Young Valiant Man Blog #4 - God Did a Dangerous Thing

Teen brains undergo intense and essential developmental changes as they mature.

Teen Brains, Dopamine, and Discipleship: What Every Young Man Must Know

In creating humans in His image, God gave us something powerful but dangerous: he gave us both passion and the capacity for pleasure. These gifts, meant for good, become dangerous without holiness.  Holiness is the capacity to express passion and experience pleasure in perfect purity and perfect love. 

When boys who are loaded up with passion and a desire for pleasure engage in life without a holy sense of their calling to manhood the end will be pain for everyone.

Plato, centuries before Christ, recognised the challenge of raising boys:

“Of all the animals the boy is the most unmanageable inasmuch as he has the fountain of wisdom in him not yet regulated … Wherefore he must be bound with many bridles.”

Plato was right, and that’s why discipleship matters—especially in the teenage years.

Why? Because the brain is under construction.  Our brain is the hardware for our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours. And here’s the key word: neuroplasticity.  Neuroplasticity means the brain reshapes itself based on what it’s fed—biologically, psychologically, and spiritually.

The critical period of development for a young man is between the ages of 10–14; during these years the brain rapidly forms its functional framework, which he’ll have to live with for the rest of his life.  Those who depend on him will find themselves having to live with the brain he has developed as well.  Don’t make life harder than it must be— help boys build a brain that works for, rather than against, everyone’s best interests.

We have been created with passions and appetites that can be rewarded through the Pleasure Centre in our brain, so what gets connected to the Pleasure Centre during our formative years is profoundly important. 

Understanding Pleasure and Dopamine

God made us to enjoy life. But pleasure must be stewarded.

Pleasure begins when the senses stimulate an area of the brain called the Ventral Tegmental Area.  If the stimulation is strong enough it is relayed to another structure in the brain called the Nucleus Accumbens, which gives the sensation of pleasure.  The pleasure message is then sent on to the Prefrontal Cortex—your internal “parent”—to evaluate whether the pleasure is appropriate; it is supposed to act as a kind of brake to overindulgence, but this part of the brain is slower to develop.  So, pleasure is like an accelerator compelling us to repeat behaviour, but in our younger years the brake doesn’t work as well as it needs to.  That’s one reason why young people have parents.

Pleasure can be triggered by:

• Your senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing

• Your thoughts and imagination

In a healthy brain it doesn’t take a lot to trigger pleasure – eating an ice-cream, listening to a song you like, a swim on a hot day, being with friends, watching a movie.  We were designed for pleasure and many things in life were intended to give pleasure.  The problem arises when we encounter intense pleasure and try to make that the normal experience of life.

When Pleasure Becomes Destructive

All it takes to create a more intense experience of pleasure is to raise the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine.  Intense pleasure comes from dopamine flooding, and there are ways of manipulating brain chemistry to give an intense experience of pleasure:

• Drugs (heroin is the most potent stimulator of dopamine).

• Pornography & sexual activity

• Gambling

• Gaming

• Alcohol (although the brain pathway for alcohol is different)

Dopamine flooding increases the experience of pleasure BUT causes the dopamine receptors in the brain shrink.  Over time this results in neuro-chemical tolerance—your brain raises the threshold for pleasure, so you need more stimulation to feel the same thrill.  Raising the threshold required for the pleasure experience blocks normal experiences in life from giving any sense of pleasure at all.  Life turns grey.

You’re not just chasing thrills—you’re slowly destroying your ability to enjoy life.

This is the process that leads to addiction at any age, but for the young there is an even greater danger – a neuro modulator called DeltaFosB.

DeltaFosB: The Brain’s Addiction Glue

DeltaFosB is a neuro-chemical modulator that follows dopamine and locks addictive behaviours into place – its action reinforces the pleasure circuit:  it turns a pleasure track in the brain into a pathway, it turns the pathway into a road, and a road into a highway, until everything else in life seems dull and pointless.  In addition, it has a long half-life, which means it stays active in those tracks it has developed long after stopping a habit, and keeps a person vulnerable to a relapse the moment their determination to quit is interrupted.

The Teen Brain: A Dangerous Window

The teenager is more vulnerable and more easily addicted to any pleasure experience than an adult:

• The Pleasure Centre is 2–4 times more responsive

• The teen brain is more sensitive to dopamine

• The teen brain produces higher levels of DeltaFosB

• The teen Frontal Lobe, the brake, is still under construction

That’s a recipe for addiction:  experiencing pleasure at a more explosive level means having a strong accelerator, while the frontal lobe is yet to fully develop ,which means having weak brakes.

“Teenagers get addicted faster and recover more slowly. The consequences can last 80 years.” — Jay Giedd, US Institute of Mental Health

Become the Valiant Young Man She’s Praying For

Somewhere out there, a young woman is praying that one day she will love and be loved.  Her hope is that the man to whom she gives her love will be a man with courage, strength, stability, and integrity. Will you be that man?

Boys become young men one day at a time. Young men growing in a hostile and lost world need adults who care enough about what they become to give them support, teaching, coaching, and encouragement.  That’s what Young Valiant Man is all about.