A primer on the topic.
Followers of myself, or those who have joined me from the dopamine detox subreddit page, will be very familiar with what dopamine is and what it does. For those who aren't, however, I want to clearly explain what it is, what it does, and how we can harness our body's natural ability to make us WANT to do certain tasks as opposed to being "lazy". Even if you are familiar already with the concepts I'll be talking about, I still want to make this article useful as a clear guide.
The chemical messenger.
Dopamine can be thought of as a chemical messenger for the central nervous system, but more specifically, is the chemical responsible for your brain and body's sense of reward and pleasure attained through any given action. Aside from that, it affects all areas of the body, in ways that aren't relevant to the topic, but a good summary can be found through this link if you're interested:
There are two pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the physical aspects of your reward centre, and those are the production and absorption of dopamine, but before I continue, I want to make a quick distinction. I will not be talking about issues relating to chemical disorders, such as depression and ADHD, that affect these two processes. Instead, I am focussing on aspects of a persons environment and habits, and how they contribute to the dopamine regulation. The kinds of practices I am looking at are no replacement for professional help if you think there's something wrong, but they can be used to assist you, should you be struggling (they have with me and I've suffered from both on and off).
Dopamine production.
It's not always clear what produces certain levels of dopamine for an individual, and while many activities may be obvious, having some awareness of the topic can help you work more out for yourself. It turns out that almost every activity will help your body produce varying amounts of dopamine, regardless of how small, but there are some obvious high earners. Evolutionarily it has developed as a motivational survival chemical, to drive your actions, with such things as getting food, procreating, building social networks (which help us feel safe), and plan for the future, helping us survive long-term. It's this planning part that separates us from the majority of the animal kingdom and has accelerated our evolution, but it is now under constant threat and is something many people struggle with.
In the age of the internet, we have supercharged these activities such as with the use of social media, easier access to processed food, porn and increased access to media. Before the internet was widely available, the best known abused activity was drug use, which cuts out the middleman and produces copious amounts of dopamine without you having to do anything (besides acquiring the drug). Many people feel trapped by the use of such stimulating activities, as they are designed to hook you in and exploit your dopamine reward centre, without sufficiently satisfying those survival instincts, often leaving us feeling unfulfilled. Now there's nothing wrong fundamentally with these activities, but due to their appeal, it can be very easy to build bad habits surrounding their use, and it's overuse that's the problem.
I mentioned that planning for the future is part of our natural instincts, and in the modern age this is simply things like goal-setting, financial planning, wanting a nice house and so on. It is something that while still a massive part of our thought processes, has been swept to the wayside to some extent with the introduction of more readily available sources of chemical reward. It doesn't mean that we don't and shouldn't derive pleasure from it, as we are hard-wired to want to do things that make us "successful" by modern standards. We are social creatures and many of us want to climb a ladder of some kind, even if that's just to be good at something.
Dopamine uptake and resistance.
When the body is flooded with such a chemical, it will do everything it can to use it, but it comes with a risk. Too much dopamine uptake can cause you to develop a natural resistance to it, much like with drug use. This is a key factor in why such example events as a day spent on your phone or binge-eating food can leave you feeling a bit empty, unsatisfied or unproductive at the end. Sure you are enjoying what you were doing, but your body gets to the point where it's had enough, or at the very least, finds it hard to appreciate the activities you are doing, especially the little things (specifically the things that give little reward, regardless of how important in your life).
Activities you once found fun can be a bit of a chore, and now the only thing you likely have the motivation to do is to carry on hitting the high reward activity that gave you the feeling in the first place. It's similar to gambling addiction, in that you might not want to, but nothing else gives you the same feeling, so you keep on doing it. Your life can fall apart, making you increasingly dependant on high dopamine activities for satisfaction. It can leave you feeling low, and in extreme cases depressed. This is why it's important to regulate what activities we do with moderation. It's also a crucial insight into understanding why and how we can use dopamine (or lack of it) to our advantage in productivity and/or feeling more balanced day-to-day.
Dopamine regulation.
I've explained that dopamine can make us feel unmotivated and depressed if abused, so let's look at how we can deliberately regulate dopamine. Imagine making two lists. One for what you know you should be doing, in order of importance, and one for what you want to be doing in order of desire. Include what you should be doing in the latter list, and you'll often notice your important tasks typically residing at the bottom. This is generally because a lot of work tasks don't produce a lot of dopamine to complete, so we need to identify a strategy to make them feel like they do.
Reward setting.
