Dopamine “Fasting,” a Controversial but Worthwhile Experience
Introduction: We Are Servants to Dopamine
Here’s a summary of the human being’s relationship to dopamine: “Yes, master.”
I recently listened to the audiobook Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist who specializes in addiction medicine. She makes a case for manipulating dopamine levels in the brain in order to overcome addictions to substances and behaviors. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger in our nervous system that transmits signals from one neuron (aka, brain cell) to another. Among the neurotransmitters, dopamine is often called the "feel-good" or “reward” neurotransmitter because it plays a crucial role in the reward system of the brain, which is responsible for pretty significant things like behavioral conditioning, addiction, and mood regulation. Researchers have shown some evidence that people with major depression have lower levels of dopamine in some areas of the brain, though it’s not entirely clear how reliable brain imaging is in capturing holistic functioning in the brain. Not only do we need sufficient levels of dopamine to feel okay, it also affects cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and learning. In fact, one of the reasons that stimulant medications like Adderall help people with ADHD is through increasing dopamine and norepinephrine (another neurotransmitter) levels. And yes, your morning coffee has a similar effect.
Clearly, dopamine is kind of a big deal and yet, we don’t understand it all that well, which leaves a bit of a void for speculation and novel strategies. In Dopamine Nation, Anne Lembke takes a stab at trying to unpack cycles of serious, debilitating addictions by manipulating dopamine levels. The cases she discusses in her book include a very high functioning tech worker who is addicted to sexual pleasure and pornography. That one stands out in my memory because I was in awe that this person built their own personal machine for sexual gratification. The other cases are a little fuzzier in my memory but I recall one person with a cannabis addiction and another person with a gaming addiction. Because this book is written by an actual mental health professional who does clinical work, she addresses behavioral addictions, which currently have limited recognition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the tome of psychiatry that largely determines insurance coverage. In this way, it’s a refreshingly broad and timely perspective on addiction.
Can We “Reset” Our Dopamine Levels?
While Lembke draws our attention to technology-facilitated addictions that are endemic to modern life, the central premise of Dopamine Nation is dubious. Lembke is saying that we need to “fast” our dopamine levels through abstinence from high dopamine activities. These ideas do not reflect mainstream findings in the field of psychiatry. After asking the great oracle, Consensus, some questions about the matter, it appears there simply is no evidence that supports the possibility of such a thing as dopamine fasting or a dopamine detox. Of course, food and other substances certainly impact dopamine levels, but it’s unlikely that abstaining from certain dopamine-inducing behaviors would eventually increase baseline dopamine. In the short-term, it’s more likely that any abstinence from these behaviors would decrease dopamine. In any case, suffice it to say the science…isn’t there.
And yet, she is onto something important here. Not enough people are talking about the reality that our brains evolved for a world of scarcity, not abundance. Despite having all of our basic needs met and then some, we are lost, scattered, moody, numb, aimless. It’s true that unfettered access to high dopamine activities and substances can wreak havoc on our lives.
When we continuously activate the dopamine pathways of our brains with things like social media, junk food, shopping, or other instant gratification activities, we create an addictive cycle that goes something like this:
We need increasingly intense stimulation to feel the same pleasure we felt the first time(s) we engaged in a dopiine-inducing activity. An example of this is that 10 minutes of social media scrolling used to bring great pleasure and heightened interest but now you need an hour of scrolling to achieve a similar effect.
You may possibly never get the same “hit” of pleasure as you did the first occasion you tried the pleasurable activity, which then reinforces intermittent conditioning, a powerful mechanism in behavioral addiction. In most animals, this means you engage in the behavior more even if the rewards are intermittent and diminished.
Meanwhile, when we’re not engaging with the dopamine-inducing stimulus, the brain's compensatory mechanisms kick in, which in turn create a dopamine deficit state that makes you feel worse than baseline. This then leads to normal activities that once brought pleasure now feeling dull and unsatisfying. An example of this is the difficulty of returning to reading a book after binge-watching a Netflix series. Trying to read may become difficult because it feels boring and dissatisfying.
