HealthyGamerGG - How to a Dopamine Detox, and Reddit Review | Community Stream

Episode Date: July 25, 2021

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Today, we are going to do a couple of things, chat. We are going to start with something that people have been asking for a lot, which is dopamine detox. And then after that, so I'm going to explain a lot of stuff about dopamine detox. Hopefully that'll take about 20 minutes. Help you guys understand what it is, how it works, why we do it, and how to do it, what to expect and tips to doing it successfully. Okay?

Next thing that we're going to do is we're going to hop on over to our subreddit and we're going to answer questions from there. So I know that sometimes people will, you know, DM me or send me emails or whatever with questions. Just a quick heads up that, you know, I try, as much as I would love to answer your question individually, I can't justify taking the time out of my day to send a response to just one person when we have the opportunity to answer questions that, you know,

maybe hundreds or thousands of people will watch. Please don't take it personally. I apologize. I wish I got fewer questions so that I could respond to. people individually like back what I did in 2018 before we were big. Not to say that we're huge or anything now, but I just get more questions that I can answer. So I'm sorry that I can't get to everyone. And I would love, I would love to. I would love to get to everyone. That would be great. So a couple of things. So, you know, just a reminder that like we're going to talk about dopamine

detox today. A lot of the things that people struggle with and when people have questions like, how do I build confidence? How do I, you know, let go of past resentment? How do I better understand anxiety? Like, how can I develop like a meditation program to help me with like feelings of depression or inadequacy? All of those questions. So what we actually did is take like the most prominent questions in our community and actually package them together in a really formal way. And that's what Dr. K's guides are. So if you guys have, you know, particular issues where like you're watching stream and one day you're like, oh my God, like that's me. I feel personally attacked Sedge. Like, oh, what do I do about that? That's what the guides are there for. I think they really cover like 70%

of the introductory questions that people will have. So you guys can, you know, check those out. They should be coming out in about a month or two. The last thing is, you know, the guide sort of represent like basically what I do in the first couple of sessions with most people that I see individually. I know a lot of people have asked, you know, do I see new people? I can't. Um, so what I've really tried to do is make like my expertise more broadly available for people who, you know, I just don't have the time to see everyone. So what I realized is that like 70% of what I do in the first two or three sessions with someone can actually be like captured in a video. So I'll explain to them things like, okay, so just because you feel depressed doesn't mean that you have a mental illness,

right? It may not be that your mind is malfunctioning. You may be like, lacking meaning or purpose in life. So those kinds of conversations I oftentimes teach during my early sessions. So I'll teach about neuroscience, teach about pharmacology, teach about, you know, what kind of psychotherapy is right for you, teach about meditation, principles of meditation, what's the true nature of self, what is the true nature of knowledge, all of those kinds of things. So all that stuff is in the guides. Okay. Dr. Kay is a psychological bully. How so? Anyway, so let's go ahead and get started. Okay, so we're going to start with dopamine detox.

Okay? Oh, I feel personally attacked. Maybe that's it. So what we're going to do is we're just going to start with Googling dopamine detox. Okay, so let's just see what comes up. So the first thing that I want to point out is that like dopamine detox is kind of like a, you know, like a high. you know, so let's just like look at, like, let's just look at the, so dopamine detox is kind of a buzzword right now. So the first thing that I'd like to do is actually like, you know, just click on a couple of random websites and just look at like what people are saying about dopamine detox and who is talking about dopamine detox.

So we see that there's like MSN is saying something about it, right? The right way to do it. Overthinker's journey. and so like, you know, what does it, I tried the dopamine detox. Here's what happened. The whole point is to reset. Okay, so we're going to take a look at that website. And then like, let's take a look at, you know, just two sites from the front page. Let's see what people have to say. Okay. This is going to explain part of the reason why dopamine detox is tough. Okay. So, okay, affiliate disclosure. Look, I'm working my ass off delivering value to you. So, you. So, okay, affiliate disclosure. Look, I'm working my ass off delivering value to use. So, yes, this blog is monetized through affiliate products. Okay, whatever. Right? So this is five-star funnel, whatever that is.

So recently I heard about this whole dopamine detox idea. Usually when I hear about these trends or whatever, I ignore them. But this time, it was different. I heard about it at a point where I was finding it a little harder to focus on work. I was going on social media a lot and so on. I joined in, and I'm glad I did. Not only did I become more productive, but I also did. quit smoking. Wow. That's really impressive. So what is a dopamine detox? Okay. So like what is dopamine? Great. So he says that it is a type of neurotransmitter. Okay? Shows a picture of it. Good. Detox is a process where you move something toxic or unhealthy out of your body. This is also called detoxification. So this is where things get weird, right?

Because in a dopamine detox, are we removing dopamine from our body? So however, dopamine, what makes dopamine so bad is that it is, is that your brain keeps looking for it over what you actually want. So this is where we get into a problem. So we're going to dig into the neuroscience here. This is, the statement is untrue. So dopamine is what determines what you want. So if we look at like what dopamine does in the brain, it actually determines. the dopamine reward circuitry is a circuit of motivation and behavior.

So like when you want something that is because of dopamine. So this is somewhat true. So you're the fastest way your brain can get to dopamine, this is correct. There's a lot of, these are all dopaminergic activities. So what is a dopamine detox removes almost all dopamine from your body for how, for however you choose to do it. So this statement is so horribly incorrect that it blows my mind. Okay. So this is like saying going on a diet is removing almost all calories from your body for however long you do it. Okay? The goal of a dopamine detox, and this is a really important point which will illustrate down the

road, is not to remove dopamine at all. We're not trying to remove dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter. I don't know if you guys know this, but like Parkinson's disease is the result of, of destruction of your dopaminergic neurons in a particular part of your brain. And so, like, if we removed all the dopamine from our body, what we would end up with is Parkinson's disease. This is not true. We do not want to remove the dopamine levels. My point here is that, like, people who are spreading this information do not have... So this was, like, on the front page. So granted, I use duck, duck go. I don't know exactly what would happen if I used Google. probably be influenced by my search history. So I use Duck, DuckGo go in, you know, in privacy mode.

And so like the first thing that I want you all to understand about dopamine detoxes, like most of the information out there is like done. Sure, like this person had a personal experience and I think it's great that they're sharing that personal experience, but like they don't understand actually like what the goal is. Okay. So then let's see what they say next. So how to how to do a dopamine detox. Okay, in the draw, food, none. Okay, so step one. So how do you, you just remove it all yourself? You just, ah, what are my favorites from things of the internet that involves self-help and growth blogs? You just remove it. Just remove it, chat. What's wrong with you, dumbasses? Just remove it. Just remove it. Just log out. Just like food, none. Just do.

Don't eat, chat. Anything else that gives you dopamine. Stop eating. Log out of all your devices. Just stop playing video games, chat. Just stop drinking. Just stop doing drugs. Just cigarettes.

Oh, like, no wonder he quit smoking. He was like, oh, my God. You just get rid of it, chat. Okay. For how long do you do a dopamine detox? Most people said for 24 hours. However, there were some people like Alex Becker who did it for much longer. Oh, Alex Becker did it for much.

So I decided to go for 36. Wow. That's so horribly incorrect because this does not understand, like this person does not understand the mechanisms through which a dopamine detox works. We'll get to this, okay? So, I mean, at the end of the point, at the end of the day, I guess there were pictures. And then, so I went into the kitchen, ate an orange, a banana, and three grapes. That's not all.

I also had my blueberry, my blue raspberry caffeine drink. So I failed twice on the second day two. Where I failed. Will I do it again? What I don't understand. Most of it, chat. Most of it. This person.

Okay, so I don't know. Should you try it? Wow, for a fail. So I don't even know. Let's just move on to the next one, okay? All right. So how to reset your mind with a dopamine detox from Project Life Mastery? Did you know that you can reset your mind with a dopamine detox?

