The Dopamine Detox: Definitive Guide
I’ll be the first to admit that “Dopamine Detox” has a weird connotation society has granted it. If you’re someone who has heard about this in the past and has refused to try it, maybe I can sway you in the other direction. As someone who has gone through an aggressive dopamine detox, I would like to share the benefits I’ve seen and achieved. With all that being said…
What is a Dopamine Detox?
A dopamine detox is a process in which a person actively tries to reduce the amount of dopamine in their brain to allow the neurotransmitter to return its levels to its natural state. Dopamine is the chemical (neurotransmitter) in your brain responsible for regulating your mood functions such as motivation, pleasure, and reward. Humans were designed through for millions of years to hunt, gather, and build to feel a sense of accomplishment. Today, we have smartphones that satisfy us when we slide up and icons roll onto the screen in a satisfying and pleasurable way. Technology today injects us with dopamine in extreme amounts. Every vibration in your pocket, instinctively reaching in, and checking the notification gives you a sense of relief and comfort. Dopamine is at work.
App companies such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok realize the dopamine saturations in the new generation’s brains are increasing, making it harder to satisfy your brain - leading to shorter attention spans; making it hard to compete for your focus - thus the rise of short-form videos (Tiktoks and shorts).
What is the outcome of a Dopamine Detox?
The first and most notable effect is you gain motivation to be productive. When you deprive yourself of watching TV and video games, it sucks initially but once you get over it, you don’t miss it. You don’t. You start to look forward to working on your brand and seeing the progress you can make.
The Dopamine Detox also enables you to take control over your focus and stay focused for hours at a time, allowing you to put in focused work into skills and personal development. It is estimated that it takes 15 minutes to get into “the zone” and every time you check your phone, this timer resets. It’s not hard to believe that most people never actually get into “the zone”, which is where you learn the most and perform the best.
Although the focus is a huge benefit, the real power then comes in the form of time management. Allow me to explain:
Each day has 24 hours.
8 hours are spent sleeping (I sleep 7 hours)
8 hours are spent working (If you have a 9-5)
That leaves you with 8 hours to live, shower, go to the gym, eat, and commute.
That 8-hour chunk is A LOT of time, and how do most people spend it? They get home from work, they eat dinner and watch TV or a movie until they fall asleep. In actuality, it would be beneficial to work on your own personal brand/business which just so happens to be the only way to achieve financial free time in a reasonable amount of time. Instead of watching TV or falling asleep to Adventure Time eating pretzels, you could read a book, expand your vocabulary, learn graphic design, learn SEO, learn how to edit videos, learn how to make a great product, learn about real estate and its tax incentives, practice your drawing, the list goes on. The idea is that most people are done for the day when they get off work and then complain that their life sucks because they live in a loop of work, consumption, and sleep. Long term, it is beneficial to work, produce, and sleep.
Combining both controlled focus and time management, you get accelerated personal development. It is said to take about 20 straight hours of focused work or “in the zone” work to learn 90% of any skill. If you spent even 1 focused hour a day eating, living, and breathing a single skill, you’d learn it at a high enough proficiency to sell your work after roughly 3 weeks. Skill learning is logarithmic, so your largest strides are in the first few hours, and the speed at which you learn that skill diminishes as time put into it increases. If you put in 2 hours a day working on a skill, you’d learn the skill in 1 ½ weeks and if you manage to put in 6 hours a day, you’d be proficient in 3 days and some change. Instruments such as the trumpet are impossible to toot for 6 hours a day. It takes years to build up the lip muscles required to be a professional but online profitable skills don’t require muscles to train. This is why an online business where you can sell sought-after online skills that you learn is ideal.
How to start a dopamine detox?
There is no need to overcomplicate it. There are many sources of dopamine sources and their various fixes.
Technology
No TV, Turn off phone notifications (except for important/emergency contacts), no social media. No video games. Period.
When working, put the phone in a separate room so you aren’t tempted to look at it. Not a reason to look at it anyway since there aren't any social media apps to look at.
Food
It’s no secret you get enjoyment from sugar and indulging in your favorite foods.
Cut out junk food, and try to eat clean. I eat only eggs, chicken, and Oikos Triple Zero to ensure I get my body weight in g’s of protein. My groceries are also cheap since I’m not buying ingredients for variety.
Drugs
No weed, psychedelics, alcohol, (and if you want, caffeine). All of these are drugs that hinder your ability to perform in the gym and make you feel sluggish, lazy, stupid, and unconcerned. Furthermore, drugs drain your finances, calculate how much money you spend per month or even weekly on vapes, alc, etc. Furtherfurthermore, I don’t think people realize how many calories alcohol contains, specifically beer. Red wine is good for you. Just have some restraint and save it for weekends.
