mechanisms rather than treating each diagnosis as a fully separate category.
Applied to addiction, this suggests a person’s vulnerability to substance use disorder, gambling disorder, or other compulsive behaviors, including the kind Schubart describes, may stem from the same dopamine-driven root cause, expressed differently depending on the behavior available to them.
What This Means for Treatment Seekers
For people already in treatment for a substance use disorder, this research is a reminder that addictive patterns can resurface in other forms after sobriety, including compulsive spending, gambling, or work.
Treatment providers increasingly screen for these cross-addictions during aftercare planning, since the same reward circuitry that drove substance use can attach itself to new behaviors.
Anyone who recognizes compulsive, hard-to-control patterns around money, whether spending, gambling, or an inability to feel secure regardless of net worth, may benefit from talking to a clinician who treats behavioral addictions specifically, not only substance use disorders.
Exploring Treatment Options
People weighing whether a compulsive pattern in their life, financial or otherwise, has crossed into addiction can start by:
- Asking a treatment provider whether their program screens for co-occurring behavioral addictions like gambling disorder alongside substance use
- Learning about Reward Deficiency Syndrome and how dopamine dysregulation can connect seemingly unrelated compulsive behaviors
- Understanding how therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy address compulsive reward-seeking regardless of the specific behavior involved
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