When dopamine levels are too low, people experience depression, anxiety, and overwhelm. I don't think that that is correct. I really don't think so. Okay, is there some stuff about World Health Organization? Okay, there's a how to reset your mind dopamine detox YouTube video. This guy is smiling and is wearing a... suit. Cool. Ready to succeed faster and master every area of your life. Click here to join my Life Master Accelerator Mastery. Life Mastery Accelerator program. A dopamine detox can change

your life. Okay, let's look at the neuroscience. Dopamine functions in a neurotransmitter. That is correct. It affects many aspects of your behavior, some of which include learning, motivation, mood. This is also correct. So this neuroscience seems better, chat. Your brain is addicted to dopamine and it will try to stimulate the repetition of behavior that produced dopamine in the first place. Technically released dopamine in the first place, not produced it, but close enough, right? We can let that slide. Once you get what you desire, dopamine turns off. As a result, you end up feeling not as satisfied as you thought you would, sort of. Okay, you may end up feeling empty, okay.

Okay, there's... Okay, he talks about phenylethyl amines here, falling in love. I'm not quite sure what this has to do. A simple and powerful example is sugar addiction. Dopamine creates a craving for sugar. So he talks a little bit about satisfaction, which makes sense. So this is actually like, this is pretty good. Oh, wow, look.

Discover the seven proven business. models that made me an internet millionaire in less than three years. And he's sitting on a car. Get instant access to free video training and get started. Free four-part video training. And he's sitting on a beat. Discover how to make money publishing books on Amazon. Mastermind your way towards success.

I'm can, hmm. Okay, let's go back to this. I'm getting, I'm getting a little bit distracted by, you know, I guess this guy is an expert at Amazon publishing or dopamine? I'm confused. Investing for beginners. Supplements. How to master your mind and emotions. How to start an Amazon FBA physical products business. She makes $40,000 per month on Amazon. NLP training. What it's really like to be a millionaire. Okay, I'm a little bit confused about what this guy is. Okay. My point, though, is that So, okay, let's just keep going.

All right, so let's... Okay, so here's where things can get messy. When you stop engaging in addictive behaviors all at once, you may experience withdrawal symptoms. This is a dangerous way to detox your system. This is also true, so withdrawal from alcohol and benzodiazepines can even be life-threatening. It becomes the only way that you are able to experience happiness. People use dopamine hits as a way to mask negative emotions that they don't want to feel.

this is also correct. You can only distract yourself for so long before those emotions rise to the surface and start affecting every area of your life. Sort of true. Best way to reset your mind is to cultivate here and now transmitters. These include serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, and GABA. Okay, so this is where the neuroscience, once again, is just way off. These neurotransmitters allow you to enjoy the present moment, experience connection, and be at peace with yourself. That's just horribly incorrect. So just to give you guys an example. Okay. So, so, So this is neuroscience 101. Neurotransmitters are like letters of the alphabet. They can be used for all kinds of things. So, for example, serotonin is used in your GI system, and if you get way too much serotonin in your GI system, if you cultivate too much of the here and now transmitter of serotonin, you will end up with diarrhea.

This is bad. GABA is a suppressing or inhibiting neurotransmitter that is activated and increased by the use of alcohol and benzodiazepines. So like alcohol literally activates your GABA receptors and stimulates GABA production. So this is the one thing that I really notice about, you know, people like this, dude, who like, I'm sure that he's trying to help people and it seems like, you know, he's got, he's actually doing a pretty good job with the science. But it seems like his expertise is in mastermind your way towards success.

He's an internet entrepreneur life and business coach and philanthropist. So it seems like he's not claiming to be a neuroscientist, which is great. But like this is like, so neurotransmitters in the brain and all over your body do all sorts of things. So oxytocin, for example, is also what causes people to lactate if they're, you know, in the postpartum period. So like neurotransmitters don't just do one thing. They're actually like letters of the alphabet. So if you think about a letter of the alphabet, it's used in a lot of different words, right?

Maybe some letters may be more common in particular kinds of words. But our body, like, it's basically a signal that the body sends. And depending on where the signal is sent, like in the basal ganglia, dopamine is used for like regulating motor stuff, right? Like how I move.

So like, for example, people who have like basal ganglia problems will have like their movement is not smooth with their arms. It'll be like a ratchet movement. So you cultivate these here and now transmitters by slowly starting to remove behaviors that are causing issues in your life. Pick one thing in your life that you're addicted to, whether it's video games, pornography, social media,

coffee or sugar. Give your mind to rest and allow your baseline to return. Just give your mind rest, chat. Meditation is a powerful way to increase your dopamine levels naturally and reset your brain. I actually don't know if it's true. That's true. I don't know if meditation does anything to alter your dopamine levels.

It may. This could be correct. It's also been found to rebuild your frontal cortex. This is true. I don't know about rebuild, but it does improve prefrontal cortical function, which leads to self-control and willpower. That is correct. I encourage you to do some research.

I completely agree because this doesn't seem like a whole lot of research. Yes, chat, I encourage you to do that. If you're struggling, don't give up hope. That's cool, right? That's a message of positivity. Are you ready to do a dopamine detox? Okay, so I don't know exactly what this person is doing. But yeah, so like this is my point.

Like, so he's, you know, standing in a cool place and speaking to people and stuff. I just don't know. So this is the problem with dopamine detoxes. Like no one knows like one on earth they're talking about. Like, I don't get that this person is, you know, he's, this. is great. I mean, this is actually pretty similar to what we do, right, Chad? It's like purpose, vision, spirituality, like neuroscience sprinkled in. Like, it's kind of like us. Right? So this dude is like happy and he's successful and there he is in sunglasses with a car. And oh my goodness. Wow.

This is, so this guy must know a lot about, you know, dopamine detox. And then there are testimonials. Great. Yeah, so I just don't know, I don't know about this stuff, okay? So it looks like he's got courses, affiliate marketing mastery, mastering book publishing, the 24-hour book system, Amazon's amazing selling machine. So I just, this is my point is like people, what I think is going on right now when it comes to like information about dopamine detoxes is that like people like this who seems like he's good at selling stuff, right? So his expertise isn't selling and he's like, oh, like this is great. Like people will search for dopamine detox.

My website will pop up because he knows about, you know, marketing stuff. And then I will talk a little bit about it. And then presumably he will, people will purchase my products and services. So this is like the problem with, with a lot of the information about dopamine detox is that it seems like people just sort of like talk about it, right? But really don't know what they are talking about. So now, let's, let's, let's, let's, before we get too far, let's look at, like, so let's look at the flip side, right? So if I were to go to PubMed and do a search for dopamine detox, what would I find? Right? So, so first of all, I don't know if you guys know this, but, you know, if I do, you should see a bunch of papers, okay, when you search things on PubMed.

So if I search for dopamine detox, essentially I find nothing. So narcotic antagonists and drug dependence, pilot study showing enhancement compliance with sin, 10 amino acid precursors and encephalinase inhibition therapy. So this is the other problem with dopamine detox, which I want everyone to understand, is that dopamine detox has not actually been studied. So there are not clinical trials on dopamine detox. So everything that I wanted to share with you guys today is going to be grounded in neuroscience. It's stuff that I've done clinically. But if we really look at like have there been randomized controlled trials on dopamine detoxes,

there have not, right? So there have not been actual studies that I've been able to find that have a specific protocol for a dopamine detox and kind of like, you know, how to accomplish it. Okay. So in a sense, like while I'm being critical of these people, like if we want to be a little bit more fair, we have to at least acknowledge that part of the reason that these people are giving crappy information is because, frankly, good information is not out there yet. So now what I'd like to do is share with you guys my experience, of like, you know, when I've worked with people with dopamine detox, first of all, explaining to you all how the neurotransmitters actually work. Okay. So we can still, so this is where like, remember that there's like the end of evidence-based medicine,

which is like review articles when we have a bunch of studies. But before that, we tend to have clinical interventions. So this is where we can use our good understanding of science and we'll present with you guys with like good literature and stuff like that. This is stuff that is really grounded in a lot of science what I'm about to explain. And then we can actually, like, based on our understanding of basic neuroscience, we can actually, like, elucidate, okay, what's going on in, like, a dopamine-tolerant brain, like what happens in the mind of someone who's playing video games. We can even hypothesize based on what's happening in the circuitry in the brain what the symptoms should present as. And we'll sort of do that. And then y'all tell me, like,

okay, actually, yeah, that makes sense. This is actually what I experience. And, so if that's the case, then we can sort of do an intervention, which I've done, and I'll explain how to do that intervention and clinically what I've seen. Okay? So let's start by understanding what dopamine actually does in the brain. Okay. All right. So dopamine pathway. So this comes from Wikipedia. Okay. So this is a picture of a couple of important dopamine pathways in the brain. The ones that we're going to be looking at are the mesocortical and the mesolimbic. Okay. These are the important ones. And then the VTA is also important. So these three parts of the brain are going to be kind of where your dopamine reward and behavior and motivation circuitry are. So this is important

to understand about dopamine. Okay. So dopamine is involved in not necessarily the feeling of pleasure. Okay. And we're going to explain this a little bit later. And this is where a lot of people get tripped up. Dopamine is the reward is the neurotransmitter that our brain uses to reinforce a behavior first and foremost. So it's not necessarily the feeling of pleasure because as we're going to discover, hedonics and motivation are actually two separate neurochemical or neurosurcates. Okay. So hedonics is the ability to experience pleasure and dopamine is involved in motivation and reward. So when we engage in a behavior that rewards us in some way, that reinforcement is going to be via dopamine. And the two pathways we're going to be looking at the most are the mesocortical pathway and especially the mesolimbic pathway.

