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Your ADHD Dopamine Menu Template

Use this dopamenu template to create your own list of pleasurable, healthy activities to stimulate your ADHD brain when it’s battery has run out.

By ADDitude Editors Verified Updated on February 22, 2024
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ADHD brains have lower-than-average levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that regulates the body’s pleasure and reward systems. As a result, dopamine-increasing behaviors are even more gratifying to ADHD brains. However, many of our go-to behaviors (e.g., grabbing our phones for a ‘quick’ doom scroll, eating a cookie, playing a video game, etc.) aren’t always helpful.

“Unfortunately, the quick and easy sources of dopamine we tend to turn to often aren’t enough to satisfy that need. Or we hit the pleasure button on the same activity so many times, it stops being as fun,” says Jessica McCabe, the creator and host of How to ADHD, a popular YouTube series, and author of How to ADHD.

When dopamine is dipping, how can you resist the impulse to scroll it back up?  The solution is to separate the planning from the choosing with a dopamine menu or ‘dopamenu’ — a curated list of options that lightens the mental load of finding pleasurable, healthy activities to stimulate us when we need it most.

To design your own dopamine menu, brainstorm a list of activities that typically boost your mood without inducing a hangover of regret or RSD. Then, slot the items into the appropriate menu categories in using the dopamine menu template.

This downloadable template includes:

  • Dopamine menu categories
  • Category examples to get you started
  • Tips for building a customizable dopamine menu
  • And more!