What Is Dopamine and Do I Really Need to Detox From It?

Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV: https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-people-in-public-toilet-using-smartphones-4553370/

A popular idea making the rounds on social media these days is what’s being called a “dopamine detox.” As much as that term is blowing up in the collective consciousness online, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what a dopamine detox is and what it can potentially do for you.

Let’s start with dopamine. It’s a neurotransmitter, a chemical produced in the brain that interacts with parts of the nervous system. Dopamine is most commonly known as the brain’s pleasure chemical, although it’s involved in a number of functions of the brain and body, including sleep cycles, heart rate and blood pressure, libido, and the control of muscles.

For the sake of this discussion, I will focus on the pleasure and motivation aspects of dopamine.

Under normal conditions, the brain maintains a baseline of dopamine production. The long-term baseline varies somewhat from person to person, and for the same person depending on a number of factors. But it’s short-term changes from baseline dopamine levels that really create an impact on things like mood, motivation, and our sense of well-being – and can lead to addictive behaviors.

Lots of different things (both healthy and unhealthy) can provide short-term dopamine boosts of various levels. Everything from exercise to food to sex to illicit drugs can provide “hits” of dopamine of various levels and provide pleasure and good feelings.

A big source of dopamine hits these days is consuming various sorts of visual media, be it social media, news, or other digital forms of information and entertainment. I’ll talk more about this when I get to dopamine detox.

Different things provide different amounts of dopamine release. Things like exercise provide a modest boost over baseline, while using cocaine, for instance, sends dopamine levels through the roof. Big hits of dopamine might not be so bad in and of themselves, but the problem is, not only do they temporarily shoot your levels way above baseline, these big hits deplete your reserves. So when you come back down, your dopamine winds up well below your usual baseline – and this usually doesn’t feel very good. The higher the high, the lower the low.

This is part of why certain drugs are so addictive.

Let’s say your usual baseline is at 50 (I’m just using an arbitrary number, not an example of what a normal baseline amount would be). Eating a delicious meal might push that up to a 70 or 80 – enough to be pleasurable, but not substantially deplete your dopamine reserves. When you drop back down to 50 after that food hit wears off, you might think, “That was great. I’d like to eat that again sometime soon.”

Compare that to using cocaine. You start at a 50. The cocaine drives that to 1000 – you feel AMAZING! But when the cocaine wears off, you’ve exhausted all of your dopamine reserves and you drop to 0. Now you feel amazingly BAD! Your brain starts rather loudly telling you, “I NEED more of that NOW!” Addiction can happen pretty easily under those circumstances.

Now, the dopamine detox trend is generally not talking about massively excessive dopamine release from something as strong as cocaine. But even much lower dopamine hits taken on a frequent basis can begin to negatively effect your mood and motivation. This is where the consumption of digital media comes into play.

Interacting on social media, closely following the 24/7 news cycle, and digital entertainment such as watching television or playing video games all provide a small but significant dopamine rush and the pleasure it provides. It’s very easy to become somewhat addicted to the distraction that such media provides from our mundane and stressful lives. If you’re not someone who is constantly glued to your phone to surf social media, you probably know a lot of people who are.

If, like me, you’re old enough to remember a time before cell phones and social media – and when the news only came on for 30 minutes a few times per day, you may be able to better see how the ready availability of such media affects your behavior and your mental state than someone who grew up with it. I don’t use my cell phone much compared to most people and yet I experience a distinct emotional discomfort if I accidentally leave the house without it! I’m not sure how I possibly survived the first half of my life before cell phones.

Anyway, this dependence on digital media to keep getting those regular dopamine bumps is at the crux of the dopamine detox concept. Basically, the “detox” consists of just taking a digital content fast for a few days to a week or more. No social media, no video games, no binge-watching news, etc.. Kind of a “cold turkey” quit of digital dopamine stimulation.

The idea is that without the nearly constant little hits of dopamine, your baseline will re-set and your mood will improve, you’ll be more motivated and efficient, etc..

To be fair, this probably does have some short-term benefits, but unlike detoxing from some toxic chemical that’s accumulated in your body, you’re not producing a long-term reduction in your dopamine levels. A lasting significant reduction in dopamine is not good anyway. Parkinson’s disease is what happens when you don’t have enough dopamine on a consistent basis.

I think it’s definitely a good idea to moderate one’s consumption of digital media, and eliminate what you can – but it’s really only going to make a lasting, significant difference if you make long-term changes in your habits.

At best, a dopamine detox for a few days to a week is probably only going to make a modest difference for… a few days to a week, or however long you do it – you go right back to where you were as soon as you start taking those dopamine hits again. The only way a dopamine detox is likely to be as life-changing as the social media influencers would have you believe is if it makes you take notice of the adverse effects of over-consumption of digital media in your life and motivates you to change your habits long-term.

If that short break is enough for you to notice that your mood is better, you’re more motivated and productive, and your stress levels are lower when you aren’t constantly staring at your phone and other screens, and that leads you to make a long-term reduction in your engagement in those activities – great!

Otherwise, in my opinion, a dopamine detox is just a low-intensity version of quitting cocaine for a predetermined few days to a week. It might make you feel virtuous and give you something to talk about with your friends and post about on social media, but it really won’t make your life that much better in the long run.

While I’m not a big fan of the dopamine detox movement, as I said, I do very much encourage minimizing one’s consumption of digital media, especially social media and “news entertainment” (sensationalized opinion content about the news, rather than simply reporting the news).

It can be tough to do if you have well-ingrained habits of constantly checking your feeds, watching your favorite news personalities, and anxiously looking for the acknowledgment of likes and comments on your posts, but I think you’ll find that substantially reducing such activities will be well worth it in terms of long-term reduced stress and improved mood and productivity.

Until next time…

George Best, D.C.