Other than COVID, there seems to be two other epidemics going on:

• Attention deficit
• Depression

Dopamine Detox: TL;DR

Dopamine is the reward, used by our brain to reinforce behaviour. The “dopamine receptors” behave like other receptors: they get used to stimuli, and get less sensitive. Similarly like coffee: one needs more and more stimulants to feel the effect. One cup a day become three cups, become 5 cups. And if you dont supply the expected amount of coffeine, we even feel bad.

Nowadays, it is very easy to be bombarded with dopamine stimuli. Mostly from social media, videos, and gaming. Maybe even all three together: watching youtube while playing a game, and then checking the phone for notifications. But actually, you dont want to perform any of these activities - the game sucks, the video is low effort, the notifications are just clickbait articles. The dopamine receptors become so desentizited that the brain forces us to do all these things together, just to get a little bit of a reward. You can try to change your behaviour when you realize your situation: Go to the couch to read a book. But after half a page you are on your phone again…

This is not a weakness, not something to power through with logic and discipline. The brain is now wired in the wrong way.

Even worse, other activities which should be fun arent anymore. Like meeting friends, watching a sunset, or even playing the game or watching the series you like. Live feels senseless, useless, happyness is gone. It feels like depression.

The solution is the “Dopamine Detox”. Like lowering the amount of coffee to be able to live without it again, or to feel its stimulating effects, we need to lower the dopamine stimulants. What should be done is to replace dopamine stimuli with boredom.

Dopamine Stimulants

In no particular order:

• Hard drugs
• Soft drugs (coffeine, tabacco, sugar, …)
• Porn
• Video games
• Social media (facebook, tiktok, instagram, reddit, hackernews, …)
• News (Online, or TV)
• TV
• Gambling
• Shopping

Dopamine Detox Details

The dopamine pathways in your brain are:

• Mesocortical: Planning, long term tasks, doing stuff without being rewarded
• Mesolimbic: Motivation, reward

Thats where your reward, behaviour, and motivational dopamine circuits are located.

• Wanting and enjoying are located in different parts of the brain.
• Dopamine is the reward
  • used by our brain to reinforce behaviour.
  • It is NOT the feeling of pleasure itself.
  • Dopamine is what makes us WANT things.
• The ability to feel pleasure is called Hedonics.
• Craving and pleasure are involved in the mesolimbic pathway.

Dopamine is a diverse structure that does all sorts of things in our brain, like motivation, reward, executive function and even things like movement. When we look at motivation, reward, it’s what we call the mesolimbic pathway and when we look at executive function, it’s the mesocortical. The limbic system is our emotional brain circuit. The cortices are our frontal lobes.

Dopamine Detox

Two weeks without the constant dopamine rewards.