Okay, so let's pop on over to Wikipedia for a second. So this is where the mesolimbic pathway is involved in reward-related cognition, which includes incentive salience. This is huge. so wanting and enjoying are actually not the same part of the brain, okay, which is going to become important in a second. So dopamine is what makes us want stuff. So the liking and pleasure is involved in the mesolimbic pathway, but there's actually a separate circuit that involves that more, which we'll dig into once things get complicated, which is how the brain works. Sorry to say, it's not like super simple. and so it also has to do with aversion-related cognition and positive reinforcement.

What aversion-related cognition means is that, like, basically, if we avoid things, so we can reward behaviors through aversion as well. So, like, if I don't go to, you know, if I don't ask anyone out to prom or if I don't go to prom, I'm going to be, like, more peaceful because, you know, I'm scared of going to prom. I'm scared of feeling alone. I'm scared of all that stuff. So dopamine is involved in that kind of motivational circuitry way as well. It's like the motivation of avoidance.

The mesocortical pathway is a little bit different because this involves executive function. So what that sort of means is that our mesocortical, so our mesolimbic pathway, this pathway here, okay, which goes from the ventral tagmental area up to, I forget what this part is. This is the orbital cortex. Oh, nucleus accumbens. Okay. So this pathway is really around motivation and reward. And the mesocortical pathway, so remember our frontal cortices are the ones that give us a sense of control and willpower. So what this means, executive function is the ability to plan out a task over time and execute on those pieces. So if I want to find a job that involves polishing up my resume, it involves updating my LinkedIn profile, if it involves like these other kinds of things than applying to jobs, responding to emails, send you thank you notes after interviews, All of those things are essentially executive function. And if we really look at it, this is why it's important.

If we really look at it, the key thing about dopamine here is that that circuit is not rewarded for each of those steps. Right. So the mesocortical pathway is the one that allows us to take actions without being rewarded each step of the way. So when I update my resume, like, I don't get a dopamine hit, right? if I update my LinkedIn profile, I don't get a dopamine hit. And yet our brain's ability to essentially execute long-term tasks that are not immediately rewarding are governed by the mesocortical pathway. And so what we actually find is that when people get too like dopaminergic dopamine-heavy,

when their mesolimbic pathway dominates their mesocortical pathway, what we actually wind up with is people who are unable to engage in action that is not immediately rewarding. So it's sort of like they can't do what they should and can only do what they want. Okay? So like you guys let me know whether that sort of makes sense in terms of something that you struggle with because that's like this is what the neuroscience tells us. Right. So we can look at these two different functions of executive function and like mesolimbic what it does. And we can draw hypotheses based on the science of what the clinical presentation of this messed up circuitry looks like. Okay? Don't worry, chat. We're not done. We're going to help you all with this.

So the next thing that we're going to talk a little bit about is the anterior cingulate cortex, okay? So now I'm going to explain a couple of things to you all. So the anterior singular cortex is involved in something called effort computation. And what effort computation means is that there's basically any time we take an act, this is the anterior cingulate cortex, anytime we we are calculating an act or any time we're thinking about doing something, our mind essentially has something called an effort calculation. So it sort of says like, okay, I can do this and get this reward. This requires this much energy for this kind of reward. Or I can invest in a lot of energy for a lot of reward. Or I can invest a lot of energy for a low reward. Or I can invest very little

energy for a high reward, right? So I can do something like spend 10 years becoming a doctor, which is a high effort, high reward. Sometimes I can even do things that my mind will tell me like, oh, there's no point in asking this person out because they'll never say yes. So that's a high effort, low reward strategy. And then even there are things that are low effort, high reward strategies, like, I'm going to spend all my money on Dogecoin, AMC, and GameStop, right? And just, I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to spend 10 bucks. and I'm going to make 10,000. It's easy chat.

Easy done. Okay. So the anterior cingulate cortex is involved in all of these effort computations. And essentially what happens is that when we get impaired dopaminergic neurons in the nucleus accumbens, right? So the nucleus accumbens is in the mesolimbic pathway. What it actually does is changes the effect of our interior cingulate cortex. And when it does that, what we essentially do is are unable to.

choose anything except for the low reward, low effort option. Okay? So I'm going to draw this out a little bit, okay? I should probably should have done this a while ago because I realize I'm hammering a bunch of neuroscience at y'all. But are y'all doing okay with this? Is this too much? Are you all like this or don't like this? Like, you got to let me know, chat. Picture is worth a thousand words maybe at this point. I realize maybe I'm hammering too much stuff at y'all. Okay. Come on. Okay, there we go. All right.

So let's go through a couple of things, okay? Okay, so number one, go away. Okay. All right, so we've got two circuits. We've got tap to connect. Are we connected? No, chat. There we go. Connected.

Okay. So let's understand what we're talking about. From the top. So number one, dopamine detox is not about emptying your brain of dopamine. Okay. Dopamine is a diverse structure that does all kinds of stuff in our brain. It does things like motivation and reward, okay, executive function, and even things like movement.

So we don't want to empty our brain of dopamine. That's a terrible, terrible idea. means we won't be motivated to do anything. So when we look at motivation reward, this is something called the mesolimbic pathway. Okay? And we look at executive function. This is mesocortical.

Okay, now we're going to do a little bit of teaching real quick. Limbic is the limbic system is our emotional circuit of the brain. The cortices are our frontal lobes. Oh no, am I lagging? Fucking A. What is wrong with this? Okay. Hopefully it'll kick in in in a second.

So this is where like the executive function. So if we kind of look at it, what we're going to see. No, chat. No, no, but the iPad isn't showing what I'm drawing. No. Okay, hold on. There we go. Okay, so mesocortical is planning.

Mesolimbic is like rewarding behavior. Okay, so sometimes there is a tension where the mesolimbic beats the rewarding mesocortical. What that means is that we're going to choose rewarding behavior over like planning and executing tasks over long periods of time. If we meditate, what we can do is reverse this because we're enhancing our cortical circuits. We're going to be able to do planned actions more than like immediately rewarding actions. So if we look at our frontal cortex, the frontal cortex is involved with things like impulse control. right? So I don't know if you all remember, but when we looked back at the Wikipedia thing over here,

what we see is that ADHD is deficient in both of these pathways, especially the mesocortical pathway, more so than the mesolimbic pathway. Okay? So next thing that we're going to talk about, now this is where things get even more complicated, the anterior cingulate cortex. But it's going to be cool, Chad. It's going to all come together. I promise you. Stay with me, chat. Don't abandon me. Okay. stay with me so this involves effort computation so what this means is that sometimes your mind is saying oh this is not worth it and when you alter the dopamine system here this actually goes and messes up the anterior cingulate cortex and messes up your effort computation so when you impair dopamine the only choice that you can make is low effort

for low reward. Right? Remember we've got effort and then we can sort of do a two-by-two table reward. So high effort, low effort, high reward, low reward. And basically, when we mess up our anterior cingulate cortex, this is the only quadrant that we can do things in. We can't afford to do anything that involves high effort for a high reward. and so like this is where this is going to become kind of important because

