The Definitive Guide to Dopamine Fasting

2.0 - The Hot Silicon Valley Trend

 Published on August 8, 2019

Dr. Cameron Sepah

CEO, Maximus. Executive Psychologist & Professor, UCSF Med School.
13 articles Follow

Dopamine Fasting 2.0 has gone viral worldwide! This article has 140K+ views, and the
international media from the ABC, The New York Times, BBC, and other prominent media
have covered it across the US, UK, Australia, Finland, France, Japan, India, Russia, Turkey, and
the Middle East. So what is all the rage about? Dopamine Fasting 2.0 is an evidence-based
technique to manage addictive behaviors, by restricting them to specific periods of time, and
practicing fasting from impulsively engaging in them, in order to regain behavioral flexibility.
Unfortunately, there's also been a lot of public misunderstanding due to media misportrayal, so
let's start with what it ISN'T.

Here's what Dopamine Fasting 2.0 IS NOT:

- Reducing dopamine (the focus is on reducing impulsive BEHAVIOR)

- Avoiding all stimulation (focuses only on specific behaviors that are problematic for you)

- Not talking/socializing/exercising (actually encourages values-aligned health behaviors)

- Rebranding meditation/asceticism/sabbath (doesn't involve meditating or not working)

- Vacation (people treat vacations as times to indulge even more in bad habits)

- A "tech bro" or SiliconValley-only trend (it's done by both genders all over the world)

So what's the Science behind Dopamine Fasting 2.0?

Let's first understand how impulsive behaviors become problematic or addictive. If you've ever
studied behaviorism in a psychology course, you may recall that "classical conditioning" is a
process which helps us learn that involves dopamine. To be clear, we ARE NOT fasting
from dopamine itself, but from impulsive behaviors reinforced by it.

With enough training, unconditioned stimuli we've never seen before, like a red dot or
notification on your smartphone, can become conditioned stimuli, because we learn to anticipate
a reward (the negative reinforcement of alleviating our negative emotions, or the positive
reinforcement of seeing a novel thing). This 'double reinforcement' can lead to
impulsive/addictive behavior since every time we feel bored, anxious, angry, sad or lonely, we
seek those things that both numb the bad feeling and distract our attention with pleasure.

How is Dopamine Fasting 2.0 based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

(CBT)?
We can regain flexibility over such automatic, rigid behavior by restricting the external stimuli,
which is a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)-based technique called "stimulus control."
You can do this in several ways to reduce your need to rely on willpower:

1) Put the stimulus (like your phone) away or make it harder to access.

2) Engage in an alternative activity that is incompatible with the stimulus (e.g. hard to do sports
and stress eat at the same time)
3) Use website-blocking software or social accountability to prevent yourself from cheating.

We can also naturally expose ourselves to the internal stimuli (negative emotions), without
engaging in the conditioned response (grabbing for our phone), which is another CBT-based
technique called "exposure and response prevention".

1) Notice when the impulses arise, and what thoughts and feelings you're experiencing in that
moment.

2) Practice "urge surfing": watch the desire to engage in the conditioned response come and
go without giving into it.

3) Repeatedly returning to whatever you are doing on instead, with a spirit of non-judgement. 

Over time, this weakens the classical conditioning in a process called ‘habituation’, which
ultimately restores our behavioral flexibility.

Collectively, CBT is considered the gold standard treatment for impulse control disorders, and
with behaviors that are hard to abstain from altogether, the scientific consensus is
that "clinicians have generally agreed that moderated and controlled use
of the Internet is most appropriate to treat the problem." In addition,
a specific study showed that dopamine fasting from Facebook for a week helped students
regain 13.3 hours of their time, and significantly reduced depressive symptoms by 17%, which
allowed them to engage in more healthy behaviors instead.

The Dopamine Fasting 2.0 Schedule

What makes Dopamine Fasting 2.0 unique are the time blocks, which recommends fasting for
gradually longer periods of time periodically to extend the benefits. Here's how to do it:

The FASTING Schedule (when you DON'T engage)

Follow the fasting schedule if you want to still do the behavior during the day, but just want to
cut back a bit and regain some behavioral flexibility so it's not so impulsive all the time.

