Well I turned on my computer this morning and read an interesting article about dopamine fasting. This is a strange topic I had never even heard about until this morning. After reading a little more, I feel it is akin to meditation and yoga.
Social media has captivated the NT world. It is like the world is now run by robots. When I was at the airport a couple weeks ago and sat down waiting for the airplane to start the boarding process, I counted the number of people in our rows that were tethered to their smart phones or computers. There were 9 out of the 10 people. I was the only one who wasn't connected. In the old days, people would be reading newspapers or magazines while they waited, not nowadays. I live in a world of wide eyed zombies.
Many social media tools are specifically designed around human physiology. For example friend's request, the number of hits or contacts, and likes helps humans feel a level of gratification. The human body releases dopamine.
But there is a problem in that if someone is always on a dopamine high, their bodies can become saturated and they need to reset in order to feel pleasure again. Anyways that is the theory behind the latest trend called Dopamine Fasting.
So if you look at what the purveyors of this trend say:
* Dopamine fasting is a hot Silicon Valley trend that involves taking a time-out from presumed “problematic” and “pleasurable” behaviors such as cruising through social media, gaming, masturbating, having sex, eating (especially the emotional kind), and thrill-seeking.
* Neuroscientists say that there’s nothing dopamine-draining about a tech or sex fast. In fact, it would be better billed as a “stimulation fast.”
* “You can totally block the dopamine system and it doesn’t change a human or an animal’s ability to feel pleasure,” Stanford Neuroscientist Russell Poldrack told Insider.
For the last few months, Silicon Valley tech circles have been abuzz about dopamine fasting.
It’s a term that was first coined in 2016, and recently re-popularized by UCSF psychology professor and venture capitalist Cameron Sepah, who said he was looking for a way for himself and his clients to better maintain focus, disconnect from their devices, regulate emotions, and not get swept up in to a culture of constant notifications, arousal, and bingeing.
But from a different perspective (that of Russell Poldrack, a professor at nearby Stanford University, and seasoned neuroscientist):
It’s more accurate to think of dopamine as a driver. It prompts us to want things, and that drive doesn’t necessarily change just because we stop doing certain activities. “You can totally block the dopamine system and it doesn’t change a human or an animal’s ability to feel pleasure,” Poldrack said. “What it changes is the degree to which they want things out in the world, and the degree to which they will actually go do something to get those things.” Dopamine does respond to both pleasurable and unexpected experiences, just like it responds to all sorts of interesting experiences we have every day. This may be where the confusion begins.
Without dopamine, you wouldn’t do much of anything, on your phone, or otherwise. When you think of dopamine starvation, Poldrack suggests, think of the catatonic patients sitting around in Oliver Sacks’s “Awakenings,” with no will to act. Or imagine a lethargic, lab rat that can’t summon the will to leap over a hurdle for a little extra food.
“Even if you go to a week long meditation retreat, your dopamine system is still running during that week,” Poldrack said. “It’s doing different things, but it’s not as if you turn off the system.” He suggests that a “stimulation” fast may be a more apt term for the hours, days, or weeks one chooses to spend without phones, computers, games, or sex.
Source: Silicon Valley is obsessed with ‘dopamine fasting’ to stay sane. It might actually work, but not because of dopamine.
So from another perspective:
Evidently, by reducing our day-to-day stimuli, we may reset our dopamine threshold and subsequently enjoy life more. It struck me as a re-packaging of elements of Buddhism, neuroendocrinology, and a world view of humans as “wet-meat” versions of computers. The true enlightenment of the article comes from the comments, here are two.
* I can think of little more to illustrate how lame San Francisco has become. As someone with Young Onset Parkinson's disease I can speak of what a dopamine fast is really like. Truly enlighten yourselves by discovering what dopamine offers your body. It controls movement as well, like digestion, swallowing, and walking, it's not all about pleasure!
* Lots of people have an effective way of avoiding pleasure: They work 8-hour shifts at boring, low-paying jobs. If they find out they still have too much pleasure in their lives they take a second job.
Source: What I'm Reading
So what do you think? I suspect many Aspies or AS might think they suffer from a lack of dopamine and wish they had a little more of the stuff. But who knows I am DEFINITELY not an expert on this subject. I don't even own a smartphone.
11 Nov 2019, 9:11 am
