Harold Robert Meyer
The ADD Resource Center haroldmeyer@addrc.org
www.addrc.org
Reviewed: May 03, 2026
Published: May 12, 2026
Listen to understand, not just to respond
You knew exactly what you wanted. You researched it, compared options, and finally clicked “buy.” The package arrives, you tear it open, and the feeling is smaller than you expected. Within days, it has faded into the background of your life. The letdown isn’t a flaw in the product or a failure of your taste — it’s a feature of how the brain is wired. And if you have ADHD, that wiring runs hotter and costs more.
The brain runs anticipation and pleasure on separate systems. Dopamine fuels the wanting — the chase, the click, the countdown to delivery — but it does not produce the satisfaction of having. That comes from a smaller, quieter system that fades fast. The result is a built-in mismatch: the rush before you buy is almost always bigger than the contentment after you own. The fault is not your judgment, your willpower, or the object itself. It is the architecture of reward.
For people with ADHD, this mismatch is louder and more expensive. Lower baseline dopamine tone makes the chase irresistible, time blindness shrinks the felt cost of “later,” and emotional dysregulation turns shopping into a regulator for feelings that have nothing to do with the item in the cart. Compulsive buying co-occurs with ADHD at more than twice the typical rate. Left unexamined, the loop drains savings, strains relationships, and trains the brain to keep buying for a hit it cannot deliver.
For decades, scientists assumed dopamine produced pleasure. Neuroscientist Kent Berridge’s lab overturned that view. Dopamine, it turns out, drives “wanting” — the motivation to pursue, the attention magnetism of a reward cue, the urge to act. Hedonic “liking” — the actual feeling of pleasure — runs on a smaller, more fragile system involving opioid signaling in specific brain hot spots, and it does not require dopamine at all (Robinson & Berridge, 2025).
This is why the chase so often feels bigger than the catch. When you scroll a product page, watch a delivery countdown, or fantasize about owning something, dopamine is roaring. Your brain reads that intensity as a forecast — this is going to be amazing. But once the thing is in your hands, the wanting circuit quiets, and the much smaller liking circuit does its modest job. You feel something. Rarely as much as you expected.
“The thrill you feel before you click ‘buy’ is your brain’s way of saying ‘go‘ — not its prediction of how good owning the thing will feel.” — Harold Meyer, The ADD Resource Center
Even when a purchase does deliver genuine pleasure, hedonic adaptation begins almost immediately. The nervous system is built to normalize whatever stays the same, freeing attention for what changes. Within days or weeks, the new car, the new gadget, the new jacket shifts from “exciting” to “the new normal,” and the boost dissolves into baseline.
Research consistently shows this happens faster for material goods than for experiences. A trip, a class, or a meal with friends keeps yielding returns through memory, retelling, and identity — this is who I am, this is what I do. A material possession is mostly visible while it is new; once it is familiar, the brain stops registering it. This is the engine of the so-called hedonic treadmill — running faster to feel the same.
The wanting–liking gap is universal. ADHD turns up the volume.
ADHD brains show altered dopamine signaling, with reduced availability of certain receptors and transporters in reward pathways. The system is under-stimulated at baseline and unusually responsive to high-salience cues. A product launch, a flash sale, an unboxing video — all of these light up the wanting circuit harder than they do in the average brain, and the resulting urgency feels like clarity rather than craving.
Delay discounting — the steep devaluation of future outcomes — is a core ADHD trait. The credit card bill three weeks from now feels weightless next to the click that delivers a hit right now. The future version of you who has to absorb the cost is, functionally, a stranger.
Shopping reliably regulates emotion. After a hard day, a perceived slight, or a rejection-sensitive spiral, the cart becomes a coping tool. The item is incidental; the click is the medication. The behavior is heavily reinforced by emotional relief, not by the object that arrives.
“Most ADHD overspending isn’t really about the stuff. The stuff is just where the regulation happens.” — Harold Meyer, The ADD Resource Center
You cannot out-discipline a neurochemical mismatch. You can change the conditions around it.
Add friction. Remove saved cards. Build a 72-hour wait list for any non-essential purchase. The wanting signal decays surprisingly fast when it is not fed in real time. For a deeper toolkit, see How to Avoid Being a Shopaholic When You Have ADHD.
Name the chase. When the urge spikes, pause and ask: what am I actually feeling right now? If the honest answer is bored, lonely, hurt, anxious, or exhausted, the cart will not fix it.
Spend on experiences when you can. Trips, classes, and shared activities resist hedonic adaptation longer than objects, and they pay out repeatedly through memory and identity.
Engineer variety. If you do buy material things, rotate them — books on the shelf, clothes in the closet — so newness lasts longer than a weekend.
Externalize controls. Spending alerts, app blockers, and a trusted second pair of eyes do the work your in-the-moment self cannot. Pair this with strategies for closing the dopamine gap so legitimate wins still get celebrated.
The goal isn’t to stop wanting. It’s to stop confusing wanting with the answer.
Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2016). Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction. American Psychologist, 71(8), 670–679. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/
Black, D. W., Shaw, M., McCormick, B., Bayless, J. D., & Allen, J. (2012). Neuropsychological performance, impulsivity, ADHD symptoms, and novelty seeking in compulsive buying disorder. Psychiatry Research, 200(2–3), 581–587. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3665329/
Etkin, J., & Mogilner, C. (2024). Does variety in hedonic spending improve happiness? BMC Psychology, 12(1), 116. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10897990/
Nicolao, L., Irwin, J. R., & Goodman, J. K. (2009). Happiness for sale: Do experiential purchases make consumers happier than material purchases? Journal of Consumer Research, 36(2), 188–198. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/beccb4d5-713e-46ad-9e95-4f5a5e4ab562
Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2025). The incentive-sensitization theory of addiction 30 years on. Annual Review of Psychology, 76, 29–58. https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/wp-content/uploads/sites/743/2025/06/2025-Robinson-Berridge-The-incentive-sensitization-theory-of-addiction-30-years-on-An-Rev-Psychol.pdf
Notice the next time you feel certain a purchase will fix something. Pause. Ask what you’re actually trying to feel — and whether the cart can deliver it. For practical tools, screeners, and coaching support, visit https://www.addrc.org.
Harold Meyer founded The ADD Resource Center in 1993 and has spent more than 30 years as a leading advocate, coach, and educator in the ADHD field, translating the lived experiences of people with ADHD into practical guidance for individuals, families, and the professionals who support them. He co-founded CHADD of New York, served as CHADD’s national treasurer, and was president of the Institute for the Advancement of ADHD Coaching. As an author and international speaker, he has presented at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting and CHADD national conferences.
Reach Harold at haroldmeyer@addrc.org.
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