Start the year on the right foot

It is the New Year’s Eve, or for others it is the New Year’s Day. Some will want to make resolutions, change their bad habits or write a little motto like New Year new me. We all know that it's often just words and actions and it only takes a few weeks or even a day before the good intentions towards oneself are completely stopped.

I will try to explain to you why we want and like to do something, how psychologically we can help ourselves to keep the good habits or to fix the bad ones. The main concept will be the dopamine detox that I will call DD. All this knowledge can be useful if you want to be more alive, be more in the moment, control your desires or be more productive and happy.

Before going into details I would like to say that I am a student who will graduate in psychology in less than 6 months, so all the information that will be given comes from reliable sources, but I still advise you to do your research if the subject interests you.

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Research

The problem with dopamine detox, which I want everyone to understand, is that dopamine detox has not really been studied. There are no clinical trials on dopamine detox. Everything I'm going to share is based on neuroscience, its clinical work.

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Inquiry

How do the neurotransmitters, dopamine, actually work? We can actually elucidate what is going on in a dopamine-tolerant brain. Like what goes on in the mind of someone who plays video games. We can even hypothesize based on what's going on what's going on in the brain's circuitry. So what does dopamine actually do in the brain?

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Neuroscience

Dopamine pathway (https://imgur.com/a/aZWXfAE)

The dopamine pathways in the brain, the ones we will examine are the mesocortical and mesolimbic, and the VTA is also important. These three parts of the brain are sort of where the reward, behavioral and motivational dopamine circuits are located. Dopamine is involved in the feeling of pleasure. Dopamine is the reward, the neurotransmitter that our brain uses to reinforce a behavior in the first place. It is therefore not necessarily the feeling of pleasure because, as we will discover, hedonism and motivation are in fact two distinct neurochemical circuits.

Hedonics is the ability to experience pleasure and dopamine is involved in motivation and reward. When we engage in a behavior that that rewards us in some way, this reinforcement is going to be via dopamine and the two pathways that we are going to examine the most are the mesocortical and especially the mesolimbic pathway. The mesolimbic pathway is involved in reward-related cognition, which includes the salience of incentives.

Wanting and enjoying are actually not the same part of the brain. (https://imgur.com/a/WD5WNVB )

Dopamine is what makes us want things. Craving and pleasure are involved in the mesolimbic pathway but there is actually a separate circuit that involves it more. It also has to do with aversion and positive reinforcement. What aversive cognition means is that is that basically, if you avoid things, you can reward behaviors with aversion as well.

Simple example : If I don't ask anyone out or if I don't go on a date, I'll be peaceful because I'm afraid to go on a date, I'm afraid of being lonely, I'm afraid of all that.

Dopamine is involved in this type of motivational circuit, as is avoidance motivation. The mesocortical pathway is a little different because it involves executive function. Our mesolimbic pathway, the pathway that goes from the ventral label mental area to the nucleus accumbens, this pathway is really around motivation and reward.

Note that our frontal cortices are the ones that give us a sense of control and willpower.

Executive function is the ability to plan out a task over time and execute on those pieces.

Simple example: If i want to find a job that involves polishing up my resume it involves updating my linkedin profile if it involves like these other kinds of things then applying to jobs responding to emails sending you thank you notes after interviews.

All of these things are essentially executive functions and if you really look at it, the key thing about dopamine here is that this circuit is not rewarded for each of these steps, so the mesocortical pathway is the one that allows us to take action without being rewarded at each step, so when I update my resume, I don't get dopamine, so if I apply for jobs, like updating my LinkedIn profile, I don't get dopamine, and yet our brains are able to perform essentially long-term tasks that are not immediately rewarding.

Long-term tasks that are not immediately rewarding are governed by the mesocortical pathway. What we actually find is that when people are overly dopaminergic, when their mesolimbic pathway dominates their mesocortical pathway, you end up with people who are unable to engage in any action that is not immediately rewarding, it's kind of like they can't do what they should be doing and they can only do what they want to do...

