Arthur Brooks

And so I left, right?

I got a little relief.

I got a little vacation in the bottle.

And it just, it was going nowhere good.

And it was really clear.

And then my dad died.

And, you know, a couple of people I cared about said...

That's your future.

You just saw your future, right?

And so I stopped.

But the hard part was step three.

The hard part was actually being alone with myself, being awake with myself, being alive with myself is what it comes down to.

And that's probably even more extreme for people who are very, very online.

Because you're trying to break the doom loop of how technology is breaking your brain, not letting you find the meaning of your life, making you angry and depressed and anxious and lonely.

you're addicted which is why you keep doing these self-terrible self-destructive things to yourself you first you get pissed and second you got to quit and look i got the algorithms to help you do that but then man you need new friends like you know you need you need to live in a society you need to live you know in people who are alive in real life and you have to be able to sit behind

the wheel of your car at a red light with nothing to do in your thoughts right and be in a supermarket checkout line without your phone and and walk before dawn without a device and hear the crunch of the gravel under your feet and say that's the sound of my feet on the path and that takes work

It's absolutely possible.

I've seen it again and again and again and again.

I mean, look, this is not heroin that we're talking about here.

I mean, the process of detox, for example, you don't even have to give up your phone.