Hi dude,

Okay, I caught up with you now despite the 'missing link'  :  )

Opponent process theory (OPT) was not “developed in the 1970s by behavioral psychologist Richard Solomon”; it was developed ibetween 1870 and 1892 by psychologist Ewald Hering. [1] It is not therefore 'Solomons theory', it is Ewald's, and was originally a rather fascinating idea about color vision which turned out to be sorta half the story. [2]

Hurvich & Jameson proposed a neurological model of a general theory of neurological opponent processing in 1974. Solomon is the dude who postulated that this theory applies in motivational terms in addiction etc. [3] ...Why do I get the feeling solomon edited the wikipedia page? Count how many times the word 'solomon' turns up...?

The main problems OPT runs into in this context are the facts that some drugs/pursuits are  not pleasant, but still addictive, while other drugs/pursuits are pleasant but not addictive; there are no 'withdrawal symptoms'; but there is no doubt about the phenomena of up- or down-regulation, and these are usually caused by extremes.

The issue with addiction is that we are able to make anything addictive with suffcient repetition and association. Moderation busts addiction because a habit of moderation does not push the system out of balance and up/down regulation is minimal.

Pain results in the release of endorphins, which can certainly be addictive, this accounts for a great deal of masochism; but the point I have been trying to make is that pleasure and excitement are equally effective and that stressors can be nasty or nice, helpful or harmful , moderate or extreme. (Hormesis is discussed in T13).

By 1995 we had Blue & Blue's 'Correlational Opponent-Processing' paper. [4] A fascinating romp; was it ahead of its time, or was it woo woo?

The page you linked to is authored by one Todd Becker; a chemical engineer and philosopher, who calls hormesis 'hormetism' sometimes and advocates the building of resilience. He doesn't seem to be aware that pleasant stressors work as adequately as unpleasant ones, doesn't distinguish between stress (vital for learning)and anxiety (deadly), and makes the usual mainstream assumption that the stressors alone (rather than the stress-relaxation cycle) are what hormesis is all about; but irrespective of that, this is not science.

Philosophy is speculation without proof, great fun at parties and on drinking/smoking sessions, but not helpful when proof is required. It would be a good exercise in NH to explain how and why many of the 'ten situaitions' given in the original article are false; this would be a good complementary task for the next tutorial, and I may use it thus.

There is some very dodgy info on this site relating to experiments on children, which could actually badly harm people, so this is certainly not a site I would recommend. Well-meaning, but ultimately harmful.

It's a good idea to conduct scientific studies using science sites, (I am tempted to say, 'and philosophical studies using loads of fun drugs' but maybe I'd better not say that?)  :  )

It's also good to keep research as up to date as possible, avoiding stuff older than five (and I some cases two) years. There is now so much more data available and we should take advantage of it.[5] The best update I could find in a limited time is this:[6] although it still labels sentiments 'negative emotions' and lust as 'romantic love', it does a fair job of bringing us up to date.

The overall vibe to me is that incomplete knowledge of endocrinal homeostasis factors such as downregulation, and whole-brain factors such as plasticity has held back OPT from completing a working model of responses to stimuli; that is now likely to change so let us see what emerges. It will be truly fascinating if Blue & Blue [4] turn out to be closer to the truth than imagined...
Best,
AR

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewald_Hering
AND http://www.yorku.ca/eye/opponent.htm
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent-process_theory
3 http://www.intropsych.com/ch14_frontier … heory.html
4 gtwavelet.bme.gatech.edu/wp/misc/BlueBlue-OpponentProcessing.txt
5 http://scicurious.scientopia.org/2009/0 … ss-theory/
6 http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia … asp?id=320