Benefits of Dopamine Detox

It is interesting to see the world in terms of physiology. What if our mood and thoughts were decided by various biological terms such as dopamine, serotonin or adrenaline?

Today, we are going to explore and hack one such term: dopamine. Without going into the technical details, dopamine is a feel good chemical and also the brain’s reward system. When you experience something pleasurable, your brain releases dopamine which brings satisfaction and motivation to repeat the same behavior.

This is especially triggered when we have a new experience or rather novelty. This is part of the reason why modern gadgets are so addictive though it also should be noted that the anticipation of the reward is more pleasurable than the reward itself. While it may seem counterintuitive, it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. After all, our ancestors' anticipation of the meat probably is what made them survive and thus us.

That being said, to counter modern day’s dopamine addiction or vicious cycles, we have come up with dopamine detox. Dopamine detox is a clean streak when a person does not engage in modern activities that result in high dopamine spikes. It must be stressed that this has become ever so important now with how multibillion corporations study our psychology and target specifically on how to engage our minds for their profit.

While this is true, it must also be noted that this does not encompass only modern gadgets. This may include old addictions such as alcohol, drugs or even caffeine and sugar. It makes sense to encompass all types of dopamine spiked activities since the brain does not know the difference between video games and alcohol as far as dopamine-related.

Ultimately, the goal is to try to reach the baseline dopamine we usually are programmed to have with basic tasks. Such benefits are overlapped with boredom as well.

Dopamine detox helps your attention span and engage in flow state easily due to the nature of non-novelty low dopamine tasks.

For example, if you were used to novelty all the time then it’s obvious that a monotonous task such as mindfulness would bore you out but if you did a dopamine detox however, such a side effect would be greatly diminished.

I have personally attempted a dopamine detox in the past week. My objects of exclusion were mainly social media. (I did not include social messaging apps such as Whatsapp)

After quitting these apps, my mood became far more peaceful and regained clarity. It brought to attention what actually matters to my life rather than the content of others. It is also in the interest of these companies to post and uplift ragebait content since it farms views and engagement unlike anything else. This is profitable to the corporations but not for me.

The benefits of breaking out of the vicious dopamine-designed loop is self-evident. Now even if I use these apps, I only engage in content that I have either genuine interest or useful.

You can achieve this using extensions such as Unhook on PC for YouTube to hide the comments, shorts and even recommendations. As for instagram or facebook, you can choose to use it on PC instead of mobile for example.

A tip. You don’t have to detox the whole day or a series of days however. You may attempt to do the detox till 3pm everyday for example. This is also inline with Cal Newport’s Deep Work.

It seems the ancients were not wrong. Moderation is key and living a life where we save the pleasures not only enhances it but also does not disturb our tasks of life.

Food for thought.