what we see in a dopamine detox is essentially going to be that people sort of get stuck in this particular pattern. So like what is the neuroscience correlation with like what all of these things? What does this mean? How is this going to present clinically? Okay. So what you're what this sort of means like this is what I look for in people who have messed up dopamine circuits. Okay. so dopamine circuits messed up okay so the first is that you feel motivated to do things that you don't enjoy

now this may sound weird but what I mean by this is it's not that you choose the things that you don't enjoy it's that there's a discrepancy between your motivation and your enjoyment so even though I'm highly motivated to play video games, they don't feel fun. Or maybe another way to put this is the things that you are motivated towards aren't fun. That's a better way to put it. Okay, chat? So this is key because essentially what happens is remember is that our mesolimbic pathway is sort of active, but something about our reward circuitry builds up tolerance so it doesn't actually feel fun. So this is the other thing that happens is that there's like, remember, there's this war between the mesocortical and the mesolimbic. So the second feature of like when your dopamine

circuits are messed up is that you should do something, but you can't. Right? Because this like weird basal mesolimbic circuit is actually ending up being stronger than the mesocortical circuit, which in turn means that you're not really enjoying or like you're, you're, you're not able to like this part of your brain that is telling you, okay, these are the planned actions I need to take. I need to execute them in this way is losing to the immediately rewarding behavior. Okay? And then there are a couple of other things that I would kind of say, which is that, you know, like this is just more of a clinical observation. This isn't really borne out in the neuroscience. But things that's that other people are highly motivated towards. are hard for you.

So this is not really borne out. I don't understand the neuroscience of this statement. Like, I really don't, to be honest. I wish I could support it. Oh, it looks like it's lagging, whatever. I wish I could support it. But, you know, this is something where, like, this is just a clinical observation that,

no, why lagging chat? Okay, we can talk about that paper in a second. but I wish I had something for you all there, but I just don't, okay, in terms of neuroscience. So the next thing that we're going to do, okay, I guess we're not going to, I'm going to talk about this because the iPad is lagging. We'll see if the iPad catches up at some point. So, like, the three things that I want you guys to remember. So, like, these are the three signs of, like, you needing a dopamine detox. Number one is that things that there seems to be.

a high degree of like compulsion towards a behavior that does not feel enjoyable. So if we kind of think about that, like what is going on there, right? Because what's happening is that the part of your brain, and this is why it's important to understand that dopamine is not just a pleasure chemical. Because you would think that if it was just a pleasure chemical and you no longer felt pleasure, then you would no longer engage in the behavior. Right? So like if I don't enjoy playing video games, why the hell, like if I play League of Legends for 10 hours a day and I'm frustrated during most of it, why the hell do I constantly do that crap? One second. Hello?

Sure. Okay. All right. All right. Bye. So next thing is, so if we kind of think about, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. So it's kind of weird, right? So we have to understand. that dopamine is not a, is not just a pleasure chemical. Because if it was a pleasure chemical and I was motivated towards a behavior and that behavior wasn't fun, then I would no longer be motivated towards it. Right. So what that means is that like we have to understand that there are two different circuits going on in the brain and that like dopamine can reinforce behaviors

without necessarily leading to enjoyment. And it's that discrepancy, which I really find people to be like useful. Those are the kinds of people that benefit from a dopamine detox. So what's happening is your mesolimbic circuit is active and is pushing you towards a particular behavior. But then like your ability to experience pleasure from it has actually developed a sense of tolerance. So now this is the next thing that I would have sort of shared on the iPad, but my iPad is lagging. So what this means is that if so like the thing about dopamine, the dopamine Detox has nothing to do with your dopamine level. It has everything to do with your dopamine receptors. Okay, so basically this is what happens. In my brain, I have a neuron that releases a

chemical signal into something called a synaptic cleft. And in the synaptic cleft, I have on the other side, a neuron that has receptors. So what happens is I essentially, like, you know, I release neurotransmitter from one neuron, and it moves over to the next neuron and activates the signal. Okay? What happens over time is that if I release a bunch of signal, the receiving neuron is like, hey, I'm getting way too much signal and down regulates the receiving end of the receptor. So the way that I kind of think about this is like, imagine that I have, you know, a speaker volume and then the computer volume. If my computer volume is jacked all the way through the roof, what I'm going to do is turn down the speaker volume so that like they end up, like the sound that I, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the. the volume of the music ends up being pleasant, right? And if my computer volume is way down towards the bottom,

what I'm going to do is turn up my speaker volume so that once again I have an equilibrium of like volume that I'm listening to. Does that make sense? So our brain does the same thing with neurotransmitter signals. So for those of you who use caffeine, like when you start drinking caffeine, it can like keep you up all night. But as you drink caffeine on a daily basis,

you develop a chemical dependence, which means that you downregulate your caffeine receptors in your brain. So that if you want to stay up all night with caffeine, you actually have to end up drinking more. So this principle of physiologic tolerance is very well understood. Is the same reason that people can be like light drinkers or heavy drinkers, right? Like you can be someone who's a lightweight or a heavyweight when it comes to drinking. And that all has to do with your degree of physiologic tolerance. With alcohol, there are other things involved. it's just not neurochemical because your liver's involved and stuff like that.

But basically, essentially, the more signal you dump into your brain, the more your brain is going to downregulate that signal. So this is the other important thing. When that person said that you do this for 24 hours, 24 hours ain't going to do crap, because the neurophysiology of what's going on is receptor adaptation. So receptor adaptation requires weeks to equilibrate. So if you think about, if you go off of caffeine for 24 to 36, hours, you're not going to be detoxed off a caffeine, right? Like, you're just going to be miserable

for 24 hours, and you're not going to be totally fine. So if you also think about alcohol addiction, so for example, alcohol addiction can take anywhere from like five to six days for the medical, you know, the medically dangerous part. And then you can even have lingering effects of chronic alcohol use for weeks to months as your neurochemistry like readapt and your neurons start developing new cellular machinery and stuff like that. It gets actually quite complicated. So what we're going to do for dopamine detox, the goal is to fix that receptor regulation. Okay? So when I bombard my mind with dopamine, so now we're going to get to things like video games and technology. So when I use like when I go on to Reddit and I want you guys to really pay attention to this for a second, okay?

When you go on to Reddit, like I know I do this. Well, I don't even think about it, right? I don't think to myself, oh, I'm really going to enjoy doing this. Like, wow, I can't wait to hop onto Reddit today. It's sort of like my mind is like kind of bored or there's sort of. some sort of like, you know, gap in what I'm doing. And my mind reflexively goes to like social media or like Reddit or something like that. And I get like, I click on the meme and I get that quick hit, that quick hit, that quick hit. It's not actually fun. It's not like when I'm, you know,

if I go on vacation, I don't like think to myself, oh man, it would be so awesome to spend six hours a day just like on the internet browsing memes. Like you don't look forward to it. But it still is reinforcing in some way. So you could, you guys see how it's like, it's not really like a craving. It's like sort of like a neuroscientific, behaviorally reinforced mechanism that's active. And we get that quick dopamine hit. We get that quick dopamine hit. We get that quick dopamine hit.

