It's been a while since my last post: Since then I've visited Canada, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Hungary and had a run-in with American bureaucracy. I also got another job which I think I actually want to keep for the foreseeable future, and got a girlfriend (I had a crush on her at a distance for years and when we met in real life we instantly connected). I feel like I'm higher on Maslow's pyramid than I ever have been. This week: - My birthday! I invited about 14 friends over, we drank, ate pizza and were merry. I didn't know my flat could hold that many people (it's SMALL). Feels amazing to host and provide a space for people I love to enjoy themselves 😌 - Rekindled a friendship with someone from college I hadn't hung out with in person for about six years. - My dad and my sister visited me (usually I visit them because the train ticket is expensive). We went to a curry house and got drunk.
Great novels I've read recently: - Prophet Song by Paul Lynch - The Trees by Percival Everett - Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright Currently back on the Everett wagon with Erasure, which may well be the best of his I've read yet.
Reading log last week: Up to chapter 12 of Middlemarch. Finished Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke. There's not nothing in there, but the book is certainly not useful.
The gist of the book is "dopamine is a reward signal, and anything that gives you dopamine can be addicting." The advice is basically "just don't do it for 4 weeks. That will prove you're better off without it. Then keep not doing it forever". With a side comment about medically supervised withdrawal for some substances. I started reading it because I noticed I reach for sweets or scroll social media when I feel crappy about anything, and it feels kinda obsessive and dopamine seeking. I was hoping there would some commentary on how to be normal when so many things online and in society are highly tailored to suck you in and give you a dopamine hit of cat pictures or righteous anger, and get you coming back. But there's really none of that. I skimmed through "Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking" and it's a 40 year old book on cigarettes but it has more useful information about scrolling twitter when you can't sleep than "Dopamine Nation" does
It took me a couple months of cutting back from almost a pack a day before going cold turkey on smokes, and recently sugary snacks. Unprepared, I would have kept relapsing. There is wisdom in complete deprivation for as long as you need to teach yourself again the difference between need and craving. Fasting or taking a break from the internet for a week are great as first steps at learning moderation, differentiating hunger pangs from "bored, could go for a snack" impulses. You then return, more able to control yourself. What you're describing sounds less like dopamine seeking and more like idling or coping. If that's the case, you could substitute them for something else with little difficulty.