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Heyhey, after the past 31 days I completed my first ever month-long extreme dopamine / consumism detox and I wanted to share my motivation, results, realisations (and some techniques). For the few people on this sub who don't know what it is, when people talk of "dopamine detoxing" they usually mean the abstinence of activities that provide "cheap" pleasure. I won't go into the science of dopamine detoxing since there's a lot of people who know and explain it better. I won't post the link to the video, but the youtube channel "Better than Yesterday" has made an excellent video covering all the science you need to know. It's the latest on the channel called "Stop Wasting Your Life - Take Control Instead" (Please don't ban me mods, I don't wan't to spread inaccurate information that was poorly interpreted by me). This is the only video you need about this topic, NOTHING ELSE. It's the one video out of all the "dopamine detoxing" videos I've seen that has actually motivated me to finally do it, it offers excellent guidance. I full heartedly recommend you to check it out if you've thought about detoxing or are sick of entertainment-media controlling your life.

My rules: No YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, Newspaper apps, TV, Videogames, Spotify / CDs, books or anything related to quickly consume entertainment. I'll talk later about spotify and books, and why I didn't want to use them.

What was allowed: Concerts, Theater / cinema, alcohol (EDIT: I'm not an alcoholic, I didn't see a problem with it), actually informational stuff online from blogs / science sites (school, meditation, sports, mental health)

First of all, this is the first time I am so happy, energised, concentrated and chill for such a long and continuous!!! time in my life. I 100% can recommend this to anyone who's lost online that want's to actually get their life under control.

My motivation was the video mentioned above. I was bound to the screen since the early days of my life, but never saw any problems with it. I've always played videogames and watched YouTube as a child, but I think it was an okay-ish amount. The problem was starting at high-school, Internet sites became more designed to be addictive, I played games just for the sake of playing them. I overdid it. I'm lucky I had a big social circle and was regularly pulled into nature through scout activities, but over the years I have definitely developed lots of bad habits and a social media addiction. And so have millions (or even billions) of people on the globe. The video above talks about this aswell, addiction doesn't always come in the form of what you think it will. I have experienced times in my life where I just layed in my bed and binge-watched YouTube, Anime, you name it for 5 - 10 hours. This. is. not. normal. In order to see how addicted I actually am and to starve the neurological connections for the bad habits, I started with the challenge. And trust me, I was very afraid and nervous in the beginning, I even had several nightmares in which I went on my phone and browsed social media. I then woke up and felt very guilty, till I realised my brain just made that up. I'm glad I pushed through, after 2 weeks it was easy.

Now, why in the world would I boycott spotify and books? I have experimented with detoxing in the past and found, that if I have spotify at hand, I'd just listen to music and not do a thing, because I was craving the entertainment so much. Once I removed spotify, same happened with books. I just binge-read entire novels because I was afraid of getting bored. But becoming bored IS THE POINT. So many people fear boredom, it's actually insane. What you tend to forget when you can fight off boredom immediately with your phone or whatever, is that the feeling of boredom goes by surprisingly quickly. What either happens is you accept doing nothing and chill / nap or you start reflecting about your day/life/activities whatever and regain your mental focus. I'm not saying you should get bored on purpose and immediately lie on the floor (even though I would recommend trying it out), but once you do get bored and you decide to rest, you can regenerate so much energy. And it really does make a difference in your daily life, if you let yourself rest / get bored more than usual. And PS: Sports is also possible without music, being aware of your muscles in your body can actually improve performance.

Am I enlightened after 1 month of detoxing? Absolutely not. I'm just as flawed as before, BUT I cut out all the shit that held me back from becoming a better person. You would not accelerate your car while still pressing your foot on the brake pedal, right? And that's basically what happened to me: I started studying frequently for university, I woke up in the morning consistently, (even more important) I went to bed more consistenly, I went to the dentist and orthopedist to actually take care of some health problems, I spent more time with friends, finally took the step to look for a flat-share to move out of my parent's house, meditated a lot, practiced my musical instrument more, learned to cook, the list goes on and on and on...

The simple magic of it all, I only shifted my focus from the realms of the web to my own life. That's it. The people on the internet doing funny and crazy stuff weren't interesting anymore, it was me. I was immediately more focused on my life and took the time to genuinely take care of my problems. It didn't even require any more mental enerygy, I just had nothing else to do.

