Dopamine Detox

 Ah. The new trend that's been going around recently. Unplug from all this "Junk Food Stimulus" and you'll finally be able to live the life well lived. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for living life more mindfully, spending less time blasting your brain by scrolling on social media or playing video games all day. But I feel like it's a bit overhyped, at least in terms of how effective it can be short-term.

Now I'm not sure there's any evidence to suggest that the brain will rewire itself in like, a day, but forgoing all distractions for 24 hours does have a few benefits. For one, the brain HATES boredom, and will do literally anything to not be bored. When the default options of gaming or the internet are gone, suddenly the only thing to do are more "pure" forms of passing the time, like work, exercise, meditation, reading, or whatever. It IS a bit of a productivity "hack", if you want to call it that, though it really is just a more extreme form of eliminating all distractions. 

Now, the main problem comes from...Actually sticking to this fast. I don't know about you, but I've tried nearly every trick in the book save for throwing all my devices out the window and going into a cabin in the woods.Site blockers? I'll just turn them off. Logging out of all my social media? I'll just log right back in, without a second thought. I've only been able to succeed when I've been basically forced to, or if I've had a magical surplus of motivation that day. The closest I've come to being clean near a baseline was when I made a randomly generated password for my Twitter Account, and sent it to my friend for safekeeping. But Twitter wasn't even my main vice, anyway, and even then if I got desperate I could just use the "Forgot Password" feature.

So, obviously, with most things, I'll have to adjust my approach. I could still try the "block myself out of things hardcore" strategy as a supplement, but it's clear that hasn't been working. I may have to try making the good habits easier, as well as making the bad habits harder. I'm not even sure what the cues for pulling out my phone are, maybe it's boredom. It would be awesome to write more, or exercise more, or draw more, instead of being on my phone all the time, so I'll try to make it easier to do those. I guess this is a process.

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