on 29-Oct-2019 (Tue)

Dopamine itself is not the culprit here. Without dopamine, you’d have no motivation. They can be genuine and beneficial. They’re evolution’s way of saying you’re onto something good, promoting your own survival or even propagating the human race (or, as we like to call it, sex).

Dopamine is the whip that your genes use to get you to do things.

Until fairly recently, dopamine hits were always coupled with some evolutionary benefit. It took hard work and accomplishment to get a dopamine rush.

There are two main neural systems that regulate decision making:

1. Your Monkey brain – dominated by the amygdala (if I got a fancy degree from Harvard, I’d refer to this as the A-System [ * ])
2. Human brain – dominated by the prefrontal cortex (sometimes called the I-System [ * ])

The Monkey brain is concerned with maximizing immediate reward, while the Human brain is focused on maximizing long-term reward.

This ability to consider the long-term ramifications of our actions is indeed what sets us apart from the monkeys [ * ]. It’s the reason why you’re able to make it this far in the blog post instead of throwing poop at people on the streets like our herbivore ancestors.

Imagine you’re staring at a candy bar. The internal struggle begins. The battle between your monkey brain and your human brain. The monkey inside of you sees the candy and all it can think about is the rush of sweetness you will get as soon as you bite into it.

“I need that candy. I need it more than anything in the world,” you say to yourself, “that candy bar will change my life.”

On the other side of the spectrum, a properly trained human brain will fight back: “Fuck that. I’m going to feel like crap after. It’s not worth it. I need to stick to my diet.”

Too much dopamine causes the balance to shift too far in the monkey direction: the amygdala is hyper activated and the prefrontal cortex is hypo activated. Every time you do this, you’re strengthening the strings of your monkey puppet master.

The short term-focused systems dominate. You’ve muted your human brain, and this creates massive feedback loops. The more you give into the monkey brain, the stronger it becomes.

According to AJAC, a veteran personal trainer and mens self improvement writer:

“Mental obesity is dopamine addiction, the mind is trained to say “yes” to everything that is presented to it. This inevitably slows down and halts higher level thinking, and turns people into social media addicted zombies.

Their minds become controlled by infotainment, and the same way a physically obese person obsesses over food, they obsess over checking every feed and have intense anxiety over missing out on anything.”

Some other side effects include:

• Short attention span – Studies show that the attention span of an average student has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. Chimpanzees have an attention span of 20 seconds. There you have it – humans are less focused than monkeys.
• Cluttered mind
• Anxiety – Constant dopamine makes you upset when you’re not getting it. Do you feel a constant state of depression and anxiety? It may be because your dopamine bar has been reset too high and your brain is addicted. You’ve got a heroin addict living inside your head.
• Instant gratification addiction – Only looking for immediate results.
• Dysfunctional personality styles : Excessive social media has been shown to lead to dysfunctional personality styles: narcisissm, shyness, need for confirmation, constant negativity and low self esteem [ * ]

According to Dr. Cameron Sepah, a clinical psychologist and professor at UCSF Medical School who’s helped to popularize this new Silicon Valley trend, “ taking a break from behaviors that trigger strong amounts of dopamine release (especially in a repeated fashion) allows our brain to recover and restore itself.”

“Dopamine Fasting 2.0” is based on the behavioral therapy technique of ‘stimulus control’ for addictions, and is much more practical to implement, since it doesn’t require total abstinence.

If a behavior is problematic, you need to cut it out.

How do you know it’s problematic? If it’s causing you:

• Distress (you’re bothered by how much you do it)
• Impairment (interferes with your optimal social or school/work performance)
• Addictiveness (you want to cut down, but cannot consistently do so)

There are two approaches.

(1) go cold turkey on ALL possible dopamine hits.

(2) just cut out the problematic behaviors.

If you cut out all dopamine hits for one day a month that means:

• No food.
• No caffeine.
• No phone.
• No internet.
• No computer.
• No substances.

However, Dr. Sepah’s modern version of Dopamine Fasting is a bit more practical. His “Dopamine Fasting 2.0” is based on the behavioral therapy technique of ‘stimulus control’ for addictions, and doesn’t require total abstinence. All it requires is abstaining from the problematic behaviors you identified above.

#1 Discipline is Freedom

It’s a paradox. The more disciplined you are, the more freedom you’ll have. They seem like opposites, but in reality they’re tied at the hip.

Want to be a slave to big Pharma in 20 years? Eat “freely.”

Want to be a slave to your iPhone? Download games freely.

Want to be a slave to your mind? Succumb freely to impulses.

Everything worthwhile takes time and effort. By giving in to dopamine, you’re reprogramming your brain to focus on the opposite.

Over the last hundred years, freedoms have increased immeasurably. The battle for freedom has in many ways been won. But at what cost?