Now that my month is over I started looking at YouTube again today. I was immediately disgusted. There is great stuff out there don't get me wrong, but let's be frank, it's 99% bull**** that you'll forget the moment it's over. It's not the content creator's fault, it's how all the social media systems work by design. If you take a step back from the never ending assembly line of content-sludge the big sites want you to feed into, you'll see how unberably toxic and (yeah even) boring this stuff is. If you consume this stuff all day, no wonder you'll feel crap afterwards. I haven't mentioned tiktok because I've never used it due to fear of getting heavily addicted to this stuff. TikTok is presumably the king of sludge-feeding people content-garbage.

Now, I think ranting about this stuff isn't even necessary, every person on this sub knows exactly which their poisons are and actually aknowledging that is a big step. Once you detach yourself from them and look back, you'll see just how unimportant it all is.

The most important thing to ask yourself when deciding on which things to cut: Do I consume this piece of media lot? Why, what feelings arise while I do? Is there a way to actually find this in reallife? Yes? Then cut it out.

For the ones interested, my toolset of techniques for the detox:

- (Really basic but necessary) Install a website blocker on your main devices. Even though you know you shouldn't go to those websites, sometimes it happens out of pure habit and you'll get reminded of your challenge quickly. And it builds some actual distance to those websites.

- Deinstall all the games on your phone, you don't need them. If you crave sudoku while driving in the bus, at least do it on a newspaper or something (even though I would recommend learning to chill and do nothing while in idle situations)

- Deinstall your browser on your phone or at least minimise the use. If something is very important, write it down, you can always google later. While in discussions, immediately googling stuff may seem helpful, but where's the fun in discussing if you google every little thing. And most of the time people don't care about the actual facts, so it's really not important.

- In the beginning, frequently turn off your phone when you don't need it. You can always turn it on of course, but the small waiting time gives you time to think if it's actually important and may hold you back

- The goal is to minimise phone-screentime as MUCH as possible, if you find a realistic reallife alternative to a useful app, go for it. These are the only apps I used: What's-App, Telephone, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Public-Transport-App, Contacs, Mail, Camera, File-Reader

- Tell your friends and family your're abstaining for a month. Unless they're really toxic they will respect your decision. The more you inform about, the better. It builds some nice social pressure, and accountability is an extremely powerful tool. Only do not do this with people who are fanatically into that stuff. They might feel attacked by you, which makes it even more difficult for you to abstain if they're very important to you.

- If you genuinely need a certain informational YouTube video, use the website Viewpure. Paste in the link and it shows you the video without all the youtube clutter + it removes ads. Or even better, if it's always the same video, just download it on any of the Yotube to Mp4 sites.

- For more focus when using screen technology or browinsg in the internet for the important stuff, turn your devices to Black and white mode. If this idea disgusts you, ask yourself if the colors are really necessary. I only turned it off for google maps or if I had to look at a photo of something. But everytime I turned the colors back on I noticed just how overly saturated everything is our devices and the web. Color can really drain your focus, so you may want to eliminate that.

- One of my favourite new habits: Planning my day in advance. At the beginning of the challenge I bought some tiny blocks of paper, of which I always kept one in my inner jacket pocket. I could take important notes very quickly and I drew a timeline of my day in the morning on it, so I never forgot to do any task no matter how small or big and found a realistic way of fitting it into the day. An actual calendar is important of course, I allowed that app on my phone.

- Meditation. Takes care of the mental stuff. I mentioned a lot that resting and chilling is so very important, and meditation is the active practice of that. I feel more tranquill and recognise more clearly the things that are draining my focus and energy

- No excuses: If you need certain things on the internet, really try to find them in real life, be it social contacts, emotional support, hangout-spaces, whatever. Think about the things that would make a Dopamin Detox difficult for you and find some alternatives. If there's a will, there's a way. (But a realistic approach to the detox is important of course)

- Mindset: If you feel shitty and bad for no reason during the detox, be glad about it. Because those few moments where you really feel miserable are the most important. You'll have to remember the greater purpose of your journey, which makes the misery bearable. If it's not easy, that's a good sign.

- (Again) Do what the video from "Better than Yesterday" says

If you read this far, thank you for your attention. If this post helps at least 1 person to get into a long Detox, then that would be incredible. I'll personally keep the habit of long, dedicated meditation in my day and keep on using some of my tools. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comments. But now excuse me, I need to listen to some music albums :)

Have a nice day!