HIT REFRESH
AS WE STAGGER blinking and numb into this new decade, there may be no more appropriate summation of where we’re at as a species than the latest Silicon Valley trend: dopamine fasting.
If you haven’t heard the term, the ethos is this: the reason why so many of us spend our days unproductively scrolling, overwhelmed and burnt out, is that our brains have become hooked on low-quality triggers of the neurotransmitter dopamine. It’s not our fault, it’s our neurochemistry that has us reaching for our phones, spending money we don’t have and making endless plans we don’t want to keep.
The solution, according to a slew of San Fran-adjacent psychologists, is a detox. Fasting from dopamine stimulants, including but not limited to sex, social media and even stimulating music, can apparently ‘reset’ the brain’s reward pathway, helping