The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in what is called effort calculation. This effort calculation means that every time we do something, this is the anterior cingulate cortex. It says to itself “OK, I can do this and get this reward, it takes a lot of energy for this kind of reward or I can invest a lot of energy for a big reward or I can invest a lot of energy for a small reward or I can invest very little energy for a big reward”

Simple example: I can spend 10 years becoming a doctor, which is a lot of effort and a high reward. I can even do things that my mind will tell me like "oh, there's no point in asking this person out because they'll never say yes", that's a low reward, high effort strategy, and there are even things that are high reward, low effort strategies like "I'm going to spend all my money on Tesla".

The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in all of these effort calculations and what essentially happens is that when we have defective dopamine neurons in the nucleus accumbens (the nucleus accumbens is in the mesolimbic pathway), it changes the effect of our anterior cingulate cortex. When this happens, we are essentially unable to choose anything other than the "low reward, low effort" option.

Let's recap for a second. Dopamine is a diverse structure that does all sorts of things in our brain, like motivation, reward, executive function and even things like movement. When we look at motivation, reward, it's what we call the mesolimbic pathway and when we look at executive function, it's the mesocortical. The limbic system is our emotional brain circuit. The cortices are our frontal lobes.

Mesocortical is planning

The mesolimbic rewards behavior

There is sometimes a tension where the mesolimbic beats the mesocortical reward.

This means that we will choose a reward behavior rather than plan and execute tasks over long periods of time. If we meditate, what we can do is reverse, because we improve our cortical circuitry, we will be able to do planned actions rather than immediately rewarding actions.

Additional note: The frontal cortex is involved in things like impulse control. ADHD is deficient in both of these pathways, particularly in the mesocortical pathway more than the mesolimbic pathway.

The anterior cingulate cortex involves the calculation of effort.

Sometimes your mind tells you it's not worth it and when you dopamine system here, it will actually disrupt the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior cingulate cortex and disrupt the effort calculation. When you impair the dopamine, the only choice you can make is to make a low effort for a low reward. When we disrupt our anterior cingulate cortex, that's the only quadrant in which we can do things, we can't afford to do anything that involves high effort for high reward.

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The diagnosis

What we usually see in a dopamine detox is basically that is that people get stuck in this particular pattern. What is the neuroscientific correlation to all of these things? What does that mean and how is it going to present itself clinically?

The things you are motivated to do are not fun. It's critical, because essentially what's happening is that our mesolimbic pathway is sort of active, but something in our reward circuitry builds up a tolerance. It's not really fun. The other thing that happens is that there's this war between the mesocortical and the mesolimbic. The second characteristic that determines if your dopamine circuits is messed up is when you should be doing something but you can't. That weird basal mesolimbic circuitry ends up being stronger than the mesocortical circuitry, which means that the part of your brain that tells you these are the planned actions that I should do, that I have to do them this way, loses out to the immediately rewarding behavior. The last sign is that the things that other people are very motivated for are difficult for you. These are the three signs that you need a dopamine detox.

There seems to be a high degree of compulsion towards a behavior that is not pleasurable. What happens is that part of your brain, and that's why it's important to understand that dopamine is not just a pleasure chemical, because you would think that if it was just a pleasure chemical and you didn't feel pleasure anymore, then you wouldn't engage in that behavior anymore. If you don't like playing video games, why on earth would you play Fortnine for 10 hours a day and get frustrated every time? It's kind of weird, so we have to understand that dopamine is not just a pleasure chemical, because if it was a pleasure chemical and I was motivated by a behavior and that behavior wasn't fun, then I would no longer be motivated by that behavior. So that means that there are two different circuits in the brain and like dopamine, it can reinforce behaviors without necessarily leading to pleasure, and that's this discrepancy. What's happening is that your mesolimbic circuitry is active and pushing you towards a particular behavior, but your ability to experience pleasure from it has developed a sense of tolerance.

Dopamine detox has nothing to do with your dopamine levels, it has everything to do with your dopamine receptors. Basically, this is what happens in a brain. You have a neuron that releases a chemical signal into the synaptic cleft and in the synaptic cleft you have on the other side a neuron that has receptors. What happens is that you release a neurotransmitter from one neuron and it moves to the next neuron and activates the signal. If you release a large amount of signal, the receptor neuron thinks "I'm getting too much signal" and downregulates the receptor end of the receptor.

A simple example: when you start drinking caffeine, it can keep you up all night, but if you drink it every day, you develop a chemical dependency, which means you regulate your caffeine receptors in your brain, so if you want to stay up all night with caffeine, you actually have to drink more.

