Dopamine fasting/technology break will help my mental health?
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been struggling with anxiety/depression and im also addicted to twitter and scroll alot each day for years. ive read that this can cause dysfunction of your frontal lobes and too much screentime can make your amygdala overactive? any truth to that?
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@AndrewPeatMatrix Make your phone grayscale as a soft start, if you want to reduce the dopamine feedback you get from it.
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Dopamine is essential for health and the reduction of prolactin. The source of your dopamine could be a problem, but going on a dopamine fast isn't always a good idea. You get dopamine from getting closer to a set goal, so set some goals and get working on achieving those. That would be a more healthy source of dopamine for sure.
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@Ruben Incidentally Haidut has mentioned alcohol is detrimental for your dopamine
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@Not_James_Bond Yes I know, I believe I'm especially prone to that. Alcohol has a stimulating and sedative effect at the same time for me. I don't drink often, tonight will be the first time in 2 months. You're right though.
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I once did a dopamine fast where I did not use any technology for 24 hours. No eating either. No exercise. Only walking - talking - writing.
Now that I am peatified I wouldn't recommend the fasting.
However - I felt amazing the next day - I had energy and dopamine to do everything - long difficult tasks were easy.
The effects lasted about 2 days - as i returned to my 9 hour screentime a day.
I will try again soon. On work days I will obviously use my laptop but try keep screen time to 0 after that. On the weekend you can throw your phone away and try go the whole weekend without it.
I think simply removing mindless scrolling and watching with walking, writing and talking makes the biggest difference. I now have a timer lock I lock my electronics away with for hours at a time to force me to get off technology. It works well.
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I've had huge benefits from this kind of thing. I found that it appears to be the LED backlight of your screen thats hurting you even more than the social media algorithm kind of stuff. That stuff's bad too, but the LED light is inescapable with a normal screen and appears to be directly damaging your dopamine somehow.
I'd say you have to work with your psychology though - simply "fasting" will be hard to sustain. You probably have lots of things you need to do on the computer. So instead, I got an e-ink screen that emits no light and this has made such a big transformation in my brain, and all kinds of physical things outside the brain too. (Dopamine is upstream of tons of stuff biologically)
You can also use some browser extensions to make social media non-addictive too.
I wrote a big post about all this here:
https://bioenergetic.forum/topic/925/defanging-your-computer -
If you’re feeling depressed and anxious I’d recommend just fully sending it and deactivate Twitter and all other socials, make the internet less accessible however you can on your phone, etc. I find that journaling is a great way to remind myself of what truly makes me happy. I’ll write those things down in an attempt to make them more concrete and in hopes of recalling them throughout the day. Remind yourself that what you really love might be reading, cooking, moving your body, getting sun, music, etc. and that as fun as Twitter can be it’s ultimately a major distraction in the way of true daily joy.
Definitely don’t go “75 Hard” ice bath fasting bullshit. Stay cozy, well fed, enjoy yourself. Online shit is full mind rape. We often don’t actually like what we’re addicted to!
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@AndrewPeatMatrix Turn off all notifications (e.g. vibrations, sounds) on your phone. Stop scrolling on social media and begin reading books instead. Don't watch internet videos.
Screen usage/culture is highly anti-social and neurologically dysfunctional, and that's saying nothing about EMF or blue light.
It also lends itself to hyperstimulating addictions like pornography, which will cause further brain decay on its own.
Dopamine is very important to keep elevated, but you should do it by resensitizing yourself to the elements (i.e. earth, water, air, fire), animals, people and so on - not by "digital culture" (Ray Peat's term) with its degenerative cyber simulacra of reality.
