Today we’re seeing increased rates of lethargy, depression, anxiety, and suicide all over
the world (especially in wealthier nations). One reason thought to be a contributing cause
is the overstimulation of the dopamine reward pathway through addictive products like social
media, junk food, drugs and alcohol, porn, streaming services, and more. Overstimulation
of the dopamine reward pathway appears to lead to dopamine-deficit brain states which,
in turn, contributes feels of depression, loss of motivation, anxiety, and poor overall
sense of well-being.
This has led to the idea and practice of the ‘dopamine fast’ or dopamine detoxing.
Dopamine detoxing is a behavior strategy thought to reset the dopamine system by abstaining
from pleasure-producing activities for a period of time.
Now, to date, there have been no studies or papers suggesting that it’s actually possible
to fully reset one’s dopamine system making the dopamine detox more of a fad than true
evidence-based practice.
However, many studies about how dopamine works are emerging which we can pull from to do
things like learn to schedule dopamine releases, understand and correctly combat addictive
behaviors that lead to dopamine deficits, and even increase the amount of dopamine for
a better sense of well-being.
In this video, I’ll provide what is hopefully an easy-to-understand and concise overview
of dopamine and the real evidence-based practices around dopamine detoxes and fixing dopamine
deficit states. This includes what dopamine is and how it works, why many people are falling
into states of dopamine deficits, and the real evidence-based practices you can do to
regain more motivation and well-being in life.
As a quick note, I’m not a doctor nor try to play one, so before making any drastic
changes to your life please consult a licensed professional and make sure to read the studies
mentioned in this video or in the description below for yourself.
First, dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter or chemical messenger. Your body makes it,
and your nervous system uses it to send messages between nerve cells. Too much or too little
of it can lead to a vast range of health issues.
You may think dopamine is the main chemical of pleasure, but really the current opinion
in pharmacology is that dopamine instead confers motivational salience, or the willingness
to expend effort to reach goals and gain rewards.
Although it does contribute to feelings of pleasure, dopamine can be thought of more
as the motivation molecule.
Too little dopamine can leave you unfocused, unmotivated, lethargic, and even depressed.
It’s so critical to motivation that in a study dopamine-deficient lab mice lack the
motivation to eat when placed by food just a few inches away.
It’s understandable why the mice were in a dopamine deficit state, but why are so many
people now reportedly falling into similar states today?
Historian David T. Courtwright was one of the first to clearly articulate the issue
with his idea of ‘Limbic Capitalism’ in the book The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits
Became Big Business.
Essentially more and more global industries today are profiting by encouraging and manipulating
excessive consumption and even addiction of their products and services. Such examples
drugs like street drugs, drugs from pharmaceutical companies, and other addictive consumables
like alcohol and coffee, gambling now including sports gambling, porn, social media, addictive
junk food, streaming services, and much more.
Not only are the products found in these industries readily available for little or no cost, but
are manipulated in a way to suck as much attention and energy as possible from us by manipulating
dopamine reward pathways.
Evolutionary psychologists believe humans are wired to live in environments of scarcity
as the human race had to for hundreds of thousands of years. Our brains are not well equipped
to deal with this sudden abundance of free dopamine-producing goods. So, we spend our
time and energy interacting with these addictive products more and more, which then leads to
dopamine deficit states in the brain.
How exactly?
In the book Dopamin Nation, Psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke describes how this has to do with
dopamine having a pleasure and pain component to it.
See, when we first get likes and shares on a photo on Instagram for instance, dopamine
is released in the brain motivating us to check Instagram again for that same reward.
After all, addictive things cause dopamine levels to spike, some more than others. The
more we use the addictive thing, the more our brain weakens the pleasure response we
get from it while keeping the pain or craving and agitation that motivates us to need it.
Dopamine receptors are relatively fragile and this bombardment can damage them or even
stimulate them to death. This is a process called downregulation.
That means you’ll crave more of the addictive substance, in this case checking Instagram
on your phone, but get less pleasure out of it and other activities, making you abuse
it more and more.
