#46 - Dopamine Detox

Very powerful practical method ahead! After this week you shouldn't have challenges with having enough motivation. It will let you build up the willpower to do demanding things... or at least it will be much natural for you.

As you know from the title, the process to be introduced and applied is called dopamine detox.

What is dopamine detox?

It is a process to boost your motivation levels even more. It's generally about cutting off activities that give you dopamine injection for at least 24 hours (ideally 72 hours or more).

Nowadays, it is difficult to postpone instant gratification (dopamine injection) for some long-term pleasure based on our hard work, determination, and devotion. This mindset is crucial for achieving a lot in life.

Yes, it is possible to live like all those successful entrepreneurs, sports athletes, and all of those that enjoy living and do it their own way. They all have this inner toughness that allows them to stick to their routines.

Be ready, and make sure you will repeat this process, ultimately one time per week, but once every month might be enough.

It’s time to get to a higher level!

Why is it so hard to do demanding things?

Let’s start with some science. To answer that question, we need to look at this brain neurotransmitter which is called a dopamine.

Dopamine is what makes us desire things that are associated with pleasure and joy. It’s a neurotransmitter that “gives” us the motivation to get up and move forwards, develop further in life, make us learn, control body movement, and other brain functions.

I'd like to share with you an interesting experiment neuroscientists did on rats. The researchers implanted electrodes in the brain of rats. Whenever the rat pulled a control lever, the researchers stimulated the rat’s reward system in the brain. The result was that the rats developed a craving so strong they kept pulling the lever over and over for hours. The rats would refuse to eat or even sleep. They would just keep pressing the lever until they would drop from exhaustion.

But then they reversed the process. The scientists blocked the release of dopamine in the brain’s reward centre. As a result, rats became so lethargic, that even getting up to get a drink of water was not worth the effort. They wouldn’t eat, nor want to mate. They didn’t crave anything at all. You could say that rats lost all the will to live and their interest in things.

However, if the food was placed directly in their mouths, the rats would still eat and enjoy the food. They just didn’t have the motivation to get up and do it by themselves.

You would think that it’s thirst or hunger that motivates us to get food or water, but there is also dopamine that plays a key role here.

There is a similar effect of dopamine on humans in our daily lives. Your brain develops priorities in large part based on how much dopamine it’s expecting to get. If an activity releases too little dopamine, you won’t have much motivation to do it. But, if an activity releases a lot of dopamine you’ll be motivated to repeat it, over and over. That's why we like watching movies - creators know how to play with our neurotransmitters.

It is important to realise that any behaviour where you anticipate that there’s a potential reward, release dopamine! The expectation of reward - talking precisely.

For example, before you eat comfort food, your brain releases dopamine because you anticipate that the food will make you feel good. Even if it would make you feel worse. That’s because your brain doesn’t even care if the high dopamine activity is damaging to you. It just wants more of it!

A stereotypical example would be someone who’s a drug addict. He knows that what he’s doing is not good for him. But all he wants is to get more of that drug. Besides getting you high, cocaine and heroin release unnatural amounts of dopamine, which in turn makes you crave them even more, and as a result you get addicted to it.

Of course, it has to be noted that nearly everything releases some amount of dopamine. Even drinking water when you’re thirsty.

But the highest dopamine release happens when you get a reward randomly. Referring to slot machines in the casino; the shorter the anticipation time - the bigger the dopamine which potentially causes higher losses. Instant reward effect.

If you played at least one time, for example, a game on your phone. You know how nice it is to open those fancy boxes when you got some reward. It is to keep you playing the game even longer and to make you spend some money in a „pleasant way”, filling up someone’s pocket. If you have dopamine doses regularly from activities in your routine, your brain gets used to it and it might become routine without your acknowledgment, so that’s why it’s important to snap back to consciousness whenever you can, and stay focused on the present continuously. Something you’re doing right now.

When you load your brain constantly with dopamine, your brain might become less responsive to that dose which might result in craving more of it in expectation of a better reward. That is described by the term tolerance.

How tolerance can be described?

Someone who rarely drinks alcohol will get drunk fast when compared to another individual who drinks regularly. Latter will have to drink more alcohol because their body developed tolerance to it. They have to drink more because they become less sensitive to its effects.

Your body tries to maintain homeostasis, so it down-regulates your dopamine receptors.

Essentially your brain gets used to having a high level of dopamine and those levels become your new normal. Thus you develop a dopamine tolerance.

