Dopamine Vs. The Dopamine detox

What is Dopamine

The neurochemical dopamine is our reward & anticipation molecule. It is released in it’s highest amounts just before a perceived reward, such as just before the first bite of a burger when you are starving hungry, before orgasm during sex, right before using a drug of choice or as you load up your favorite video game.

Your brain doesn’t care if the high dopamine releasing activity is damaging in the long term or not, it wants to feel good now.

Our bodies are complex biological systems that like to remain in a balanced homeostatis. Whenever an imbalance occurs – our bodies adapt to it.

If you are engaging in lots of high-dopamine-stimulating activities everyday, your brain in turn starts to shut down dopamine receptors to try and maintain homeostatis.

Dopamine receptor downregulation is a huge problem. As you become more and more desensitised to dopamine, everyday activities that don’t release as much no longer interest you, and it becomes more difficult to motivate yourself to do them.

Dopamines role in everyday life

Many of our daily actions are tied to dopamine, and in a lot of ways we are slaves to our dopaminergic system – this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in the past it was critical to our survival.

However in the modern era, we don’t necessarily need to worry so much about survival and where our next meal is going to come from as much as our ancestors did. Our dopaminergic systems have become dysfunctional and ‘hijacked’ by highly stimulating distractions.

Dopamine makes us seek out food when we are hungry, entertainment when we are bored and gives us ways to escape negative emotions through our vices when we are feeling down.

When you are bored and reach for your phone, regardless of whether it just pinged or not – that’s your brain trying to get its dopamine fix (usually to escape a negative emotion) through the novelty and stimulation of your smart phone.

These distractions keep us numb, unfulfilled and ‘entertained’.

What is the Dopamine detox

The dopamine detox is exactly what it sounds like. It involves a period of time where high-dopamine stimulating activities are cut out, this allows our brains to go through a type of ‘reset’.

Reseting our brains dopaminergic system is essentially allowing it to upregulate and resensitise our dopamine receptors, so that we can be more functional and productive, leading to a life filled with more motivation and drive.

Now that we know dopamines role, and how impactful an optimally-functioning dopaminergic system is to our lives – it’s time to get rid of the activities that are wasting our dopamine and look at ways to speed up the regulation process.

Are you a good candidate for a dopamine detox?

If you feel like you go long periods of time in a hazey-brain-fog, and it doesn’t feel as if you are moving towards your goals or highest ideals – I believe a dysfunctional dopaminergic system is probably to blame.

I would say this is crucial for anyone who has big dreams, goals and aspirations but can never find the motivation to get started, or the tenacity to keep going when things get tough.

As well as a list of fears and limiting beliefs that can come from embarking on a new phase, project or lifestyle change… your neurochemistry also plays a key role.

Dopamine is the driving force behind why we do what we do. It can be your enemy and keep you a slave to vices, or it can be your greatest wingman and allow you to speed towards your goals and feel great while doing so.

What are the benefits?

The dopamine detox is essentially like hitting the reset button on your neurochemistry, then it’s up to you how you rewire your dopaminergic circuitry moving forward.

Want to start a new project?

Great, now as you begin dopamine will start to be released as you make progress. Dopamine produced by seeing progress will create a positive feedback loop whereby you actually enjoy working on a project and get excited, when in the past there was dread.

Want to get into shape but can’t find the motivation?

Once your dopaminergic system has been rewired, exercise will actually FEEL GOOD and it will make you want to do it more… resulting in a great positive feedback loop..

Want to start dating?

If you’ve cut out porn/masturbation you’ll naturally want to engage in dating. The dopamine produced from conquering your own fears and limiting beliefs will make you feel good about the process as you learn and start seeing results.

How to raise dopamine

Our brains have a certain ‘neurochemical budget’ to spend everyday.

Once it’s spent, its very difficult to find the motivation to do anything else.

Typically people waste their dopamine on short term pleasure (vices) that feel good in the moment, but then they often find they’ve got no motivation or drive to do anything else.

They’ve ‘spent’ their daily dopamine on useless shit.

Instant gratification creates long term sacrifice…

…Short term sacrifice creates long term satisfaction.

Vices

Most people’s vices can be simplified to pleasure now, pain later.

They are triggered by a negative emotion and unconsciously engage in their vices to escape.

Not escaping feels uncomfortable (almost like resisting the urge to scratch an itch).

Here are some of the most common WRONG ways we spend our limited dopamine budget.

Ranked worst to least.