Think of it this way. Dopamine contains pleasure and a pain side as illustrated in this simplistic
picture. When released for the first time, both are in homeostasis but as we continue
to use that drug or addiction of choice, the pleasure wears off leaving more pain or craving
as the brain tries to keep us in homeostasis and balance.
The result is the body craving the addictive substance for long periods during the day,
and not experiencing much pleasure and enjoyment from the said substance or other less addictive
activities that used to give us pleasure.
This, if damaging enough, then leads to mental states of depression, anhedonia, anxiety.
So, if you find yourself in such a state, what can we do to restore healthy, fully function
levels of dopamine?
Again, the answer is a bit more complicating than just fasting from all pleasure-producing
activities for a few days and ‘rebooting’ your dopamine system. However, research is
indicating by 1., reregulating dopamine levels and then 2., increasing dopamine in the body,
you can fix potential dopamine brain deficits and improve subjective well-being.
Part 1. is to reregulate and time the release of dopamine in the body.
If you’re in this dopamine deficient state, chances are one or more addictive activities
you do throughout the day are contributing to this state whether it’s social media
use, gambling, binge eating, etc.
You’ll have to identify these main behaviors and if they are things you don’t want to
be spending the bulk of your motivation on, put in place steps to get rid of them or significantly
limit their use.
So, note that regulating dopamine is about balance in life, not relentlessly accomplishing
tasks. Restricting all pleasurable activities, not enjoying your accomplishments, and not
taking time to live in the moment isn’t going to help your sense of well-being.
You don’t necessarily need to remove these addictive behaviors permanently from your
life. It may be enough just to limit the amount of time you use them.
To begin reregulating dopamine deficits, first write down what addictive behaviors you want
to change and you think are detrimental to your life.
Then, through a process of CBT plus forced separation, you begin abstaining from the
things or people causing the addictive behavior.
Now, CBT is a form of psychological treatment that includes a wide variety of practices
and techniques. At its core CBT states that psychological problems are based, unhelpful
ways of thinking and learned patterns of unhelpful behavior.
In this case, you first need to acknowledge that the addictive behavior is partially or
perhaps fully out of your control, and you need to change the way you think about it
to then change your behavior around it. In other words, simply using willpower alone
and approaching the addiction the same way you have been isn’t going to work long-term.
We need new thoughts and behaviors surrounding the addictive elements.
Next, start to become mindful of when the craving or urge to use the addictive substance
happens and acknowledge when the craving starts.
Then, instead of blindly giving in to the craving like before, engage in a new routine
that has to do with diverting attention away from the craving.
Instead of giving in to that urge to smoke dope or gamble online, you’re going to acknowledge
the craving to do so, engage in another activity, something beneficial long-term to your life
like exercising or reading, to replace it.
To ensure you don’t relapse into the addictive process, you can forcible separate yourself
from the thing causing your addiction.
If you’re addicted to social media or internet sites, install parental blockers or page blocking
extensions that require passwords and significant work to disable.
If you smoke, throw out all cigarettes. If you eat too much junk food, through junk food
away. Yes, you can still go buy some, but now the process of indulging in that craving
becomes harder now that you have to expend much more energy to satisfy the craving.
Now, of course, addiction is a spectrum and there may be some people who are so addicted
they need intense intervention. But for many people suffering products that have to do
with this ‘Limbic Capitalistic’ idea, you can probably make significant behavioral
changes just on your own.
It appears about 30 days or more is needed for the brain to begin adjusting to the new
behavior and to rest reward pathways. So, abstaining from your addiction of choice for
a week or two won’t have any effect. You’ll start feeling better in 30 days, then need
to make sure not to relapse and keep your improved behavior strategy in place for the
rest of your life.
Also, you need to be conscious of when you do spike or surge dopamine since it will inevitably
happen again. For instance, if you engage in a reward and spike dopamine before engaging
in a difficult task, focusing and being motivated to accomplish the task will become much harder.
Neuroscientist Andrewl D. Huberman suggests not spiking dopamine before engaging in something
that will require effort and motivation, but instead, trying to spike dopamine from the
effort itself.