This can be a huge problem, because the things that don’t give you as much dopamine, don’t interest you any longer. And it’s much more difficult to motivate yourself to do them then. Those normal dopamine level activities for you become less fun because they don’t release as much dopamine as your brain used to, compared to the things that do release it in high amounts. So you tend to get involved only in high dopamine level activities/things that might be distancing you from your goals.

The concept of Dopamine Detox is simple – remove sources of external pleasure from life.

You are going to set aside one day, when you are going to avoid all the highly stimulating activities. You are going to stop flooding your brain with high amounts of dopamine and you are going to let your dopamine receptors recover.

For 1 whole day (or more), you will try to mentally relax as much as possible and do NOT do what’s on the list below:

• Masturbation

• Having intercourse

• Scrolling social media

• Playing video games

• Gambling, especially playing on slot machines

• Watching internet pornography

• Taking drugs

• Shopping

• Smoking cigarettes

• Consume caffeine

• Hanging out with friends

• Talking to anyone

• Reading any books

• Drinking alcohol

• Eating junk food

• Eating food based on high containment of artificial SUGAR

• Usage of phone or any electronic device (particularly no social media, no games, no movies, no music, no TV)

• Rather avoid strong power-boosting techniques like strong breathing techniques.

• It’s best not to talk, nor sing to not get into emotions.

These are some ideas that came to my mind, maybe you will find some more that would be relevant to your situation.

Do you get what I am trying to tell you? You have to get yourself to the state when you will feel extremely bored. Now, you can understand how somebody in rehab might feel. Best what you can do at this moment are given on the next page.

What is permitted on a dopamine detox day:

• Have a walk, especially alone and best is a pristine place like a forest, mountains, or lake.

• Meditate, especially mediate with observation. Silent Meditation (you will learn more about it next month). Quiet practice can drive you crazy because your mind will crave some experience. Be strong, and simply sit, turn yourself into observer mode and realise that you are not your thoughts, not emotions. You can start with 15 minutes, then have some breaks, and start over again (you will learn everything about meditation next month).

• Water fasting is one of the best ways to purify the body from toxins and parasites, bring back weight balance, slow ageing, improve cell recycling. What I notice is clarity, and peace of mind.

• Do light exercises, like easy yoga positions.

• Write down your thoughts in your journal.

• Reflect on your life and goals, write them down, talk about them, brainstorm.

• Write in your diary if you use those, no digital diary - it might cause distraction.

It is time to dive into yourself. Miracles happen in silence. Test it out.

Why would this even work?

Think about it this way. Let’s say that you’ve been eating every single meal at the best restaurant in your town. As a result, what happened is that those fancy meals become your new normal. If someone offered you a bowl of plain rice, you would probably refuse. It simply wouldn’t taste as good as your usual restaurant meal, but if you suddenly find yourself stranded on a desert island and you are starving, suddenly that bowl of plain rice doesn’t seem so bad.

That is what dopamine detox does.

It starves you of all the pleasure you usually get, and in turn, it makes those less satisfying activities more desirable. Teaches you patience and acceptance.

Dopamine detox works, because you become so bored, that boring stuff becomes more fun.

I am a supporter of hardcore measures. I truly believe that to overcome something - we have to face it. You can, of course, delete pleasure from your „schedule”, which gives you more dopamine injection, but I believe it is much more powerful to give 100% on this single day.

Our goal is to limit negative habits, at first. After a while, it will become NORMAL to permanently stop harming ourselves (and spontaneously, stop harming others as well), or at least have more control over life. Throughout the process, step by step, day by day. You should be more and more aware of your thoughts and mental processes. It is interesting that when you are aware enough you start realising straight away how you feel – it will give you a choice.

So ideally, you should avoid those behaviours, altogether or at least as much as possible.

You will be bored, but that’s our goal. It will let you connect to the things that will benefit you. Most of them are probably long-term activities, so as a reward for completing complex work you will get your dopamine injection.

The rule of planning is simple: always start with low dopamine things, and only when you finish them, you allow yourself to do some high dopamine activities.

Our goal is to revive control over ourselves. To give yourself a conscious choice. Some people will stop completely, some don’t – just individual decisions.

After a few processes, you will be able to prolong dopamine detox. Be stubborn! What I realized is important during the process, to be honest with oneself. Write down ideas, what challenges you the most and what exactly you want. You can ask yourself, your heart, soul, whatever you want to guide you through life and give you clues. Don’t demand the answer, instead - listen.

Afterwards the process, maybe you are ready to start forging your master habits. Make up your plan and put it into practice.

Remember to note down all your thoughts.