So what we want to do through a dopamine detox is reset our levels because what happens is when I play a video game for 10 hours a day, I'm getting a constant stream of dopamine. That constant stream of dopamine is going to downregulate my dopamine receptors. This also, we don't actually hasn't been studied. So this is a clinical observation. based on principles of neuroscience. Okay. So caveat there. And as our dopamine receptors get down regulated, we will enjoy things less. But something weird happens because the reinforcement circuitry,

the behavioral circuitry, seems to stay intact. And that has something to do with probably other neurotransmitters and things like that. That's like the endocannabinoid system and habit formation and stuff. I'm not going to go into that now, but there's another interesting. There's a part two to this lecture, which is really fascinating. So essentially what happens is as I get the constant stream dopamine. It's sort of like if I'm drinking, sipping coffee throughout the day, my brain is going to adapt to that level and it's going to downregulate my dopamine receptors. Then we wind up in the situation where now that my dopamine receptors are kind of downregulated, other activities start to feel less pleasurable. Because if you think about the dopamine hit from, let's say,

reading a book or going for a walk, these things start to feel less pleasurable. So this is the next thing to think about when you need to dopamine detox is do activities that normal people seem to enjoy seem to like not be very enjoyable to you. And so this is where like if the answer is yes, then you need a dopamine detox. Okay. So like just to kind of summarize like what we're looking for for dopamine detox is if your life has a constant stream of dopamine and what we're talking about is video game usage, social media usage. These are the things that kind of like bombard your brain with dopamine, if that's the case and you wind up in this clinical presentation of feeling compelled or a compulsive behavior that does not actually lead to enjoyment. So if you play

video games for 10 hours a day and like don't actually have fun, then you may need a dopamine detox. If you spend a bunch of time on social media and don't even enjoy it, you may need a dopamine detox. One person is mentioning pornography. That could absolutely be a part of it, right? So this is why we're not going to be intervention specific. We're not going to be like, you know, addiction specific. What we're explaining is the neurochemistry of the dopamine reward system. And so whatever you do that results in this presentation makes dopamine detox potentially useful for you. Does that make sense? Like, it's not about what the addiction is. It's not about what the behavior is. It's about the clinical signs of a particular brain that is messed up

in terms of dopamine reward system. Okay? So you feel compelled to do something, but you don't enjoy it. Things that other people tend to be able to do or be able to enjoy that you can't enjoy, you may want to consider a dopamine detox. Okay?

And then the last thing is sort of like, you're unable to control the part of your mind that is, there's a war between like what you know you should do, but you end up just going towards the compulsive behaviors over and over and over again. like that's the third sign. Okay. So now we get to how to do,

oh, there's a raid. Okay. Thank you for the raid. Who's rating? You guys came in at, thank you for the rate. Thank you for whoever rated us. Okay.

So, oh shit. Do I have to summarize now? Okay, what we're talking about is dopamine detox. Okay? We're talking about like the actual neuroscience of a dopamine detox. And we're about to dive into how to do it. So let me. give you guys a quick summary. So we started off by looking at like, you know, other people who

talk about dopamine detox on the internet and like really, I don't think there's a whole lot of good clinical or neuroscientific information there. We went over to like what the dopamine reward circuits are, what they look like and how messing with the dopaminergic parts of our brain creates a particular presentation of like dopamine tolerance. Okay. That presentation is characterized by three things. So as a clinician, the three things that I look for when I'm thinking about recommending a dopamine detox are number one. You are compelled towards a behavior that you don't enjoy. Okay? Number two, there is a war in your brain between the things that you know you should be doing and the, but you can't, what you should do always loses to like this impulsive, like behavioral, like, fast food kind of enjoyment sort of thing. So I should be working on my resume,

but I'm just going to queue for a game of Valerent or league or whatever. Okay? Thank you guys very much for the raid. Tappell? Thanks a lot. Okay. Third thing is that activities that seem pleasurable to other people don't seem to be as enjoyable to you.

So if you kind of check those three boxes and you have a constant stream of like dopaminergic activity like video games or social media or or whatever, then you may be right for dopamine detox. Okay. Now we're going to get to the actual, okay, so Dr. Kay, how do you dopamine detox? Remember that the first thing is that what we want to do is give our brain a chance to downregulate the receptors. So what we're talking about is probably a two-week minimum of dopamine detox. Okay, otherwise your receptors aren't going to doubt, like they're not going to upregulate the way that they should. That's the first thing. The

second thing to understand is that the main problem with the dopamine detox is boredom. So what I want y'all to mentally prepare yourselves for is that the way that your dopamine circuitry is wired, things that should feel pleasurable are not going to feel pleasurable. So what you're going to deal with is two weeks of boredom. That's the raid boss, okay? It's not about like withdrawal. It's not about like, you know, sweats or like you're just going to be bored. So you need to be mentally prepared that what you're going to be fighting against is boredom. okay. Next thing to consider is that what we want to really try to do is minimize our dopaminergic activity. And what I mean by dopaminergic activity, it doesn't mean that you actually can't have fun.

What I want you all to minimize is that compulsive behavior that you don't actually enjoy. So video games, social media, content aggregation, so steer clear of like Reddit, YouTube, things like that. Some things that involve like technology are totally fine. Like so for example, if you want to watch a movie, even watch one movie every day, I think that's totally fine. Time limited, not like constant scrolling stuff, time limited enjoyable activities, even involving technology are completely fine. You want to steer clear the stuff that your brain veges out on. So don't binge watch a TV show. No vaging out while you're watching like Netflix or Amazon Prime or something like that. No binge watching anime. You want to watch like a Naruto movie, like go for it. It's not going to be fun.

either way, whether your dopamine system is messed up or not. Right? So you can actually watch like a movie, like by all means, go for it. No big deal. Right? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Seriously, dude, like the movies suck. Am I wrong there?

Like the canon, the Canon, Naruto and the Shepudan canon is like pretty good, but the fillers in the movies suck. Do you disagree? Like, is it just me or just like, do the anime movies are, far inferior to like the actual like you know the real like manga based stuff

um I mean if you guys disagree then then you know by all means I don't know what you know call call me an idiot or you know

I don't know even how you punish me on on Twitch I'm sure there are ways but like seriously like dude like the canon like the chudin exam on Naruto like isn't that sick like that's awesome like that's some of the best anime that's ever been made. But like the movie is like, you know, because an hour and a half is like,

Naruto meets some random character that has no involvement in the plot. There's no like character development. There's no like villain that's, you know, practicing necromancy. Anyway, there's my Vatha. There's my ADHD. Going back. Okay. So dopamine detox, two weeks. Main thing that you're going to have to deal with is boredom. You want to cut out dopaminergic activities. So these are like the dirty, like the mcnuggets of dopamine that you do, right? So like content aggregation, like video games, even stuff like Twitch, like discrete technological activities that are highly enjoyable and like a short, limited time span are actually fine. If you want to watch one movie a day, go for it. Okay. So the other thing that I would recommend,

so like the way that you're going to do this successfully, so since boredom is your enemy, like planning out your day is going to be a huge part of it, okay? Books, audio books, doing stuff in nature, cleaning, cooking, adopt skills, like a skills learning program or something like that. Those kinds of things are going to be your bastion. So what I would say is like, you know, on a, let's say you want to start on the weekend. So Friday evening, what you're going to do is grocery shopping. And you're going to plan out your meals for like Saturday and Sunday. You're going to plan out, okay, like this is what I'm going to do in the morning. This is what I'm going to do in the afternoon. Get yourself.

like a good audiobook. Okay? So like good audio books are going to be really, really important for like relatively boring activities. So while you're cleaning your kitchen, like listen to an audio book, find a good podcast. You want to be like doing stuff. And the more that you pack your day, the better off it's going to be in terms of like, you know, not relapsing. Because remember that when you relapse, what's going to happen is your mind is going to be bored. And before you realize it, you're going to pick up your phone and you're just going to be like on Twitch or whatever. Or YouTube or whatever. Okay. So social activities are also really good. So like I think board game night, totally fine. Like by all means, get together with a few of your buddies. Play some terraforming Mars.

Like play D&D. Like go for it. Like a good six, eight hour session of D&D with people ideally in person, because you got to be careful about computers because it's really easy to open up tabs when you get bored and things like that. So I'd see you're clear of that. But like it's totally fine to do fun activities. I think if you want to do something like go camping, like that's the perfect time to do a dopamine detox. Because you guys. got to do things like pitching your tent and like, you know, making your food and then like, you know, like, changing and like camping like has stuff involved. So spending time in nature, going hiking, those are fantastic opportunities to do dopamine detoxes. So if you guys are doing

something like going on a ski trip or going on vacation, this is a good opportunity for you to like take stuff off of your phone, right? Like remove Reddit from your phone, remove all that stuff. If you have something like a tablet, by all means download like three movies over the course of a week. and that's like what you're going to watch, but you're not going to like stream random crap. Okay? So next thing to remember is that unstructured time is the primary source of failure in dopamine detox.