Society
No hanging out with friends. This is a tough one especially if you have obligations and it’s hard to balance with a significant other. The reason being is that you only have 8 hours to yourself in a day. If you want to hang out with friends, hang out with them on the weekends when you’re most likely to be relaxed on your detox anyway.
Sleep
You need to go to sleep on time every time, with no exceptions. Your brain needs it and if you’re following the 8-hour chunks and not watching TV to keep you up, you should be doing this anyway. I go to bed no later than midnight every night and my alarm goes off at 7 every morning. If I stayed up any later than 12, I would feel miserable when I woke up at 7. Don’t stay up, it’s never worth it. It will surely knock you off your entire schedule
The result of removing all of these things willingly is that when you sit on the couch… what are you going to do? You’re going to be bored out of your mind so you might as well work on something. That’s the beauty of it. The first few weeks are rough but after 2 weeks, you have a habit, and after a month your dopamine is reset to its natural state and you find pleasure in your work. This is when you start looking forward to growing as a person and you break the loop of coming home from work and wasting away in an earn-spend cycle, keeping you stuck with your boring 9-5 and living a miserable life. I get that sounds appealing to some people and those are the people to who this doesn’t concern.
Lastly, I would like to say you can be as lenient or strict with your rules as you’d like. The hard-core Dopamine Detox includes only cold showers, only eating healthy, no masturbation, exercise at least 4 times a week, no drugs (or alcohol) of any kind, no tv, no hanging out with friends at all (HUGE TIME COMMITMENT), and assigning yourself a production quota to meet every week. I would strongly encourage anyone seriously interested in the dopamine detox to start with the strict one so that when you do eventually start slipping back to your original lifestyle, your brain can notice a difference in “then-now” much faster and catch the fact that you’re slipping and remind you to get back on track. As soon as you incorporate leniency, it takes a lot of self-discipline to not fall entirely. It’ll start with cheat days on weekends. Then you drink on a Tuesday. Then maybe a Friday. Then it starts happening 3 nights a week consistently. Just some food for thought.
Doesn’t this strip the enjoyment out of life?
No. As someone who has done this, I can vouch that people who ask this very question think very short term. This isn’t new though, as America as a whole thinks this same way, especially about financials. Let me hit you with an example:
I very much like cake. I walk into my office only to see… a slice of cake. I have two options. Have a slice. Or refuse a slice.
Have a slice:
I indulge in this piece of cake that dances on my tastebuds for 30 seconds. Afterward, I regretted the decision because I remembered I’m on a diet and the cake makes me feel bloated for the next 2 hours.
Refuse a slice:
I maintain my natural dopamine levels, I work hard throughout the day, and I’m none the wiser as to if that cake even tastes good or not.
The problem is that people would still have a slice over and over. After all, they rank the short-term enjoyment of having the cake in their mouth over the long-term consequences of weight gain because they don’t instantly see its effects. I have personally adopted the dopamine detox as my permanent way of living with a twist that has served me well. I lost 50 lbs in 5 months with this method. I am 6’4, I started at 235 lbs and today I’m 177 lbs (see images below). I’ve noticed people treating me better, I have an amazing girlfriend, I’m overall more confident, and I have an even bigger hunger for success which has led me to this blog. You can’t tell me you don’t want the story I have. I refuse instant gratification because I know at the end of the day I will feel the same when I wake up. Think long term and you’ll maybe skip on that next piece of cake.
Why does the Dopamine Detox matter?
Depending on the type of person you are and your level of aspiration, this may not matter to you at all so go ahead and keep watching videos and eating your chips. For those of you who are unsatisfied with your position in life and wish to develop your self-discipline skills to make a consistent change, this is for you. The importance of the dopamine detox is different for everyone but it’s paramount that you have very solid reasoning for it. Make sure it’s personal and you would care if you fail. Understand that if you break the detox, those aspirations you have will never come true.
What drives me to stay consistent is knowing for every second I’m not working, I know someone else is. It causes me pain to feel like I’m falling behind knowing I can put in the effort required to keep up or stay ahead.
I want to say thank you to everyone who has read all the way through. While I do recommend starting with the strict detox, I think it’s important to find balance as you train your self-discipline to be strong enough to handle leniencies. I would like to think everyone can do it but I know it takes a specific amount of mental scarring and capacity to achieve such a lifestyle change. If you fail to succeed, find the cause and correct it. Anyone who achieves this has my respect and I can trust them to be consistent.
It’s important to know that this isn’t just something you do for a month at a time or every so often. This is a lifestyle change but it’s the change nobody wants to make. This is the change people avoid by trying to find “easier” alternatives such as signing up for weight watchers or watching youtube videos on how to make money online fast. Don’t take shortcuts. The Dopamine Detox is the definition of healthy living, you get results equivalent to your effort.
