Our thinking

Dopamine fasting

24 February, 2020

In today’s ‘attention economy’, we are over-stimulated by a myriad of media. Dopamine is the brains chemical responsible for feelings of pleasure and happiness, when we use our phones or eat our favourite food. But it turns out, you can have too much of a good thing….

‘Dopamine fasting’ is increasing in popularity, based on CBT’s use of ‘stimulus control’ for behavioural change. Dopamine fasters aim to limit their exposure to stimuli that increase dopamine levels – but, if dopamine makes you feel happy, why would you want less of it, you ask?

Excessive levels of dopamine can desensitise us, resulting in the same actions becoming less pleasurable over time. For example, if ice-cream makes you feel good, and you like to eat a lot of ice-cream, it won’t be long until one bowl isn’t enough to give you the same high and you’re on your third bowl without batting an eye…

As such, dopamine-inducing activities can become highly addictive – even the former VP of User Growth at Facebook admits guilt for creating dopamine-driven feedback loops that are “destroying how society works”. People also exhibit behaviours, like emotional eating or posting on social media for ‘likes’, that use dopamine to medicate negative feelings.

The goal isn’t to disengage from all happy activities. Rather, it is about reducing the stimulation you expose yourself to, allowing your brain to recover and restore itself, retraining and prolonging your attention-span, and engaging in better behaviours like not procrastinating with things that give you a quicker reward.

So, perhaps the next time you reach for a Candy Crush, phone-based dopamine rush, you might consider seeking your high from a healthier source, like meditating or getting some exercise.