Drug/substance use

This should be obvious, hard drugs can elevate brain dopamine levels way beyond that which is naturally achieveable.

Repeated, habitual use, creates addictions and dependancies.

As the user continues to seek it out, healthy dopamine pathways that would move the individuals life forward, begin to seem boring and meaningless in comparison to the high induced by the substances.

Porn/masturbation/sex

Masturbation and sex itself are the highest possible sources of dopamine our bodies can produce naturally, and can act as an escape for alot of people just like any other addiction would.

Porn is almost as bad as a hard drug in terms of the sheer amounts of dopamine it can produce. In some ways, it can be a lot worse and more insidious.

Our society glorifies porn in such a way that it’s become a lot more socially acceptable, and much less stigmatised than it was decades ago.

In the modern era… the porn addicts ‘dealer’ lives in their pocket in the form of a smartphone. They can essentially hit the pleasure button whenever they want to avoid dealing with negative emotions. Gone are the days where access to pornography was more limited and confined to magazines and videotapes. The sheer access to unlimited porn in any genre provides the user with endless highly stimulating novelty.

Porn access today is much more anonymous and allows the user to avoid shame – a necessary emotion that stops us damaging our self-esteem. In the past people may have been deterred from accessing porn because it required the user to feel some level of shame (like walking into a store and going to the counter with a porn magazine).

It’s also responsible for the surge in erectile dysfunction which is becoming more and more common in young men.

For more information, check out Gary Wilson’s (RIP) work – ‘Your brain on porn’ below.

Video games

For some and myself included, video games can be a major problem. They keep dopamine levels elevated and our attention hooked for prolonged periods of time.

They can give the player a false sense of progression and achievement. Our hunter-gatherer brains get the same dopamine-reward from beating the final boss of a video game, as our ancestors did by hunting a deer and bringing it back to the tribe. One activity being completely useless… and the other essential to our survival.

You can feel rewarded even though you’ve done absolutely nothing but sit in a chair with bad posture for 3 hours straight.

What’s worse is that video games can act like false-status, making the player feel like they are actually achieving things. Even though their life outside the game could be completely falling apart.

As someone who has struggled with excessive gaming, I can say for me, without a doubt that RPG’s are the worst for simulating false-status. You are slowly levelling up a fictional character to the point where it can feel like an extension of yourself.

I put so many hours into Runescape that it could of been a shadow career. When I finally quit in 2018… I was able to sell all my virtual items for almost £10,000.

If I’d have put every hour of playing runescape into building a business instead… maybe I could be a millionaire, who knows.

If you’re a video game enthusiast, be honest and ask yourself…

What kind of shape would you be in, if you were as dedicated to lifting weights and training, as you were to playing your favorite game?

Imagine if you gave up 1 hour gaming a day and instead used that hour to lift weights at the gym… work on a project… or improving your dating prospects…

Internet surfing

This is a trap I fell into once I limited how much time I spent gaming. Although internet surfing doesn’t stimulate dopamine to the extent of a video game, it’s still providing endless novelty – even if you are looking at what you deem to be ‘self-improvement’ content.

An easy trap to fall into is consuming content that you believe is helping you, but not accompanying it with any action.

It’s the equavilant to watching workout videos and not going to the gym, then wondering why you’re not jacked… or wondering why your dating life sucks when you don’t actively practice speaking to women.

It’s easy to delude yourself and rationalise by saying “Well, at least it’s not porn or video games”.

You would be right, it’s not those, but it’s still escapism and ultimately a waste of time.

I believe internet usage can be done in moderation, providing it’s planned downtime to relax after you’ve done your productive work for the day.

A good way to balance this is only consuming content you are willing to take action on… for example…

Watch a workout video…. then go and do that workout.

Read some dating content… then go and do some approaches.

Look at some dieting tips… then actually implement those strategies.

Sugar & junk food

Comfort eating is something many people are familiar with. They feel negative emotions or discomfort, and reach for their favorite junk food to drown it out with raw mouth sensations.

Sugar is actually a drug – and triggers the brains reward system, causing dopamine to be produced in vast quantities.

There’s also other health problems associated with excess sugar intake, such as insulin resistance potentially leading to diabetes and heart disease. Typically sugary snacks contain lots of useless calories and are often to blame for excessive weight gain.

While sugar and junk food are not as time consuming as the aforementioned vices, It’s still something to be aware of, and it’s worth reviewing your relationship with junk food – are you using it as an escape or as a well deserved reward?

Check out the cheat meal section of my ultimate fat loss guide for more information.