The fasting schedule excludes behaviors are problematic during periods of time that are normally
associated with rest (nights/weekends/vacations), that make it easier to comply:

 1-4 hours at the end of the day (depending on work & family demands)
 1 weekend day (spent it outside on a Saturday or Sunday)
 1 weekend per quarter (go on a local trip)
 1 week per year (go on vacation!)
Remember these are suggested guidelines, not strict rules. If it's easier to start by dopamine
fasting for 1 hour a day (vs. 4 hours a day), then go for it, and then try to ramp up to what you're
willing to do and sustain long-term (e.g. 2 hours/day). Perfect is the enemy of good. So like
Nike: just do it.

The FEASTING Schedule (when you DO engage)

If you would really like to minimize a behavior so you're doing it as little as is practically
possible, but still want or need to do it on occasion, then add in the feasting schedule to put total
time limitations about when exactly and how much you'll do the behavior.

With this added approach, allow yourself to engage in the behavior for 5-30 minutes, 1-3 times a
day. One easy way of doing this, is allowing yourself to check your phone for notifications and
communications right after mealtimes only for a limited amount of time before moving on.

Interestingly, the Chinese government has instituted a practice in-line  with

Dopamine Fasting 2.0 as compulsory law for minors under the age of 18. They use both and
fasting and feasting schedules: having video game makers program a feature that disallows use
from 10PM-8AM, and only allowing use for 1.5 hours/day during weekdays and 3 hours/day
during weekends and holidays. While it would be ideal for parents to be the one to institute this,
the Chinese are likely ahead of the curve here since they've seen how much internet addiction has
devastated their youth.

What Makes Dopamine Fasting 2.0 Distinct?

Just as intermittent fasting has become all the rage in Silicon Valley, I have created “Dopamine
Fasting 2.0” as the antidote to our overstimulated age. What differentiates Dopamine Fasting 2.0
is that I DO NOT prescribe a list of things that you cannot do. If you have zero bad habits that
you would like to spend less time on, then you probably don't need to do it at all. However, if
you find that a particular behavior is causing you:

 Distress (you're bothered by how much you do it)

 Impairment (interferes with your optimal social or school/work
performance)
 Addictiveness (you want to cut down, but cannot consistently do so)
Then you may want to target that behavior for dopamine fasting. In my clinical experience, I find
six categories of impulsive behaviors are commonly problematic and prone to addiction. Again,
you DO NOT need to abstain from ALL of these things, only the ones that are an issue
specifically for you. This also helps compliance, so you don't feel like you need to make drastic
changes to your life and feel deprived:

 Emotional eating
 Internet/gaming
 Gambling/shopping
 Porn/Masturbation
 Thrill/novelty seeking
 Recreational drugs
This list is neither inclusive nor exclusive. The antiquated versions of “dopamine fasting” that
say absolutely no digital devices, but I find this to be missing the point. For example, browsing
compulsively through various articles on your phone can definitely be addictive, while reading a
single book on a Kindle Paperwhite device (which has no options for distraction) is probably
fine. To decide what to fast from, simply regard whether it’s highly pleasurable or problematic
for you, and thus you may need a break from.

The Six Most Common Behavioral Addictions:

So what behaviors choose you choose to dopamine fast 2.0 from? If you don't overdo or have
any problematic behaviors, you don't need to do it at all. But in my clinical experience, most
people tend to have trouble with one of the following six behaviors, which in extremes, become
behavioral addictions:

1. Emotional Eating
It’s easier to be completely abstinent from recreational drugs, since they are not absolutely
necessary to live or work. However, food is much trickier, since we obviously need to eat to
sustain ourselves. Those those who are already doing intermittent fasting (IF; such as where you
eat for 12 hours and fast for 12 hours) or extended fasting (where you fast for 1-5 days), it’s very
easy to incorporate into dopamine fasting. For example, the 4 hours of dopamine fasting + 8
hours of sleep = 12 hours of intermittent fasting that doesn’t include food.

For everyone else, it’s fine to eat healthy foods during a dopamine fast, just avoid those that tend
to be highly rewarding/addictive because they make you both feel good (positive reinforcement)
and feel less bad if you're feeling stressed (negative reinforcement), which is hyper-addictive
combo. In my clinical experience, foods most prone to 'emotional eating' are ultra-processed
foods with added ingredients that make them very:

 Sweet (sugar-sweetened beverages)

 Salty (pretzels)
 Savory/Spicy (flaming hot Cheetos/Doritos)
 Combination of carbs + fat (buttered popcorn, mac & cheese)

2. Internet/gaming
The internet is hard to avoid given how connected school/work is, so the goal is to
compartmentalize it to within 12 hours, so your brain can take a break for the remaining 4 hours
of the day and pursue valued activities instead.

