so i went on a dopamine 'detox'
a 7 day digital diary of no scrolling, no shopping, no music, no podcasts....
I’m on a morning run with charlotte when the idea of a dopamine detox starts to take hold. We’re doing a loop around central park, and the monotony of running is one of the only consistent thing that helps me clear my head. The past few months I’ve been grappling with the push and pull of setting hard goals for myself and beating myself up when I don’t achieve perfect execution. It feels like I’m pushing against the tide every day only to eke out the tiniest slivers of progress.
My biggest gripe is I feel like I don’t have time to do everything I want to get accomplished in a day. Starting with the things that set me up to have a good day (wake up early, pilates, clean my apartment), to having said good day (get through the inbox, learn something new, call my loved ones) but also trying to build equity in myself (reading for fun, getting better at running, writing this blog). Most days it feels like I am barely scraping by. But apparently I also have all the time in the world according to my 4-6 hours screen time every day (side note — I have no idea what’s considered “normal” for screen times… 4-6 hours feels high but I’d love to hear what you all think )
Charlotte says sometimes it’s better to just abstain completely than to perpetually self discipline your way out of bad habits. Said differently, it’s harder to turn down the second glass of wine when you’re already a feeling a bit cheeky from the first. I’ve been going the atomic habits route for the past few years with only atomically better outcomes, so the idea of going cold turkey intrigues me.
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Turns out the science of a dopamine detox is more pseudoscience than rigorous meta-analysis, but I find the underlying principle of abstaining from bad habits to be admirable. The dopamine detox I chose to embark on was more of a choose-your-own-adventure abstinence centered around cutting out the modern indulgences of any chronically online 20/30-something — mostly based on emma chamberlain’s dopamine detox from earlier this year — with the goal of developing healthy habits to integrate into my daily routine post detox.
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Monday
AM: Monday starts off so strong that it’s almost inevitable that it ends in the proverbial tears before bedtime. I wake up at 6am and traipse straight downstairs to sit on my couch and stare listlessly out into the abyss while waiting for my 6:20am alarm to hit (normally i’d spend the time scrolling). The second morning alarm jolts me into productivity where I wrap up writing my blog — which in a cruel twist of faith is about shopping without being able to actually online shop. I’m rushing to hit a 7am deadline to leave for a barry’s class so physically don’t have the time to reach for my phone.
I don’t go to barry’s that often anymore and forget how much it takes it out of me. I hit the runs too hard, and then realize I’ve forgotten to bring my makeup and go to work feeling lightly disheveled but in relatively good spirits. I spend the commute doing my duolingo and accidentally taking the wrong train. At work, I make myself my office breakfast (english muffin, jam, pb) and the morning is interspersed with enough meetings that I don’t really miss my phone.
PM: Monday afternoon hits me like an absolute truck. I think it’s the combination of barrys and not getting great nights sleep but I feel absolutely exhausted by the time 2pm rolls around. I stalk the office for a mid-day pick me up but end up going for a walk for an oat milk cap (which btw is so much last satisfying than a coffee cake or a quick social media scroll). The walk home from work helps a bit but what really sucks is not being able to lay in bed and turn my brain off to watch dumb videos. Instead I facetime some friends, eat leftovers and type out this post. Monday evening is bachelor night at dini’s which is my only saving grace — screen time with friends doesn’t count (hey I literally make the rules) and while I have never myself been a ‘bachelor’ girl, I am grateful for the mindlessness of reality tv.
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Tuesday
AM: Getting out of bed this morning proves tough without a little dose of dopamine to get the day going. Usually I put on some music to pull myself from sleep, so having to wake up and get ready for pilates in silence is viscerally painful.
PM: Again the afternoon slump is where I really get hit hard with wanting to scroll social media for something to satiate my fatigue. What’s interesting is that the habit to reach for my phone is still there — except I find myself mindlessly refreshing my inboxes while trying to avoid the promotions tab brimming with summer sales. I find it comically capitalistic of me to use email as my entertainment of choice, but I guess my threshold for novelty on a detox is just that low.
I have to get my nails done before I leave the city, but to be honest the prospect of sitting in a nail salon with nothing to entertain me for an hour scares me. I feel naked walking to my appointment without headphones in and make mental note of every person I pass that looks around my age. Not a single one passes without headphones in or a phone in their hands.
I read this incredibly timely and interesting post in maybe baby that observes that so many scenarios in our daily lives are artificially set to music. We’re obsessed with trying to manufacture the precise mood for every single daily ritual — “vibe engineering” mundane activities from “songs to sing in the shower” to “morning commute” and “sad hour”. Haley argues that doing so is, in some respects, hedonistic because our soundtracks ultimately distracts us from connecting to the organic soundscapes of the real world. While everyone is entitled to their ‘main character moments’, who are we to decide what we need to hear or feel at every single moment?
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Wednesday
AM: Another barry’s class, this time with duncan (I bought a 4 pack that was shortly expiring) so the rush out the door in the morning is what keeps me from needing my morning dopamine. I’m running late (again) so it’s a half asleep jog to barry’s with two full tote bags of clothes and laptops.
Turns out if you ever wanted to see every person you could run into in the downtown circuit in one room, you just need to open the door to a 7.20am barry’s class. Jack, Duncan and I go for a serendipitous post-class smoothie while I try to explain to them how I’m not having a meltdown, but spending the week abstaining from dopamine. I find myself talking in circles but honestly I don’t even fully know why I’m doing this to myself. Part of me just likes misery, I suppose. This makes more sense to the boys.
