Dopamine Detox for a Week

[IJB063]

I’m gonna stick to a “dopamine detox” for a week starting from

[13/06/20]

Ending on

[20/06/20]

A Dopamine Detox is basically the avoidance of all base vices, as to deliberately make yourself bored to resensitize yourself to experience, and reset the chemical soup in your mind so that you’re motivated again to do actual productive things.

To get yourself out of your rut and to become productive you need boredom or "dopaminergic ammo" to give yourself the neuro chemical desire to actually step outside of your comfort zone. Our culture is a "novelty culture", which is a built around hooking in to your brain and keeping you constantly stimulated in a zombie like trance, so that people can extract money from you.

What boring yourself does is starves those pathways and resets the mind out of that zombie like trance. So here are the rules.

What I Can do

1. Meditate
2. Read
3. Write
4. Exercise 

What I Can’t do

1. Use the Internet
2. Watch Television 
3. Use Social Media
4. Socialising 
5. Use any Screen 
6. Eat Junk Food
7. No Substances
8. No Music

Etc...

Anything that I find stimulating is banned. Until 20/06/20, then I can slowly give myself back vices and keep them in a schedule, to find it easier for me to make my schedule stick.

 

[Preety_India]

@IJB063  this looks awesome to me. Even I get hooked to the television especially because of this corona. 

 

I will add this to my journal. 

And you're right about systems exploiting our dopamine energy for money making. 

Thanks for sharing btw

 

 

[IJB063]

@Preety_India

No problem, hope you find it useful 

[Aquarius]

3 hours ago, IJB063 said:

@Preety_India

No problem, hope you find it useful 

For me at least, it really is useful! I'm gonna try this, except I'm going to allow myself to do things on my computer and internet, because I work digitally a lot. But only specific work related things.  

[IJB063]

@Aquarius

5 hours ago, Aquarius said:

For me at least, it really is useful! I'm gonna try this, except I'm going to allow myself to do things on my computer and internet, because I work digitally a lot. But only specific work related things.  

Good Stuff ?

Simply, all you’re doing in a dopamine detox is avoiding anything stimulating, the only thing stimulating I’ll allow myself is coffee, I don’t trust myself to use the internet even if it’s originally to do something productive because I’ll inevitably end up surfing the web or going on YouTube...

Work is work though, you have to keep the lights on

 

 

[kag101]

Dude, that looks way too rigid... 

[Shiva99]

Gotta start this soon. I've been planning on doing it for some weeks now, but i'm always putting it off hehehe.

[Edan]

@IJB063 will you be abstaining from sex/masterbation too?

[IJB063]

@kag101

On 13/06/2020 at 3:48 PM, kag101 said:

Dude, that looks way too rigid... 

Yes, that’s the point it’s supposed to be rigid, kinda breaking the rules with this now, but this will be the only time I check this forum, just wanted to update a thread and needed to use the internet to send an email, besides that I haven’t broken the curfew 

On 13/06/2020 at 8:16 PM, Edan said:

@IJB063 will you be abstaining from sex/masterbation too?

Yes, no sex or masturbation either

Its the avoidance of anything stimulating, both are

[Aquarius]

I realised I only do productive things so I stopped doing this challange. I'm too good at being an awesome productive human being lol.  

[kag101]

On 15/06/2020 at 0:15 PM, IJB063 said:

Yes, that’s the point it’s supposed to be rigid, kinda breaking the rules with this now, but this will be the only time I check this forum, just wanted to update a thread and needed to use the internet to send an email, besides that I haven’t broken the curfew 

My guess is, after this challenge is done, you will fall back into those habits even stronger. 

Repression generates obsession.

I highly recommend this episode. It is my personal favorite.

 

[IJB063]

Update

[20/06/20]

Finished the dopamine detox, it was a lot harder than I expected, this is the longest I’ve done it, before I’d only had done it over the weekend 

Some quick notes of the top of my head, I failed yesterday, so I wouldn’t even consider the whole dopamine detox a success, I just caved in and said fuck it, and I failed a few times throughout the week, checking my phone quickly, going on Facebook, listening to music, it started out from first I let myself play online chess, at the start I didn’t want to use the internet whatsoever, but I gave myself that exception, when things got really boring. Than I said I can use YouTube to watch music tutorials so I can practice guitar over the week, but when I allowed myself on YouTube I inevitably started watching stupid videos that I shouldn’t have. Over all I hugely cut of most of my bad habits, I hadn’t played VideoGames the entire week until yesterday, neither had I watched TV. I haven’t drink alcohol or smoked week this entire week. 

What I found difficult is with Covid shutting everything down I’ve been stuck in the house, with nothing to do besides play VideoGames and watch TV etc... so to eliminate that leaves me with a lot of time with nothing to do. I can meditate the entire day, neither can I exercise, so the entire first 3 days most of the day was spent doing literally nothing, it’s strange to see how nuch time I spend on my phone or in front of a screen, it’s actually pretty warped when you think about it.

@kag101

I think I agree with what you said Kag, repression creates obsession. 

Though I don’t think there is anything bad with avoid stimulating as I do feel better over all, it’s just it was a constant battle and I did backslide. I watch that video at some point today, thank you for the recommendation 

Overall I might attempt something like this again but I’m going to plan what I’ll be doing in the days better, and I think it would be better if I remove my phone, computer or TV from the house to stop the constant temptation to use these things. 

@Aquarius

Congrats, you made it a full day, you did better than I expected 

 

[lmfao]

Nice, I'll try this in some form

[Moreira]

Sorry for necroing this post. I'm actually depressed due to abuse of videogames and want to make a dopa-detox.

But the main problem I have is that I dont know what to do with so much free time.

I can meditate 1-2 hours, read some books, go to the gym... but the rest of the day? If I dont do things I get very anxious.

[IJB063]

@Moreira

Use incremental steps.

You can’t jump into the deep end of the pool when you can’t swim. You can’t run a marathon on a broken leg, you gotta wait for the leg to fix.

There’s no shame in starting small and working your way up, it’s even more impressive as it takes honesty and humility.

Your anxiety is probably related to your addictions, when you begin to shed those you’ll become less anxious.

It’s kill me to meditate for 1-2 hours in one sitting, when I did this dopamine detox I read the entirety of 1984, so if you take the time to do one and have a book you can really get into it. 

See me allowing myself to read is still a cop out because it’s still stimulating but I allowed myself that much stimulation as it’s better than playing VideoGames for 8 hours in a row, and I’d be more inclined to do that if I was going all in.

So just test it out for a day and see what you can do to fill in the time.

13 hours ago, Moreira said:

But the main problem I have is that I dont know what to do with so much free time.

This I found to be the most difficult thing too, that’s why I failed on the 5-7 days. As at some points I was just at home doing nothing for hours but I’m feeling much better now than I did before and I’m working on my habits.

Also a side note, if your depressed I’d recommend not doing a dopamine detox as it could exasperate it as your going to be stuck in your head. Instead just work on lowering how much VideoGames you play each day and meditate slightly more (also don’t recommenced meditation when your depressed) and start exercising, but some equipment and weights for your home if you haven’t already. 

The best way to work on your anxiety is to expose yourself to it, there is no running away from anxiety.