Instead of being imprisoned by culture, people are imprisoned by their own brains. You’re free to protest, but you’re locked in a prison. You’re free to complain about anything… but you can only complain by writing it on a wall locked in a bathroom stall.

#2 Break Your Addiction to Comfort

The pursuit of dopamine will shrink your comfort zone to the size of a microwave. Today’s pleasure-addicted world is using dopamine hits to mask their pain.

Dopamine is a medication. But a medication with more side effects than what is listed in a standard pharmaceutical commercial.s.

Dopamine hits are used to avoid unpleasant experiences. Instead of living with your own thoughts, experiencing boredom or dealing with anxiety head on, you retreat to your phone.

When’s the last time you’ve even taken a shit without looking at your phone? Now you’re playing Candy Crush with double pink eye.

Of course, this is bound to backfire. Avoiding the problem only amplifies it. It’s like allowing a homeless person to sleep outside your home because you’re afraid of saying something. And then the next thing you know he’s sleeping with your wife.

Slowly acquiescing to dopamine trains your addiction to comfort, eroding your discipline. You cede control. You can’t find the motivation to do the important tasks.

Things that are uncomfortable do not produce the same dopamine spikes, so your craving brain avoids them.

Basically, if everybody is trained to experience pleasure, after a while you can’t put up with any discomfort. But discomfort is the only way to grow. Discomfort is a call to arms. A pleasure addicted society is a mediocre one: A society who’s greatest accomplishment is their Fortnite score, instead of their 100 year Cathedrals.

What starts merely as avoidance of pain turns into full-blown addiction to comfort, trapping you in a comfort cage.

A dopamine fast is the long, shit covered crawl that will break you out of this comfort prison.

#3 More Resilience

“Here’s a lesson to test your mind’s mettle: take part of a week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantily in shabby clothes, and ask yourself if this is really the worst that you feared. It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead, for when fortune is kind the soul can build defenses against her ravages. Seneca

The reason you can’t be alone with your painful thoughts is the same reason you can’t motivate yourself to go to the gym. Or meditate. Or eat beef liver. Or stand up to that coworker that constantly takes credit for your ideas. You’re afraid of the pain, and you’ve trained your brain to avoid it.

This is so often how you are defeated, one seemingly small concession at a time. You don’t just wake up one day and become mentally and physically weak. Each and every time you give in, you erode your self-discipline.

A dopamine fast will give you more resilience. Like a vaccine, small stressors harden you to pain. The pain of giving up your biggest addictions will train you to deal with the real disasters when they come.

Deliberately putting yourself in uncomfortable positions prepares you for the inevitable unplanned discomfort. Whereas weakness leads to stagnation. So sleep on a bed of nails, put glass in your shoes… and remember that it’s not the end of the world the next time your barista forgets your half and half.

You obviously don’t need to go that far. But without any discomfort, you’ll never be comfortable.

You’ll never solve the biggest problems in your life if you don’t face them. Like a ticking time bomb, they explode in unexpected ways. The addiction to comfort is the fuse that ignites the nuclear explosion.

Most people live in fear of hard challenges, but you will not. You will become mentally and physically resilient.

#4 Tame Desires Before They Devour You

An addiction to hedonism will destroy your life.

The example of Marcus Aurelius and his brother Lucius epitomizes this. Marcus lived a life of philosophical inquiry and discipline, shunning parties and games in favor of studies and self improvement.

On the other hand, his brother and co-emperor Lucius was known for his extravagant parties. He once threw a party that cost the equivalent of the entire Roman army’s annual pay.

Marcus pored over books, Lucius poured drinks. Lucius dropped philosophy in search of more freedom and leisure, whereas Marcus was disciplined in search of fulfillment. Marcus rose early and studied. Lucius slept in and had a hair of the dog.

In the end, Lucius’ habits devoured him. His hedonistic lifestyle addicted him to the dragon of dopamine. Like a schizophrenic pendulum he swung back and forth between deep lows and very high highs. Lucius ended up dying early as an alcoholic, and Marcus ruled the Roman Empire and lived a life of fulfillment.

If you’re interested more in this dichotomy, check out Donald Robertson’s new book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.

The stoics believe that entertainment is not inherently good or bad, but it is unhealthy when pursued excessively. It becomes a problem when you are more interested in doing what’s pleasurable than doing what’s good for you. When you scroll through Instagram instead of reading that book that’s staring at you from the shelf.

Time and time again, pleasure in the short run leads to pain in the long run. The road that seems the easiest never actually is.

Tame these addictions before they enslave you

#5 Increase Your Long-Term Fulfillment / Meaning

There are two paths you can follow in life:

1. A life where you’re addicted to comfort. You make decisions by avoiding short-term pain and seeking pleasure.
2. A life where you seek self-discipline and reason. You attack discomfort and transform it into power. You use it to fuel you to accomplish great things.