Excessive smart phones & social media use

Next time you are on public transport, look around at the vast amounts of people completely zoned out and glued to their smartphones. If it wasn’t so serious, it would almost be funny… The zombie apocalypse is already here.

The modern smart phone is basically a source of endless novelty and entertainment. With games, internet access, porn, social media, youtube and music all at your fingertips, whenever you want it, and wherever you go.

Have you ever found yourself mindlessly scrolling reddit or social media in sort of a trance, only for a significant amount of time to pass before you snap out of it?

I sure have, that’s my brain cleverly avoiding something I know I should be doing and getting its fix of dopamine.

More conscious smart phone use can certainly go a long way to free up more dopamine.

One strategy that works for me is setting my phones colour scheme to greyscale. For some reason, this makes it boring to look at and makes it much easier to resist aimless usage.

Healthy Dopamine

So now we know what not to spend our dopamine on, let’s look at healthy and productive ways to allocate our dopamine.

Exercise

Exercise has countless benefits. To list but a few…

• Boosts self-esteem and confidence
• Promotes longevity and quality of life
• Improves physical appearance and attractiveness
• Lowers anxiety
• Improve mental health

By far, the times in my life where I’ve felt the worst have been when I have been unable to exercise properly.

The most recent period was in 2020/2021 during the scamdemic lockdowns, when my local gyms were shut and I was reduced to bodyweight exercises in my cold, lifeless garage.

I don’t think I’ve ever been truly ‘depressed’ but this was as close to it as I’ve become…

It occurred to me just how important and how valuable my exercise routine was and the major part it contributed to my sense of wellbeing and overall mental health.

Exercise will not only boost dopamine, but also trigger the release of feel-good chemicals like endorphins and endocannabinoids.

You’ll also develop stronger willpower by showing up to the gym when you don’t feel like it, disclipline as you adjust your diet and resist food cravings, and a much healthier relationship with dopamine through the delayed gratification often brought about by long-term projects like changing your body composition.

I’ve found the gym is a great place to meet likeminded people, who are interested in self-development and becoming a stronger version of themselves, both physically and mentally.

Project work

If you’ve ever been engrossed in a creative project… whether it’s putting together a portfolio, working on a piece of art, writing a book or building a business. Then you know that once you start working you will quickly get into the flow and it can actually become enjoyable.

It’s a different kind of enjoyment, other than the short dirty high a vice would provide – it’s longer lasting and I’d describe it more as a permeating sense of wellbeing and self-esteem.

The big problem is… getting started. It’s that resistance that needs to be overcome everytime you try and sit down to work.

The hardest part is actually sitting down and making the decision to start, after that it becomes easy.

A lot of creative projects are long-term endevours, meaning you won’t see instant results, instead they build and compound over time and eventually when they do pay off, are incredibly rewarding.

Just by choosing to work on a creative project when you dont feel like it, you are delaying gratification and developing willpower.

Contrast this to escapism using vices – sure, they’ll make you feel good right now, but have a hidden cost that your future self will have to pay.

Cold showers

Cold showers are the absolute antithesis to short term, instant gratification.

As you stand vulnerable and naked in front of the icy jet of water you’re about to step into… every part of your body is screaming at you and telling you not to do it.

They provide such discomfort, that every other hard choice you’ll be met with later that day will become easier.

The cold will force you to pay attention to your body, you won’t have chance to loop on negative thoughts and when you come out you will have a crystal clear mental clarity, that feels like you’ve been in deep meditation, and you’ll be energised and focused as if you’ve consumed lots of caffiene.

Willpower is like a muscle that can be developed and trained. By choosing to step into discomfort – you are directly stimulating growth of your willpower, making hard choices easier.

The challenges of everyday life become much more feasible when you voluntarily expose yourself to discomfort.

The colder the better and the more fearless you shall become.

To start with, set a 1 minute timer and try and stay in for the whole minute. Add 30 seconds each time and gradually decrease the temperature.

Build up to doing 3-5 mins as cold as you can go. This way you can slowly adjust and make it a habit that you are likely to stick to.

In conclusion

The dopamine detox can be extremely effective for anyone who feels like they are stuck in a rut and lacking the motivation or drive to make a change.

In most cases in order to break a bad cycle, a complete reset is needed.

This means cutting ties with the vices keeping you in the place you are in…

…and building new, healthier habits to replace them and move your life in a new and exciting direction.

To read about how I go about implementing new habits so they become part of your lifestyle check out habit periodization