Could you survive a dopamine detox?

I tried, and here’s what happened.

What is a dopamine detox? Well, basically, you try to have as little fun as possible. Social media, music, masturbation, junk food — all these are dopamine creators and the more we use them, the more our dopamine receptors demand more.

According to Better Than Yesterday, there are two types of Dopamine Detox. One is a long-term solution where you set aside a day every week in which you will commit to reducing your dopamine intake — use your phone less, get off the computer and so on. This kind aims to rebalance your dopamine in the long term and give you a better quality of life, but the results won’t show right away. The other type of detox is a more extreme option designed to completely reset your dopamine receptors immediately; going 24 hours without any dopamine.

I (of course) decided to take the extreme option: going 24 hours without my phone, music, TV, Netflix, my computer, sex, masturbating or anything that could ‘give me joy’ — I could only read, walk and ‘journal’. (Write in your diary, for the non-Americans among us).

I’ve previously tested a number of products in the hope that I will sleep easier; for example, I tried melatonin for a week. The result from that test was that it turns out that you can take something to help you sleep, but it won’t fix your…