One gives you fleeting pleasures. The other gives you lasting fulfillment.

It takes a Herculean effort to stay disciplined amongst the noise, to fight the siren call of the pleasures. But in the end, it produces something more satisfying than pleasure: genuine purpose and meaning .

As Marcus Aurelius said, “Real fulfillment comes from acts you do.” He also said “Check out my son Carnivore’s twitter account.” It’s not going to come from the shallow dopamine hits. To get real pleasure, you need to replace these superficial pleasures with better hobbies.

You need to achieve what the stoics called apatheia : freedom from harmful desires. Joy is a byproduct of achieving long-term goals, not ravenously snacking on quick dopamine hits. This is why Marcus was able to achieve much more pleasure than his brother who was more addicted to pleasure than I am to steak.

Epictetus underscored this point: “Freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire.”

In today’s world, this is a challenge. We’re overstimulated from every direction, our attention spans whittled down from beautiful, long nails to bitten stubs of a madman.

All of this is echoed by neurochemistry. Low-level pleasures activate only one part of your brain, whereas higher-order pleasures engage broader neural networks [ * ].

#6 Fasting Teaches You to Be Grateful

Constantly pursuing pleasures only makes you need more. It’s allowing your base instincts to run the show, appointing your monkey brain CEO of your life.

From the perspective of your base instincts, you’re NEVER good enough. You’re never going on enough vacations. You don’t look like George Clooney. You’re not as wealthy as Bill Gates. But trust me, even George Clooney has felt self conscious about his gray hair.

The monkey ceo is ruthless. He won’t be happy until your head is on a stick and he’s eating bananas off your back.

But it’s not true. You have everything you need to be happy. It’s all in your control. It all comes from within.

An addiction to dopamine will tell you otherwise, but breaking that addiction will free you.

#7 Increase Productivity & Focus on Long-Term Goals

“Nothing, to my way of thinking, it better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” — Seneca

The ability to focus is a superpower, and a dopamine addiction is your Kryptonite.

The culprit: people have trained new habit loops and taught their brain to look for dopamine instead of doing long-term work.

Your monkey brain is always searching for the feeling of reward from the Instagram notification or the new text message until it can’t stand an hour without it.

Everybody has been trained to think for the short-term. But if you can break out of this paradigm, you will dominate.

You’re running a marathon, but most people are standing in place. They think they’re going faster but they’re really stuck in place on a treadmill. Meanwhile, you’re casually pacing to the finish line.

#8 Increases Creativity & Imagination

You can’t ever create anything if you’re never alone with your thoughts.

Your imagination is a muscle. If you’re constantly ingesting, you never imagine.

Being alone with your thoughts is the key to becoming great. If you slow down and give your brain time to create instead of ingest, you’ll be surprised by the genius you’re capable of.

Give your mind the silence it needs. Your brain is craving this fast.

#9 Rewire your brain: Dopamine Sensitivity

Your brain has been rewired by these demonic technologies and this addiction to comfort comes with crippling side effects.

Even if it doesn’t feel like you’re addicted, your brain has been rewired. As discussed above, the seesaw of reward has shifted more towards the monkey brain than the human brain.

You’ve trained your brain to focus on short-term instead of long-term goals, diminishing the impact of long-term thinking.

Every time you scroll through Instagram while working, you lay new habit paths in your brain.

You teach yourself that distraction produces reward. Not learning. Not skill acquisition. Not building things.

You give your thumb all the power. Our beautiful opposable thumb that evolved to dominate the world has now been reduced to a slave to the iPhone scroll. You’re focusing on the wrong things and pursuing vacuous rewards.

Once you learn about neuroplasticity, you’ll never use these menacing technologies again. Every thought and action you take literally rewires your brain, creating insidious associative behavior. It’s like you rip out the dash on your car and are plugging random wires into each other. Next thing you know, you try to turn on the stereo and your car starts driving in reverse.

The hyperactivated dopamine hits of the world also change the benchmark of your dopamine levels. It decreases your dopamine sensitivity over time. Meaning you no longer feel the same reward from a satiating, delicious steak. Instead, you need the sugar.

The scariest part is that this can eventually cause your entire brain to adapt . It rewires all your circuitry around motivation, inhibitory control, executive function and conditioning [ * ].

The hyperactivated dopamine hits of the world also change the benchmark of your dopamine levels. It decreases your dopamine sensitivity over time. Meaning you no longer feel the same reward from a satiating, delicious steak. Instead, you need the sugar.

The scariest part is that this can eventually cause your entire brain to adapt . It rewires all your circuitry around motivation, inhibitory control, executive function and conditioning [ * ].