Okay? When your mind is bored and you don't have something planned, it's way too easy to like dig into the easy dopamine McNugget, all right? The McDonepamine. So the next thing to kind of think about is that if you guys are running into trouble, I recommend doing it with friends.

you don't have to do this necessarily with in-person friends, but I'd find like two or three people, like, um, you know, maybe like sometimes people will like get together with people on discord and things like that, where, you know,

you'll, you'll kind of decide, okay, we're going to do dopamine detox from, you know, June 9th to June 20th. Okay? Or June 22nd,

whatever. And then people kind of plan out, okay, what's your plan? Like, let's like, let's like, you know,

meet every day on Discord. Like, we'll check in about how things are going. Like, you guys can help each other out a little bit. And yeah, that's it. So last kind of tip is, remember, the more accessible the dopaminergic activities are, the easier it is going to be to relapse.

So what you want to do, and this is kind of interesting. So if you look at the research, a lot of relapses are not planned out. They're impulse decisions. So if you look at alcohol relapses, for example, like I've been sober for a year, I go to a kid's birthday party. My kids' friends' birthday party. My kid's friend's dad is there and he's like, hey, do you want to drink? And it's like an impulsive decision. It's like, sure. Everyone else is having a beer. Like, why can't I have a beer too? And then it's like, boom, relapse. Then I've had 10 and I'm vomiting and whatever. So what you want to do is increase the activation energy and make things less accessible. So uninstall all the video games and then like at least you have that amount of time. So let's say let I uninstall everything. And then I like start reinstall. it when I relapse. But then I've got like a 15, 30 minute window where I can still like catch myself, right? I can get out of the house. I can go for a walk. I can even cancel the installation. So you want to give yourself time. And so like uninstall the crap, uninstall the

dopaminergic activities, log out of like your Netflix account, like log out of your Reddit account. Like if you want to, you can even use websites that block things like Reddit and stuff like that. Go for it or tools. And so that's kind of a dopamine detox. So two weeks, highly structured activity, plan what you're going to do, cooking, cleaning, traveling, nature, books, audiobooks, some kind of creative work if you want to, learn a skill, and kind of tell yourself, okay, at the end of two weeks, I could have learned how to X, X, X, X, X, X, right? Like, whatever you want to do, X, Y, Z. I could have learned how to speak a hundred words of Spanish in two weeks. And so work on those goals, use people's help, and like, that's kind of how you do

a dopamine detox. Damn it, chat. Okay, other things to talk about, which we're not going to cover today, but like other things to kind of, so versions, two and three of this lecture. Okay, so this is lecture one. There's actually two follow-up lectures. Super cool lectures, by the way. I don't know when I'm going to do them, but we're going to do it at some point. All right. Number one is actually the neuroscience of Anhedonia. This is fascinating. So Anhadonia is the inability to feel pleasure. Is a common symptom of depression. So it's like activities that I used to enjoy. I know long. longer enjoy. Okay? That's Anhadonia. Music is fine, but once again, I would be a little bit careful, right? Do you listen to music constantly throughout the day? Or is it something that you do? So I would say, like, if you want to listen to music, by all means, like, you know, pick like half an hour of music and listen to it like with intention. Like you can have music on, you know, either in the background or like actually go for a walk with your headphones and then like just listen to the music for half an hour. It's an amazing experience if you actually like

don't have it in the background and I have it in the foreground. So neuroscience of Anhedonia is something that we're going to cover at some point. So Anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure. So like there's a fascinating neuroscience kind of stuff going on there. Another thing, the other thing that we want to talk a little bit about at some point, I think this took longer than I wanted to because I ranted because I do that sometimes, chat. This is a paper I've shown before, but I think it's just a really good representation. So this idea that like motivational drive and the ability to feel pleasure are actually discrete circuits.

And this kind of goes into the dopamine detox and stuff like that. So this paper is kind of looking at things like asociality, which is like the, you know, being antisocial. A volition, a reduction in the motivation to initiate or persist in goal directed behavior. And Anahedonia are reduction in the ability to experience pleasure. So in schizophrenia, these three things are. quite impaired and very common. But it's my experience. I know it sounds kind of scary, but it's my experience that the same circuits that are involved in schizophrenia for these negative symptoms may in some ways be affected by things like playing too many video games. And so as we dig

into the neuroscience and the cool thing about schizophrenia, I mean, this isn't cool, but the useful thing about schizophrenia is these circuits are so impaired that you can learn a lot about the neuroscience when you kind of like knock one piece out, right? So we'll explain a little bit about what we've learned from schizophrenia and hypothesize how the lessons we can learn from schizophrenia may actually help us like with digital mental health. No, people who play video games are not, don't have schizophrenia. So here's a, this is a good kind of figure. So like the hedonic system is governed by opioids and GABA and the reward prediction is governed by dopamine. these are actually two separate systems.

And they go into this anterior singulate thing that I was talking about of computing effort and integration of information that I didn't really talk too much about. And then like this is basically like this is the structure of motivation in your brain. This is it right here. And then what you wind up with is a behavioral response. So as we start to understand these different pieces and move the levers, you will actually be able to adjust your behavioral response. and so like there's a whole lecture there for next time okay all right um all right so now let's move to

any questions chat before we go to la reddits huh does weed help no good god weed is awful so the problem so okay you guys want to understand weed here's the problem with weed okay in a nutshell I mean, there are a lot of problems with weed, but here's the problem. No, weed isn't good. So the problem is that weed, so remember that the hedonic circuitry, pull this up, the hedonic circuitry and habit formation circuitry are actually governed by endocannabinoids. So the problem with weed is that it tends to literally from a neuroscientific perspective,

like really build bad habits and really negatively impacts like motivation and drive. So a lot of people think, like, oh, there are potheads who are just as smart, like, you don't lose IQ points, which I think is correct. Like, I don't know if weed actually affects, like, intelligence and problem solving capability. In my experience, what it affects is, like, it's hard to break habits when people use marijuana, and it seems to be hard to find motivation. Yeah, so meditation to do during detox, like, it depends. Like, I'd say, do whatever your meditation practices. We're in a more long-term sense trying to, we've got more stuff on meditation. So there's a lot of, like, detailed stuff on meditation in the Dr. Kay's guides that recommends

meditations for particular goals. And there's also, like, I developed a meditation program at HMS or Hodward around treating addiction. So they're like, depending on what kind of addiction you have or what kind of mental problem you have, there are certain. certain circuits of the brain involved, and there are actually particular meditations that target particular weaknesses in the brain. So, for example, some people who relapse will say things like, oh, I just, I didn't know what happened. I was fine for six months, and then before I knew it, so in those kinds of cases, what's happening is there's a lack of internal awareness in the moment. So there are some meditations that will increase the internal awareness. For other people,

relapse is not like, I didn't know, like, one day I was, fine and the next day I wasn't. It was like, it's a daily slog of like impulse control. And so like that kind of daily slog is going to have a different kind of neuroscience involved than like the I didn't even realize it. Like I'm so sorry. I didn't realize what happened. Okay. Is smoking weed once or twice a week good? No. Hate to break it to y'all chat. Generally speaking, using mind altering substances or you're going to be healthier without using them. Now, there are some cases where, you know, using mind altering, like, so there are like clinical cases where marijuana like is recommended, right? So if you, for example, you have pain and appetite problems related to cancer, like by all means go for the weed, right? Like that's where depending on talk to your doctor about it. And like there are some cases where medical marijuana is reasonable. But those tend to be few and far between. So in terms of psilocybin.

an LSD and things like that. Once again, I check out, you know, the work that MAPS is doing. So MAPS has found good clinical uses for those kinds of substances. Once again, done under the guidance of a medical professional. Some people, like my buddy Will, believes that those things should not be restricted to medical use and should be used for Will Sue, by the way, if you guys remember, he was on stream several months ago. But he thinks they can be a healthy part of, like, self-growth. I think once again, you've got to be careful there because I've worked with a lot of people who have had like crippling anxiety or PTSD from bad trips. I routinely work with people who, you know, will use psychedelic substances and really mess up their life. So just because something has,

you know, some utility in a therapeutic or, you know, growth perspective doesn't mean that it can't also be damaging a la social media and video games, right? So like you can play games and it can be a fun way to hang out with your friends, and you can be addicted to them, and it can be, like, bad for you. Right? Okay, let's see. Have you read the studies on MDMA and PTSD? Absolutely. I've read just, I mean, I don't want to say just about every.

I've read several major studies on the use of psychedelics to treat psychiatric conditions. It's a fascinating area of research, and jury is still out there about whether it's on balance, safe and effective. It looks like it's going to be. But we still don't know. Can we play games for one hour a day if we detox? I would recommend no. So I wouldn't play anything. Or like I would play like discrete time limited games is fine.