PM: I’m leaving for a weekend trip today, and the time period leading up to a vacation always feels like I’m a kid again, too excited to do anything except wait for the time to pass. Exactly an hour before I have to leave my apartment, I make a last minute dash to the tailor to drop off some alterations so I have something to look forward to when I get back. When I get back with time to spare I collapse on my couch only to regain consciousness realizing I’m mid-scroll into an instagram story. It gives me the icks that social media is muscle memory at this point: if I close my eyes, my fingers know the exact movements and keystrocks to pull up the latest pictures of someone’s Thursday night dinner at Raf’s.
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Thursday
AM: Waking up in a new space helps with forming new habits, or so I read in atomic habits. Thursday I wake up at the beach and think the theory holds because I’m too absorbed in novel stimuli to need distractions. I go for a 5 mile jog without headphones in, which is a new habit I picked up this year. Except running in the barrier islands is a humid slog and the last 2 miles are an unending stretch of back roads that make me feel like I’m stuck in a loop.
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Friday
AM: Not being able to rely on my phone for little hits of dopamine make me acutely aware of how often when I’m feeling a little stressed, a little anxious, a little bored I reach for the colorful little apps to soothe my monkey brain. It’s insane because most of the time I’m just reaching for new stimulus, and new information to pack into my brain so that those bad feelings get squished into the little corners of my brain while my conscious mind is distracted by completely frivolous information. It’s like opening all these new tabs in chrome until all you have are all these half baked ideas staring back at you.
PM: No matter how hard I try, I can’t fall asleep — my mind does the thing where it starts racing, wide awake and looking for trouble. Heather havrilesky says that some days our brains are just looking for rejection out there. Usually it’s masked as an innocuous scroll on social media, but other times it’s just feeling like every conversation is an invitation to fight and every moment is a reason to feel sad and misunderstood.
It genuinely didn’t occur to me until a few years ago that just because your brain wants to be sad doesn’t mean that it’s an accurate reflection of your reality — rather, you can notice those little voices and choose to not gratify them. Sometimes our brains just are wired to work against us: we have to be conscious enough to recognize it and persistent in choosing to undo those neural pathways.
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Saturday
AM: It’s 6am on a saturday and I’m awake because every one else in the house is getting up to do their long runs. I’m the only one not training for a race, but I have a deadly combo of being insane and crippling fomo so I decide to join in.
The night before we watched the ‘air jordan’ sports biography on netflix — the cinematic turning point is the scene where sonny (nike baskeball scout) asks phil knight (founder of nike) what made him change his mind to sign off on betting the entire basketball budget on michael jordan. Phil turns around and shrugs it off, “I went for a run”.
Running has always been a way for me to clear my head, and the past few months I’ve done it with few distractions: no musics, no audiobooks, not even headphones. Just pounding out the miles, alone with my thoughts. I used to joke how this scenario would be my personal nightmare, but it’s only made me realize how deeply avoidant I am. So now it’s something I try to actively seek out.
Sunday
AM: It’s the last day of my detox, and for that I am grateful. The things I missed the most — listening to music (for the girls, “august” is in the queues), being able to satiate the curiosity of “what are my friends doing right now” are the guilty pleasures that I am excited to return to. Like most diets, I don’t think maintaining a detox is sustainable in the long run, but there are aspects of it that I’d like to keep with me:
As much as social media is an evil, I do find that being disconnected from it becomes isolating — there are some people that I care deeply about but staying in touch with a “hey how’s it going” every few months feels more contrived and obligatory than helpful. While following along with their lives on instagram might not be perfect, it’s not nothing either.
On the other hand, not being inundated with the compulsive desire to repress my thoughts, through social media, or music, is something that I want to try to retain. It’s funny how when you remove the tumors of instagram, tiktok, and youtube — slack, gmail and duolingo will fill the space. And maybe the latter are superficially more edifying, at the end, it’s all little forms of escapism.
note: i started on monday so data is a little skewed but not terrible I noticed that there are very few times in our daily lives where we’re fully present while we’re in a transition phase. We’re always multi-tasking, phone in hand, earbuds in, doing duolingo, book in arms reach. There were so many times this week where I was just alone with my thoughts, with literally nothing to do except think, and think and think. But even then, you can still circumvent the thoughts you’ve been avoiding. You have to want to work towards knowing yourself better, the same way you have to want to be present. I think the scary part about a life filled with little hits of dopamine, is not that these frivolities are evil in it of themselves (although this could be debated) it’s that our time and our attentions are limited and they’re taking up space in our precious hard drive. Space to really experience moments, to sit in our discomfort, to feel bored, to feel lonely, to face our fears, the thoughts we’ve been avoiding. There is value to those feelings because they give our lives depth and the opportunity to better understand and accept ourselves.
The last night at the beach, I experienced what I consider a ‘rare and perfect moment’. I have this theory that there are only a handful of ‘perfect moments’ that we as humans get in our brief time on earth — little moments where the outside world seems to fade away for a fleeting second and something in your being knows that you’re currently experiencing something really special. So much of our lives are pining for the big achievements — that if and when we ever achieve them result in ego-boosting yet ephermeral bursts of dopamine. But then there are some moments, and it’s always the mundane ones, where for one brief, rare and perfect moment, you genuinely believe that everything is right in the world.
It might be purely coincidental that this happened on the same week that I did my dopamine detox, but I also think maybe not. I’m learning that sometimes it’s good to suspend disbelief. For now, I choose to believe that sometimes the universe has a way of showing us brief glimpses of transcendence — if only we’re willing to lift our heads and look.
"Part of me just likes misery, I suppose. This makes more sense to the boys."🤌🏻 These memories tend to be what's most deeply engraved upon our brains, sprinkled with a dash of euphoria. Perhaps, occasionally, we should lean into this, just as you have.