In other words, don’t reward yourself before or even after doing the task. Instead, make
the task the reward. Make your job or whatever it is your trying to accomplish engaging and
fun the best you can.
Focus on enjoying the journey, i.e. writing a novel or lifting weights, not necessarily
the destination, i.e. rewarding yourself for publishing your first book or savoring winning
a bodybuilding competition.
You’ll have to do some existential-type thinking here and decide if you want your
life to primarily be about engaging in short-term pleasures with little overall meaning like
video games, gambling, drugs, etc.
Or have a mix of meaning and happiness in life, meaning putting away some of the more
hedonistic activities for activities give a sense of purpose greater than yourself like
working a job that’s meaningful to you or volunteering.
Part Two to fixing dopamine deficiencies is to increase the amount of dopamine in the
brain. Now by increasing dopamine, researchers mean one of the following: more dopamine is
being made, dopamine breakdown is slowing down, more dopamine is being recirculated,
more dopamine receptors are being created, existing dopamine receptors are working better.
Here are several ideas you can try that have been found to work in some individuals based
on research.
Idea 1. is to do physically or mentally hard challenges. As discussed by Dr. Lembke, by
pressing on the pleasure side of the brain to produce more pain, one can press on the
pain side to produce more pleasure. The brain is always trying to find homeostasis.
One idea of pressing on the ‘pain’ side of the brain is to take ice baths or cold
showers in the morning. Taking a shower with 14°C/57°F water can increase dopamine substantially
in some people, up to 250%.
Try engaging in hard, but ultimately beneficial tasks that will not only help you achieve
goals but increase pleasure while doing them like weight lifting, reading a hard-to-understand,
but profound work of literature, and more.
Idea 2. Improve your diet. Specifically, try to consume more l-tyrosine, an amino acid
that is the precursor to dopamine. You can do this by increasing healthy protein intake
with almonds, eggs, fish, and chicken and checking to see if you are deficient in one
or more of the cofactors needed to turn l-tyrosine into dopamine, such as vitamin B6, vitamin
B9, copper, zinc, or iron.
Also, it may help to reduce the number of saturated fats in your diet. One study found
that rats that consumed 50% of their calories from saturated fat had reduced dopamine signaling
in the reward areas of their brain, compared to animals receiving the same amount of calories
from unsaturated fat.
Idea 3. Get Adequate Sleep
New research is suggesting that lack of sleep can reduce the number of dopamine receptors.
Not only can prolonged poor sleeping habits hurt, but perhaps even
one night of sleep deprivation results in the downregulation of dopamine receptors.
Look into sleeping longer and getting a better quality of sleep.
Idea 4. Spend more time in Sunshine
Science consistently shows that low exposure to sunshine can reduce levels of mood-boosting
neurotransmitters including dopamine. One study in 68 healthy adults found that those
who received the most sunlight exposure in the previous 30 days had the highest density
of dopamine receptors in the reward and movement regions of their brains.
So, try taking walks outdoors more.
Idea 5. Exercise Regularly
More results are starting to come out that exercise not only improves overall mood but
can increase dopamine levels in humans.
Specifically, you should go for sustained exercise over a period of time, like planning
on exercising constantly three days out of the week for an Hour. For instance, one three-month
study found that performing one hour of yoga six days per week significantly increased
dopamine levels
More research needs to be done to address what specific exercises and what intensity
works best. But incorporating some sort of physical exercise program on a weekly basis
can come with a myriad of health benefits, not just increased dopamine.
Now, there is far more to how dopamine works and the ideas surrounding dopamine detoxes,
but hopefully, this video provided some helpful introductory information on the topic.
As of today, it seems companies that engage in this limbic capitalistic approach to business
show no signs of slowing down, and only improving their hold on our attention and energy.
Hopefully, some of the information presented here was helpful, and again if you feel you
suffer from deficits or imbalances in dopamine, consult with a licensed professional and read
studies for yourself. It appears the ability to understand and regulate dopamine and other
neurotransmitters can greatly improve the quality
of your life.