Like board games is cool. Like board game night with your body is D&D is fine. I would stay away from all electronic games. Chess also, it depends on how you play it. So if you're like going to a friend's house and you all are going to play like chess in person, I think that's probably okay. And also, like, you know, I'd steer clear because it's slippery slope. Okay.

How do you distinguish between this and ADHD? Okay, great. If you saw me, can you address the detox for ADHD? Yeah. Okay. This is perfect. So we're going to move to our first case of the first Reddit post, okay? You see this chat?

Ready for you. Geb, gab, gab, five days ago. Dealing with depression, anxiety, and ADHD. How can I tell what's causing what? How do I treat this set of conditions? Beautiful question. So just a bit of a backstory. I'm from the UK and I just finished my final year at university.

I have depression, generalized anxiety disorder, diagnosed by my doctor when I was 16, and ADHD diagnosed by my educational psychologist during my time at university at the age of 21, along with dyslexia. I always felt that I had to put twice the amount of effort into an academic piece of work, constantly be in fear of getting over-excited in social situations,

as it tends to make me say things without me thinking and struggle with day-to-day tasks, so just keeping the place tidy and keeping my hygiene in check. I always felt stupid about it at best or at worst feeling suicidal over the prospect that no one would ever want to associate with me because of how differently I approach the above things. Getting the confirmation that I had learning difficulties was a blessing is I can now at least partially justify why I struggle so much, However, now that I've had a few years to come to grips with it, I feel like it's also a curse that I know I have these difficulties, as I think it also explains why therapy, self-help, alternative treatment, such as yoga or echotherapy, eco-theraping, and even some of the prescribed drugs didn't work.

For therapy, self-help, and alternative treatment would leave me too inattentive, and I would simply forget what even happened, let alone taking anything. anything the sessions or material provided, whilst coaching felt a bit more involved, but then my motivation hits rock bottom the moment I'm presented with something, is I feel too incapable of taking steps to proceed. And being aware of that makes the feeling worse. And the prescribed drugs, the SSRI, I believe it was Lexapro, however, this was years ago, so my memory might be fuzzy. Looking back on it now, it exacerbated some of the symptoms associated with ADHD.

In my case, it caused sleeping problems. and even more inattentive than normal. So as you have surmised, I'm in a bit of a bind here. I cannot treat these conditions separately as doing so, whilst helping alleviate one makes the other two worse. And I've yet to find any to either system determine which symptom is being caused by what conditions. So I can treat them separately or found a type of treatment

that works for all three at the same time. Beautiful. Can anyone give any insight? beautiful that you're in the situation. I think it's a really good example. Can anyone give any insight into this? I'm not the only one to have this specific set of problems or conditions, right? This is a wonderful post. So once again, I got a, I got a, so this was an interesting post that we kind of debated a little bit back and forth about. So on the one hand, we have to be careful here because I really can't dispense advice over the internet. And at the same time, I think that

this post is a wonderful example of what is wrong with psychiatry. So let's just think about this person for a second, okay? So I want you all to appreciate this. So I do not believe that this person has three separate standalone diseases all happening in their brain. In fact, one of my most brilliant mentors once told me that if someone has three psychiatric diagnoses, they're all wrong. Okay? So I don't know if this sounds interesting or not, but like, just bear with me for a second. So generally speaking, I mean, sometimes we can have discrete multiple processes going on in the brain, but it has been my overwhelming experience as a psychiatrist that when people get tacked on diagnosis after diagnosis after diagnosis after diagnosis after diagnosis, there are individual

clinicians that are looking at one thing at a time. And this is the problem that people with three diagnoses get into. I have these three separate diagnoses, and if I treat any one of them, the others get worse. So this is what's annoying about being a psychopharmacologist, because like, if I give you an antidepressant, it's going to make your ADHD worse. If I give you a stimulant medication for ADHD, it's going to make your anxiety worse by ramping you up, right? So we get stuck in this situation where, like, this person is in a bind and doesn't know where to

turn. And it makes perfect sense, right? Because it's like there's no way. because one person is diagnosing this over here, one person is diagnosing that over there, one person is like, you know, diagnosing this over here. So they're recommending psychotherapy for depression, but my ADHD is too active. So I can't participate in the psychotherapy. If I start a medication for like an antidepressant for my depression, then it actually has cognitive side effects that make the ADHD worse. And this person feels incredibly stuck to me.

And so it's a huge deficiency of the way. that psychiatry is built. So what we do in Western psychiatry is we are reductionist and like all about division, right? So I'm going to diagnose you with this over here and this over here and this over here and this over here. It's not a holistic perspective. And we even see this from this person because this person is getting multiple diagnoses from multiple people. My psychologist diagnosed me with this. This person diagnosed me with this. So there isn't like a sort of an overall picture of what's wrong with this person. So this is where, you know, I think there are a couple of important principles. The first is that as long as you think non-holicistically,

this is going to be a problem. Okay. So like, that's just the way that the medications work. And you get into this problem where like, okay, I've got this medication, this medication, this medication. And even though you're taking one medication for anxiety, one medication for depression, one medication for ADHD, it's not like your function is substantially better than without any of the medications. Because the side effects are just as bad as like the benefits. It's like I improve my depression by two points and I worsen my ADHD by two points. When I take ADHD medication, I improve my ADHD by two points and I worsen my anxiety by two points. So sometimes if you have a very good psychopharmacologist, they can do this thing called double

dipping where they can really give you like one medication that hits multiple things. So for example, buproprione is a medication that improves ADHD and improves depression. SSRIs can improve depression and anxiety. There are different kinds of things that you can do that hopefully a good psychopharmacologist can help you with. So the first thing that I'd say, if you are someone who has gotten three diagnoses and each of your treatments doesn't work because of another diagnosis you have, the first thing that you need is a very, very good, like, quarterback for your mental health treatment. So you need one person who is going to take point and responsibility for all of your diagnoses. Ideally, this is someone who does psychotherapy and medication management. And this is why, you know, I think it's good that MDs are trained in both.

Because someone who can do therapy with you and understands from like a neurochemical perspective what the side effects of your medication are going to be will then be able to tailor the psychotherapy that they do for you, taking into account the side effects that they're aware of from your medication. Right. So ideally, the first thing that you need is a quarterback that is really going to run the whole treatment. The entire diagnostic process, as well as the entire treatment process. This is one of the downsides of healthcare is now we're fracturing healthcare into all these individual pieces. So I've got my doc who prescribes my meds. I have one psychologist who does this. I have another person who runs my, like, you know, my skills training group.

And so it's really hard. So unfortunately, that can be hard to find, but that's really what I think is necessary here. The second thing is this is why I love Ayurveda, because there are some interventions that we ignore in psychiatry, which I think are a huge problem. So in this post, there is nothing about what this person eats. There's nothing about whether this person exercises. There's nothing about whether they meditate. there's no information about any of these other things that will affect your mood, your anxiety,

and even your attention span. So there's a lot of stuff that you can do for your mental health that has nothing to do with psychiatry. Right. So exercise has been shown to improve both depression and anxiety. Meditation has been actually is an evidence-based intervention for all three that basically carries no side effects. Now this is where if you have a good meditation, teacher, they can teach you a meditation technique that you can even use with an ADHD mind. Right? Is this person doing yoga? Because like I would highly, highly recommend, so they mention alternative treatment and yoga. So there's also where like, I think yoga is a very good intervention. Maybe Tai Chi, if yoga feels too slow for someone like this. Or like Tai Chi has a little

bit more movement. But this is where I think this case illustrates a couple of important principles. The first is that the more we fracture out our mental health. treatment and the more that I get one diagnosis from here and one diagnosis from there, the more that a clinician is looking at one slice of my life and treating only that one slice of my life, the more you're going to wind up in this bind, where every treatment comes at a cost of another diagnosis. So you need one person who will sort of diagnose you from the start, from start to finish, and will run your treatment plan from start to finish. Can they use the help of other therapists? Absolutely. but you really need one good quarterback who will diagnose you, like, evaluate for other things.

