We begin with a link to the podcast that started it all.
The podcast talks about the latest sizzling hot developments in pop psych and behavioural psychology that center around everyone’s most rewarding friend, the neurotransmitter known as dopamine.
As we all known, dopamine activates the reward center of the brain and is thus responsible for damned near everything we do because we are all ultimately looking to received reward and/or avoid punishment.
Pleasure and pain in the modern vein, if you will.
What has the world abuzz these days is that we can now see how homeostasis plays a vital role in dopamine, addiction, and depression.
See when something stimulates our dopamine response, our dopamine level goes up and we feel good.
But homeostasis demands that we go back down to our baseline level of dopamine, so our body immediately begins to scrub the dopamine out of our bloodstream again.
What happens, though, when something pumps our dopamine levels up crazy high?
You come crashing on down. Even though it is your own body doing it to itself, your mind can’t help but interpret that as things rapidly getting much, much worse.
And if it’s a bad enough overstimulation, it actually uses up your entire short term supply of dopamine, making that crash so much worse.
And so what do you do? You lunge for more reward stimulation, and end up solving the problem in the short term and making it far worse in the long term.
The harder you push on one side of the seesaw of pleasure and pain, the harder it swings back in the opposite direction, and (metaphor switch warning) you end up in a terrible tug of war with yourself.
Which is why the hot new buzzterm is “dopamine fasting”. The name is misleading – if you had no dopamine at all, you would die from total lack of motivation.
See where depression comes in?
No, what is meant by “dopamine fasting” is that you refrain from the highly addictive dopamine releasing activities modern society specializes in delivering to us faster and better than ever before.
And sorry if this is obvious to you, but I am NOT just talking about substance abuse. here. The internet has turned us all into addicts by putting whatever will most addict us in our pockets, whether that’s cheap unsafe sex (hookup apps), too much unhealthy food (delivery apps), or even crossword puzzles (so very many apps… trust me. )
Now the lady in the podcast recommended going four weeks without your addiction in order to let your dopamine levels “reset” (another buzzword) and then you can go back to life as usual but with a new awareness of how things can go out of control.
So maybe this time, you take things a little slower, and if you feel yourself wanting more and more of your particular dopamine release, slam on the brakes.
And if that doesn’t do the trick, you know what will make you feel better? Pain.
Yes, in what has to be the nearly the theoretical maximum of counterintuitiveness, just like pleasure got you into this mess, pain can get you back out. Pain pushes down on that half of the seesaw and thus speeds your way back to the midline.
I’ve noticed this myself. I would not consider myself a masochist, but there have been times when I could not help but notice pain making me feel oddly better.
I assumed it to be a product of tension relief.
But now I know there might be more to it than that.
More after the break.
But what about me?
That’s enough of the fun stuff (brain science). Let’s get to my case.
Obviously, I am addicted to video games.
And I know that for sure because the mere idea of going four weeks without video games fills me with gibbering panic.
I can’t even imagine going an afternoon without them. Going almost a month without video games is far beyond the pale for me right now.
That doesn’t mean it can never happen. I believe the research. I know it would ultimately do me a hell of a lot of good. I am not one to balk at medicine.
Well unless it is CPAP. Or blood glucose monitoring and insulin. Or…
OK, let’s not go there. NOT MY POINT.
It could definitely happen. But it is going to take a heck of a lot of road-clearing and prep work before I can go there.
Video games have been my lifeline for way way too long. Ever since I feel into the Skyrim hole all those years ago, video games have been my life, or rather, what occupies the hole where a life should be.
They suck up everything I have besides this blog (thank you so much for reading) and that means they have devoured every bit of human potential I have, leaving next to nothing for me to use to make any progress.
And that’s just how my depression likes it.
And the addiction lurks at the edge of all my issues because their solutions all involve spending free time away from the god damned games and that’s a no go.
And like any good junkie, I both love and hate my “junk”.
I hate it because I can’t live without it.
But I still can’t live without it. Or at least that’s what I used to call the “cravings part of the brain” tells me.
And it all comes back to that central damning accursed question :
What do I do with myself?
What do I do with all those empty hours that suddenly open up when I contemplate putting down the games even for just an afternoon?
This is the existential nightmare faced by all disabled people. What the hell do you do with your time on Earth when you can’t contribute to society?
And that’s where the thoughts about life being pointless and stupid and my being a burden and the world being better off…
..yeah, let’s not go there either.
I know I want to escape the gravity well of video games enough to add something more vital and connected to the world and fulfilling to my life.
And that requires my making room in my life for other things.
But I am so scared of trying to figure out what the fuck to do with myself that I can’t even face the problem head on.
I have to shield my eyes and look at it with a sideways squint, like it’s a very bright light.
But there has to be a way out of this quagmire.
And I will find it, even if I have to build it myself.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.