7 Benefits of a Dopamine Detox: Why Do it?
#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.
That’s how free you really are.
Fasting from dopamine and building better habits will strengthen your discipline and allow you to truly be free.
#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.
After all, everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.
#3 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.
#4 Increase Your Long-Term Fulfillment / Meaning
There are two paths you can follow in life:
- A life where you’re addicted to comfort. You make decisions by avoiding short-term pain and seeking pleasure.
- 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 .
#5 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.
#6 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.
#7 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.
How You’ll Feel on a Dopamine Detox
Here are some things I experience on dopamine fasts:
- My mind is quiet but focused. Like an ocean with an oil spill, your mind is polluted. Once you lift out the dopamine it will be like a clear reef.
- At times, I crave the dopamine. It feels like the monkey inside my brain crying in pain. But weirdly it feels good. I meditate on it. I control it. And I starve it.
- I experience massive insights. About business. About life. About myself. I’m pretty sure I cured cancer but forgot to write it down. When you clear out weeds, you allow flowers to blossom.
- I realize how much of a waste of time these shallow pleasures are.
- I notice more beauty around me. Things I don’t usually experience when I’m glued to my phone. Even the plants were beautiful. This is also why I think it’s so unethical that vegans eat them…
Your brain has been hijacked.
Big food companies have created foods that addict you.
Social media companies have created notifications that addict you.
Scientists have created porn that you crave.
It’s time for the way out. And that way out is fasting.