In fact, the more signals you pour into your brain, the more your brain will down regulate those signals. When people say you need 24 hours to reset dopamine level, that's not true, if you do that for 24 hours, 24 hours won't do anything, because the neurophysiology of what's going on is receptor adaptation, receptor adaptation takes weeks to balance, so if you think if you stop caffeine for 24 to 36 hours, you're not going to be detoxed from caffeine, you're just going to be miserable for 24 hours and you're not going to be totally fine. If you also think about alcohol addiction, for example, alcohol addiction can take five to six days just for medical reasons.

For dopamine detox, the goal is to fix that receptor regulation. When you bombard your mind with dopamine with things like video games and technology, you go on reddit or any kind of social media, you don't even think about it. That's the problem. You're not thinking "oh I'm really going to enjoy doing this, like wow I can't wait to jump on reddit today."

It's like my mind is bored, boredom or that there's some kind of a void in what I'm doing. My mind reflexively goes to social media or Reddit or something and I click on the meme and I get this quickie, this quickie... this quickie this quickie it's not really fun, it's not like when you go on vacation, you don't think "oh man, that this would be so great to spend six hours a day on the internet surfing Tiktok", you don't feel like doing it, but it still reinforces in a way.

It's not really a craving, it's a kind of neuroscientific mechanism that's reinforced by behavior. Which is active and we have that quick dopamine hit, we have that quick dopamine hit, we have that quick dopamine hit. What we want to do through a dopamine detox is reset our levels because what happens is when you play a video game for 10 hours a day, you get a constant flow of dopamine, that constant flow of dopamine will downregulate your dopamine receptors. If our dopamine receptors are downregulated, we enjoy things less, but something strange happens because the reinforcement circuitry, the behavioral circuitry seems to stay intact and that has something to do with probably other neurotransmitters and things like that, like the endocannabinoid system and habit formation.

Basically what happens is that when you have a constant flow of dopamine.

Like if I drink coffee throughout the day, my brain will adapt to that level and downregulate my dopamine receptors, and then you get into this situation where now that my dopamine receptors are downregulated, other activities start to feel less enjoyable, because if you think about the effect of dopamine. Reading a book or going for a walk, those things start to feel less enjoyable, so that's the next thing to think about when you need a dopamine detox: are the activities that normal people seem to enjoy not very enjoyable for you? If the answer is yes, then you need a dopamine detox.

Just to summarize. What we're looking for in dopamine is if your life has a constant flow of dopamine and what we we're talking about the use of video games social media use, these are the things that bombard your brain with dopamine, so if that's the case and you find yourself in this clinical presentation of feeling compelled or compulsive behavior. That doesn't really lead to pleasure. So if you're playing video games for 10 hours a day and you're not really enjoying yourself. You may need a dopamine detox, if you spend a lot of time on social media and you're not having fun, you may need a dopamine detox, pornography could absolutely be one of them.

You feel compelled to do something but you don't enjoy it; things that other people tend to be able to do or enjoy that you can't enjoy; you may be considering a dopamine detox; and finally, the last thing is some sort of inability to control the part of your mind that is or there is a war between what you know you should be doing but you end up going to the compulsive behaviors over and over and over again; this is the third sign.

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The intervention

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You need at least two weeks of dopamine detox to see significant results. During these two weeks, you must be prepared to be bored, schedule something to fill the void and avoid temptation. The program can be anything: walking, reading a book, exercising, cleaning, shopping, cooking, playing an instrument, coding, learning a skill, vacation, nature, travel, outdoors, etc. Scheduling and active media consumption is allowed, such as watching a movie a day or listening to music. Like when you know you are there and not in the clouds. Passive mindless consumption is not allowed: scrolling SM, watching Netflix on a loop or anything zombie-like. No video games, replace them with board games. Go out, socialize, live your life. You can always keep what you do a secret to avoid relapse. Sometimes peer pressure is the worst thing. It’s okay if you relapse for 5 minutes, the important thing is to get back on track and not give up, stay consistent and resilient. I challenge you to try to keep up with me. I start my dopamine detox on the 1st and it will end on the 14th. It's a great way to start the year and be happier and more productive. Who’s with me?

Happy New Year’s fellas.