Thread by @__justplaying, my experience with dopamine detox threadokay so about six years ago i [...]

my experience with dopamine detox thread

okay so about six years ago i broke my leg, which made me briefly face my mortality and had me in a cast for 6 weeks, homestuck. cue to being depressed out of my mind for like a week and a half, the lowest of lows. 1/ https://twitter.com/captain_mrs/status/1335997673774735360

https://twitter.com/captain_mrs/status/1335997673774735360

after that week and change i was sitting at my therapist complaining as usual and telling him how its so hard be stuck at home with no external structures. by that i mostly meant work. i was also in some pain etc but really the lack of structure was killing me. 2/

by thst point i also read everything on the internet and was horribly understimulated, stuck in adhd boredom.

and i told my psych how nice it would be if there would be a place that could give me some external struc—

and that's when the holy spirit just slapped me, hard. 3/

because i suddenly remembered that weeks ago i semi-randomly hung out w a catholic priest who lived in a nearby monastery and he mentioned that they have guestroom. at the time i didn't think much of it but now — it was time for a 5-day self-guided retreat. 4/

truly, that moment was one of the few genuine spiritual experiences.

i called the place later that day and somehow they had a room for me for the next week.

come monday morning, i showed up, they showed me my room, told me their schedule and that was that. 5/

they were great people and i remember them fondly but not very chatty. the schedule of every day was fixed - the meal times, the four prayers, the daily mass. nice lil structure. i had everything for my self-imposed and self-guided retreat. 6/

i didn't bring my laptop, only my phone and my kindle — and i only allowed myself an hour of internet per day in the evening at most, otherwise my phone was in airplane mode and mostly functioned as a very expensive watch. 7/

so what did i do all day? besides attending the prayers, i read on my kindle. a lot. i would also venture outside with my crutches, and just take the beauty of nature all in — the monastery was at a very beautiful place. i took things slow. 8/

i would check some stuff on the internet in the evenings but in general for about 4 days and change i was on a de-facto dopamine detox and it was pretty great and an amazing spiritual experience. i discovered a bunch of things about myself, other things clicked in place etc 9/

i fell in love with their liturgy, which was very old-school, so old that they pronunced some swedish words differently. i particularly fell in love with praying the rosary which is really the catholic version of guided meditation. 10/

a bunch of other good things happened and overall i loved it very much. on the fifth day, a friday, i felt like it's time for it to end, so it did. got a ride back to home.

and i'll be honest, i bounced back immediately and hard. 11/

i went even more all-in with having as much stimulation and distractions as possible.

that saturday i also had a chat with my dad (back then we were still kinda close) and i told him how much peace i felt there and somehow the discussion got to a point where i said... 12/

"what if my fate in life is to become one of them? to renounce all worldly things and just be a nun?"

(i was with monks bc there weren't any convents nearby. also, they were great.)

and my dad said "well, maybe it is"

...and that scared the bejesus out of me. 13/

and for a while i was literally scared to go back there. for at least half a year, maybe more. i was so afraid that place would somehow just, suck me in and i did not want to end up a nun.

but eventually, i did go back and that's when i started to have my mini-detoxes. 14/

i would put my phone in airplane mode and take the train there in the afternoon, just in time for the rosary then the evening prayer then the mass. by then, more than 2.5 hours have passed with me being disconnected and all.

and then i'd go for a walk nearby in the nature. 15/

what i discovered then was what i called the three-hour rule: for the first 3 hours of disconnecting i'd be antsy & restless but something after 3 hours would just flip in my brain and after that it was just pure bliss. me walking down a path, the lake next to me, all quiet. 16/

all quiet in my brain, that is.

it was around this time i got more in touch with my inner children; i had conversations with them, i felt them, it was great. i still miss that.

the Quiet would of course go away as soon as i turned my phone back on but till then — peace. 17/

i did that periodically for about a year and change and after that i left sweden and haven't really found another place for this, except kind-of sort-of when i would go on hikes.

but i did have another, even smaller dopamine-detox for a while — yoga. 18/

there isn't really anything more to say about that. i am on my phone or my laptop 24/7 but for those 1.5 hours i am not and i am breathing and moving and relaxing and it's pretty grear. it also allows me to sort through my thoughts. 19/

indeed, recently i started putting a pen and a piece of paper next to the mat so i could quickly jot down whatever todo item came to my mind. i highly recommend it.

i still hate dopamine detox but when i manage sometime do it anyway, it can be great. 20/20

(thanks @captain_mrs for the inspiration for this thread)

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