Gemma Speck

It's a completely different psychological system.

What's really happening and what you're really experiencing is executive function and executive control that interrupts a previously enforced loop, behavioral loop.

Essentially, your brain has learned a very efficient cycle of cue, craving, action.

action reward you know if you feel slightly uncomfortable if you feel bored anxious under stimulated and you reach for your phone and you receive the reward of that behavior over time the loop becomes automatic i being on my phone makes me happy so i should do it more what a dopamine detox actually does is not

By abstaining, you're not actually depleting dopamine levels.

What it does is just insert conscious awareness back into the equation.

Instead of immediately obeying the craving, you pause, you observe it, you tolerate it.

And every time you do that, you strengthen the brain systems involved in self-regulation and you weaken the automatic reinforcement cycle that was running unchecked before.

So that's really what's happening in these detoxes.

This is what's happening when we talk about being able to control dopamine.

And that is the true psychology behind dopamine that we get wrong.

More dopamine doesn't make you happier.

Something triggering dopamine doesn't mean it will become addictive.

The reason certain drugs or activities are addictive is

isn't because they spike dopamine and give us something that's only a small part of it.

It's often because they take away or mask a different, more unpleasant sensation.

And so our body has learned that the presence of this thing makes us feel better.

Dopamine's role in that is that it just helps you learn that association.

It's not responsible for the end feeling and it's definitely not something that you can detox, control and dopamine certainly isn't this bad addictive thing that you need to avoid.

What we can take from this, I think, my God, look at me, I'm so, what we can take from this, I sound like a lecturer, but what we can take from this is just a really important shift in how we understand motivation.