Generally speaking, avoid anything designed by a company (movies/television) or involves

frequent input (social media scrolling/clicking), since products such prioritize user engagement
not user well-being. While the internet can be a great learning tool, the constant attentional
switching (and thus dopaminergic firing) from social media, articles, forums, games, etc. is
what's problematic.

Listening to music is a tricky example, because it can be pleasurable, but it depends on how it’s
used. Leaving an album on or soundtrack playing in the background uninterrupted is fine, but if
you can’t do tasks without music without being bored, or are manually DJing/clicking/searching
through songs, then that's when it should be avoided during a dopamine fast.

3. Gambling/Shopping
These two behaviors are actually more related than people realize, given they involve repeatedly
spending money in order to purchase a large payoff. They can be considered male and female
cousins since more men like to gamble, and more women like to shop, though these stereotypes
are increasingly blurring as traditional norms break down. In any case, any form of gambling and
non-utilitarian shopping (for staples) should be avoided during a dopamine fast.

4. Porn/Masturbation
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with occasional porn viewing or masturbation for the person
doing it (leaving aside the social implications for now). But the issue is more around how they
are used. For some people, these behaviors can become problematic and compulsive and thus
benefit from dopamine fasting.

Sex is a trickier behavior to include in a dopamine fast given there’s another person involved,
and thus may be hard to schedule. Thus, I’d suggest it’s fine to have sex if you can’t do it another
time AND it’s done in a fulfilling way with a regular partner. Americans are generally starved of
physical intimacy, so values-aligned sex is a healthy behavior worth making an exception for
(just as when I’m treating insomnia, I tell clients that sex is the only activity allowed in bed
besides sleep, to promote sleep hygiene). Impulsive (started without clear intention), compulsive
(repeated without clear intention), or high-risk (health hazardous) sexual behaviors are obviously
discouraged, and especially during a dopamine fast.

5. Thrill/novelty seeking
Psychologists call this “sensation seeking”, the public calls it getting an “adrenaline rush”. These
behaviors can also take more subtle forms such as seeking novelty, complexity, & intensity (like
watching a psychological thriller or horror movie).

An easy rule of thumb is if it elicits an emotion that is high energy/arousal AND very positive
negative in quality/valence (such as euphoria or fear), then consider abstaining from it during a
dopamine fast.

6. Recreational Drugs
Obviously abstain from recreational drugs during a dopamine fast, but that also includes alcohol
and caffeine, which most people don’t consider to be drugs because they’re socially
destigmatized, but can absolutely be physiologically addictive. This also has the added health
benefit of significantly improving your sleep quality if you avoid it in the 4 hours before your
bedtime.

But I don’t have time/can’t avoid checking my phone!

If you can't fit your work/pleasure into 12-15 hours/day, I’d argue that you (who are not
clinicians on call or first responders) are not very good at managing your time & energy. Learn
to follow the 80/20 rule of figuring out what 20% of your behaviors are getting 80% of your
results in order to figure out what to eliminate or delegate.

Forcing yourself to engage in “time-restricted pleasure” also makes you procrastinate less and
better manage your time and energy, because you have to be efficient within that window.

What Should I Do Instead?

You don't need to “do nothing” or meditate during a dopamine fast (unless you’d like to). Just
engage in regular activities that reflect your values: 

- Health-Promoting (exercise, cooking) 

- Leading (helping, serving others)

- Relating (talking, bonding over activities)

- Learning (reading, listening)

- Creating (writing, art)

What’s Wrong With Fun? & “Dopamine Binges”

The point of dopamine fasting is not to encourage monasticism or masochism, Fun, enjoyment,
and aesthetic appreciation are an important part of life (though most of us could use less
flattering social media and more fulfilling sex, which would honestly make us a lot happier). 

Hormesis is a concept from toxicology where taking a substance in low doses may make us less
susceptible/resilient to it over time. For example, being exposed to an allergen as a child may
actually make you less allergic later in life. Similarly, it's reasonable to have responsible
“dopamine binges” once in a blue moon (obviously in a way that doesn’t incur long-term health,
relationships, or legal issues). That helps reinforce the lesson that these behaviors aren’t
inherently problematic, but it’s the habit that’s the issue. So practice flexibility regarding
fasting itself in order to reset from resetting.

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