The first strategy, often common in dog training of all things, is simply setting rewards! If you can trick your brain into associating the completion of a task with getting a fixed reward, such as an hour of TV time, then you are more likely to feel positive about doing it. The difficulty with this is staying disciplined and not allowing yourself a reward without having done the task (or the system obviously fails). I personally do not have much success with reward setting, so I have limited experience with, but I'm sure there are plenty of resources available to help get it right online if you think it's for you.
Dopamine detoxing.
The second strategy, and one that I will go into more detail on, as well as provide a support network for, is dopamine detoxing. As the name suggests, this is about abstaining from most high reward activities on a chosen day of the week (or whenever seems most appropriate for you in terms of frequency. You can do it daily if you really wish to). What this does, given enough time, is help reset your natural baseline for dopamine uptake, causing even the smallest of things to bring you joy again. The goal is not to remove dopamine entirely from your day, but to ensure what you are doing is worth your time and that you aren't simply chasing instant gratification. Now either you can make a priority list such as the one I've mentioned to help you decide what to remove from your day, or you can use existing guidelines on what to abstain from.
Myself and the community I am a part of, follow guidelines set out by Andrew Kirby; A stoic YouTuber who was the first to make me treat such a practice with any real seriousness. His simple and community-supported approach has made the topic easy and accessible. It's the community focus that has really captured my attention. There are three tiers of detox type provided, but feel free to use whatever rules work for you. I prohibit for myself any activities involving screen use, eating processed food/sugar, or masturbation. I've started doing this every week on Sunday (along with the other detoxers in our support group), which is a great way to have the time and mental clarity to organise my personal life before the work week begins. It also allows me time to recharge my mental batteries and disconnect from social media, which has a litany of proven mental health benefits.
The things that have made me stick with this are the resources available and the people taking part. I never thought I would be a part of a group like this, but I equate it to an alcoholic's anonymous group, but for dopamine. It really does help to know that there will be people you are accountable to at the end of the day, and we have even self-organised a buddy system to make sure you have that accountability on an individual level. Here are some resources to get you going, but don't feel like you have to join the group to partake in a healthy practice:
You can find the community residing primarily on; https://www.reddit.com/r/DopamineDetoxing/
You can find the "mental momentum" video series for detoxing primers and information at;
Lastly, due to the unique computer only nature of the programming and digital design professions, I took the opportunity to set up our own Arkode discord server, which is acting as a support hub for these professions and those detoxing while being forced to use machines for work (we are inclusive of people not detoxing too of course!). We've wanted to do this for some time anyway, but the timing seemed right, and I believe this is the best value we as a company can deliver back to the industry while supporting a positive movement. Just use this invite link in-browser or in-app;
To make you seriously consider this, I want to share my experience with the practice. For one, I've made plenty of like-minded friends online as apart of our own server and the detox group, who are committed to bettering themselves. It's a really positive movement to be a part of that is backed by science and isn't managed like a cult. That alone is powerful. Even had I not met people though, I have still felt a sense of freedom on Sundays, which while it was uncomfortable at first and took some adjustment from both myself and my girlfriend, has really given me a stable basis from which I can look after my mental health with no external influences. I've been really looking after the house-share I live in, cooking, cleaning and just generally making my space a place I'm happy with.
This feeling has extended into my week too, as I am now comfortable spending more time away from my phone, and am more clear on my work goals. Motivation has been a struggle in quarantine, but detoxing has helped massively. Yes, I sometimes find myself bored, but that's a good thing! boredom can give you the drive to achieve important things for yourself and those around you. Embrace it, don't shy away. I've also been more conscious of my relationships with others, technology, and I've had more time to pursue simpler hobbies. For example, I've finally organised and digitised a CD collection I inherited from my Uncle passing away last year. It's been nice, in a strange way, to re-connect to something more human. An exploration of someone's entire music collection is something I doubt I would've done without the permission to give myself that free time. You have to know how to make the most of detoxing, don't get me wrong, and have a genuine desire to improve yourself for the practice to work, but to those stuck in the same cycles of media consumption or addiction, I can't recommend it enough.
I wanted to end on that note because I want to make this something tangible and something real. Far too many articles I've read remove the human element from things like this, and that's what other practices I've followed have been missing up until now. This is a group-based movement should you want the social aspect, even if it's just to check in with people once a week. Quarantine has been a lonely time for many, and this is a great way to make the most of it. I hope you have learnt something from this, or been able to see productivity with fresh eyes if you are coming from the subreddit. Being aware of dopamine and its effects, or detoxing from it won't give you productivity super-powers, but at the very least it's a very welcome change of pace for those I've spoken to. I wish you all the best of luck, and I hope to see you around through the resources I've listed. We're one of the fastest-growing collectives on the internet, and I hope you'll join us. Until next time everyone, have a nice time, and stay safe!