sweetie, its just your brain chasing fake dopamine again.

| how your brain's mad hunger for dopamine is making you destroy all your carefully calculated routines & boundaries

It’s crazy how the one thing that really excites you and motivates you to do the chores, the studying, the work, the hobbies and literally anything in the world, is the same thing the overload of which would cause your life to go on a feral rampage, you guessed it, the delight dealer hormone none other than Dopamine.

When you entertain a guy/girl (who is way below your standards btw) by replying to their texts and checking your phone constantly and getting that rush of a notification-induced dopamine when they finally reply, when you watch one more tiktok before sleeping and suddenly its 2am, when you check the views on the reel that you posted and see 100 more views, or when you see 1 more like on your substack post (guilty ehe) yeah that’s you chasing the fake dopamine via instant gratfication again.

Us humans were made to read, talk, socialise, play, gain knowledge, cook, run and above all, enjoy peace. Those were the sources that brought us the gifts of genuine satisfaction of mind, making our brain release not only dopamine but also serotonin and oxytocin. With the invent of technology, talking and listening has become a dying art now, how often do you spot people scrolling on their phones than talking to each other at a restaurant, a cafe or any public place for that matter? Plenty. We’ve resorted to sending texts now and maintaining the false intimacy by sharing reels with our friends rather than calling bi-monthly to check-up on them.

From scrolling hours worth of brain-rot on Tiktok & Instagram to enjoying a cup of tea while reading a book that intrigues you, dopamine is released from our brain in almost all activities we do, during the boring tasks tho? not so much. Taking a break from Instagram for my finals, for almost half a month, made me realise the importance of not always being hooked onto something visually, because the dark reality of most social media platforms is that they’re engineered, carefully optimised and algorithmically refined to keep you scrolling on their app and we all pay these corporations via our attention as the currency. Chasing this fake dopamine induced by the instant gratificational activities such as scrolling short-form content like reels and tiktoks has ruined our brain’s perception of what real happiness aka real dopamine feels like.

This need to constantly feed our brain with something comes from ah yes Evolution’s chaotic improv show, since our brain evolved over time to seek the easiest rewards due to the survival mode our ancestors used to live in. Finding honey or fatty food in the wild? their brain went “EAT NOW!! you don’t know when you’ll eat again.” This survival instinct still exists in us, except that now we’re surrounded by plenty of sources and yet our brains have been hijacked by artificial stimulation that never existed in nature. The modern overstimulation has made this habit loop of getting dopamine hits way too easy, and not just when it comes to multimedia content, but also food delivery and social validation. Earlier a 2 hour movie felt so intriguing, now even a 15 second reel feels too long. This makes the slow delayed gratificational process of studying or working towards a goal feel so unnatural in a fast-paced society where everyone shows their highlights and W moments on social media.

Escapism adventures such as ‘bed-rotting’ for example, is a result of the loop that has been created to chase this fake dopamine.

feel bad → seek quick pleasure → short high → crash → feel worse → repeat

This happens a lot when chasing motivation on social media as well, you feel bad so u go on reels to watch some motivational study reels and then feel even less motivated to study and the cycle continues.

In order to reclaim your power and well ‘LOCK IN’ you need to start chasing Real Dopamine instead, the one that comes from taking action rather than waiting for the motivation to strike, its in embracing moments of solitude than checking your phone again for their text, its in writing imperfectly than searching for the perfect words, its in talking with an old friend instead of watching random hauls, its in going to the gym and sweating it out instead of just saving workout reels in the folder, its in committing to a project and finishing it instead of half-assing your efforts, its in LIVING rather than WAITING for life to happen to you.

thank you so much for reading sweetheart, remember you’re loved <33

xoxo

Shreya