We go back to the original stimulus to try to get that same reward from the first time we used it and the cycle begins again.
When I read this book, I felt like it was calling me out, in a helpful way. Just by calling us out on our socially acceptable addictions, Lembke shines a light on harmful habits that have become the norm. Where we go from there is not as straightforward.
Is “Dopamine Fasting” a Solution?
Lembke’s intervention from her clinical practice is “dopamine fasting,” which is proposed as a way to “reset” the brain’s natural reward system through abstinence from high dopamine activities. I am putting these things in quotes because we don’t know if this is what is actually happening in the brain. Nonetheless, many people benefit from these “fasting” approaches and there is little to no risk of harm in trying this out because the high dopamine activities we’re targeting are likely not all that healthy anyway. In other words, you will not be harmed by abstaining from social media, highly processed food, and binge-watching Netflix. Plus, there is enormous value in not seeking pleasure continuously, such as cultivating the capacity to be more present, more tolerant of banal human experiences such as boredom, stillness, uncertainty, etc.
Just to be clear, what kind of high-dopamine activities are we talking about here? Here are some examples.
Scrolling social media
Video games
Shopping
Binge-watching streaming content (Netflix, YouTube)
Junk food consumption
Excessive news consumption
Compulsive smartphone use
If you do not suffer from the excesses of any of the activities above, you do not live in the modern world. If that’s you, please stop reading here and return to your primeval bliss!
Sidenote about shopping: I’ve done a bit of a deep dive into this and I recommend you read this post and then my take backsies in this post.
How Does One “Dopamine Fast?”
Step 1: Identify Your Problem Areas & Choose One Thing
I’d recommend starting with one behavior you would like to change. If there are multiple behaviors you’re interested in changing, you can make a list of them and choose one to start with. Choosing multiple behaviors to change at the same time isn’t effective in my experience. Common high-dopamine activities that you might target include:
Social media scrolling
Video games
Online shopping
Binge-watching streaming content
Junk food consumption
Excessive news consumption
General compulsive smartphone use
General screen time
Step 2: Choose the Duration of Your Abstinence
There’s no official guidance on this, but a lot of people report benefits from abstaining from the behavior for 1 week. I’d recommend that as a starting point. If you’re feeling really not confident about being able to do that amount of time, maybe start with 24 hours and see if it makes you curious about doing it for longer, such as 3 days, and then, perhaps eventually, a full week.
Step 3: Create Implementation Strategies
Before you begin the fast, put things in place to set yourself up for success as much as possible.
Tell your loved ones and colleagues that you’re trying to do a detox from your target behavior for a week (or whatever the duration may be) so that there is social incentive and accountability built into the process. It would be even better if you invite people to do it with you and you can encourage each other along the way and not feel alone.
Put restrictions in place. Those restrictions will depend on your target behavior.
You may need to remove certain apps from your phone (at least temporarily), such as Instagram or TikTok
You may need to use website blockers or apps that help you restrict internet access, such as Freedom
Anticipate withdrawal symptoms, such as irritability, boredom, restlessness, and plan to deal with these experiences in some way
Implement coping skills such as deep breathing, grounding, meditation, talking to your support system
Prepare alternative activities such as drawing, cycling, playing a musical instrument, reading a book, etc.
Step 4: Debrief
After you complete your fasting period, congratulate yourself and spend a bit of time journaling about what you observed during the experience. What did you learn from this experience? What did you observe while doing it? What was harder than expected or not as hard as expected? If there’s a possibility to incorporate this abstinence into your life, what would that look like for you?
If you end up feeling more grounded, more in control of your time, and your mind feels clearer after your detox, you might consider having a screen-free day or (days) of the week. Another way to do it might be to practice abstinence periodically, such as quarterly. What would you find helpful about these approaches? What would you find hard about them?
Next Steps: Dopamine Boosting
Although there isn’t much research support for “dopamine fasting,” is not a real thing, there is research support for increasing your levels of dopamine in healthy ways, such as engaging in physical activities and sunlight exposure. I wrote a basic guide on dopamine boosting some months ago. You can check that out here.