Like, do you really have ADHD? Or is this a consequence of, like, you know, you're a lack of concentration from depression? Or is the reason that you're depressed and anxious in the first place because you have self-esteem issues from having lifelong ADHD where you felt stupider than everyone else? Right? Because in my experience, overwhelmingly, when I work with people like this, I think it's just excessive. exceedingly rare that people have multiple individual and standalone illness processes going on in their mind. Usually they're all tangled together and they have a common root. So this is where like you've got to take a step back and figure out, okay, like what's the, what's at the root of all

of this, right? When did the depression start? Is it because you've actually had lifelong ADHD? And this is where I use that example because I've seen this. So I've had people who will come in with three different diagnoses and when I go through this process, what we usually find at the bottom. bottom is actually the ADHD. And the ADHD was so difficult during their young years that they essentially developed depression and anxiety out of the ADHD. They felt so worthless and their opinion of themselves tanked so low because when they were in like the fourth grade, everyone else could do this stuff and they just felt dumb. That like, you know, when they got called to do a book report, they would walk up in front of the class and their mind couldn't

focus properly. They'd forget what they were saying. And then the whole class was. laugh at them and they'd feel stupid and then they wind up with an anxiety disorder. Right? So like oftentimes ADHD is at the foundation. But the key point here is that these processes in our brain tend to be like intertwined in some way. So having a very good clinician to start from scratch and don't do this thing where you're like accumulating like diagnoses from different people because that almost never works well. And the second thing is remember that there's a lot of stuff you can do for your mental health. That is that is, is unrelated to a psychiatrist, a medication, or a treatment.

This is the whole reason that we have, like, Healthy Gamer the way that it is, because we have a bunch of people out there diagnosing and treating people with things. So what the, like, the Healthy Gamer Coaching Program, what Dr. K's guides are, they're all about this other stuff that we just ignore when it comes to, like, mental health.

So, for example, in people like this, when I have treated people like this, I will put them on a good Ayurvedic anti-Vata diet. Right? because VATA, an elevated and perturbed Vata leads to anxiety and ADHD. Now, I'd be really curious if this person on the Beck Depression inventory actually wound up having something called an anxious depression because that's a Vata disturbance as well. So if this person had an anxious depression, if they had ADHD and if they have generalized anxiety

disorder, Vatha diet will help all three of those things. And then as all three of them get better, then you can start to really like work on them, right? because right now this person is stuck between like a rock and two hard places. They have like no give. Okay. So this is where like I really think looking at things like exercise, looking at things like diet, not to say that there is substitute for treatment, but you've got to start somewhere, right? Like you're besieged on three sides.

And in order to like win this war, you have to at least like catch a break on one side and like start carving out some sort of success, some kind of foundation so that you could start to tackle the other problems. And this is where I think it's unfortunate, like, psychiatrists won't say, like, go and exercise, or they won't help you go and exercise. They won't help you with your diet stuff. We're not trained to do that kind of thing. But really, when I see a lot of progress, like, I'll get these people in my office who've seen, you know, a dozen psychiatrists over 15 years, and we'll kind of start from scratch, and we can really see a lot of progress, like, even getting off of all medications.

It's definitely doable. So you just got to, you know, I know it's tough, but, like, I think you have to start by trying to find, someone who can really be like a team captain for all of your mental health care, understands how all of your diagnoses intertwine. And then you can also tap all manner of things that are good for your mental health that don't necessarily have to do with treatment. Like, are you eating healthy? You know, I would recommend something like a vata reducing diet, depending on what your doha is. We don't really know what this person's docha is. So you have to figure that out first. But oftentimes in situations like that, that's worked really well. And then like also doing like

Tai Chi and exercise and stuff like that. Getting out in nature, getting some of those good plant aerosols, getting your vitamin D level checked. There's a lot of stuff here that you can do. Okay? So it ain't hopeless. Questions. How do we access this mythical care?

That's a great question. So I think it's tough, but like, you know, like the right answer doesn't change because, just because the world makes it hard to access, right? And I think that's one of the hardest things about being a doctor. You know, it's like, I don't know. But like the right answer in terms of taking care of your mental health is something that we understand. And I think the real challenge is just because, like that, but that's the right answer and just the fact that like these people are hard to find, which I totally get. I totally get that. And that's why like 70% of people in my

practice, like traditionally I've seen for free. Like, I don't charge them a penny because I can't afford it. Right? Because like the people like me are, you know, they're out there. But like, our system does not reward like clinicians who do this kind of thing, at least in the United States. So the short answer is like, how do you access it? I don't know. I wish I had a good answer for you. But that's what you need. And like, I hate to say that. And it's like, oh, like, but like, I'm not going to give you a less true answer just because the right answer is hard to find. And like, I just, I just think that's dishonest. So I'd say just keep looking. I hate to say that. And that's also why, like, I'm giving you guys, I'm not just saying that's the only option, right? Because, like,

you can find Tai Chi studio. Like, you guys can watch IPing Tai Chi and, like, learn how to do Tai Chi from her. You can adjust your diet. You can do, like, a Google search on, like, a Vatha diet and, and, like, learn about it yourself. You can watch our YouTube videos. So I'm doing why best not to leave y'all hanging, but I hate to say it, but like the right answer is the right answer. And if this person has three separate diagnoses and none of their clinicians are actually talking, and one clinician is treating their thing in isolation and screwing over what the other clinicians are going to do, like, there's no, like, that's bad. There's no way around that. And you need to have someone who's taking responsibility for your care. Right? Like, that's the truth. The fact that

it's hard to find, like, I'm sorry, we're doing what we can, started an organization, we're trying to help people with all the other stuff because at least there is a system of mental health treatment by licensed professionals. It's all the other stuff that we really think is even more missing, which is why we started our coaching program, which is why we have the Dr. K's guides. Like, how do I learn the meditation that's right for ADHD? Like, that's what we're trying to fix. And when we get around to it, maybe a couple years from now, we'll try to fix everything. but it sucks, I'm sorry. Doesn't make it wrong, you know?

And if somebody else has a better answer, by all means, like I wish there was a better answer, it's the best one that I've got. It's tough. I'm with you. I wish I could give you an answer that was easy and more accessible. But it's a great question. It really is.

And like, the simple truth of the matter is like, you know, shop around and ask people say like, hey, I've gotten a bunch of diagnoses by a bunch of different people. I'm looking for someone who can actually, like, run point on all dimensions of my treatment. I'm looking to get a thorough diagnostic evaluation and see whether these different diagnoses that I've accumulated over the last 10 years are actually accurate or not in, like, how to tackle all three of these problems. Is that something you can help me with?

That's what you do when you ask, when you meet a psychiatrist. Right? And you can ask them, like, how long are we going to meet for? like I'd like to, you know, at least get an hour or 90 minutes. 90 minutes for an intake is not unreasonable. And eventually you'll find a thoughtful clinician if you look. Okay. Okay.

Next question. So there's a quick question. Should you get off ADHD meds for dopamine detox? That's something you should talk to your provider about. Talk to your provider and say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this dopamine detox. What do you think I should do with my ADHD meds? So life is unfair. I feel cheated out of the life that I always desired.

Every dream or goal I want to accomplish has artificial barriers attached to it, such as a particular degree, a test score, or some prerequisite courses. I'm an undergrad at a state school taking difficult but ultimately useless courses such as organic chemistry in order to apply to grad programs such as dental and medical school. However, some people have skipped the line. and have gotten into these combined programs in which they have access special academic privileges afforded to them. They don't have to take the same courses, nor do they have to score as well on the exams as everyone else. Through some miraculous act of providence, they've been given a golden

ticket. This disparity is making me cyclical of the entire educational process and resentful in general. Is this kind of mentality toxic? Is it wrong to feel that others don't really deserve or earn what they have? What a great question. Okay. So, we're going to start with the bottom. Is this kind of mentality toxic? Yes. Is it wrong to feel that others don't really deserve or earn what they have? Not at all. Okay? So let's think about it. So this is a problem of ego. So if you're feeling like life is unfair, and if your mind is constantly telling you, like, I have to go through all of these things that other people don't have to go through, that's reasonable, right?

Like, it's not wrong. And at the same time, it's also not helpful. It's incredibly toxic. So if we look at the faculties of our mind, the goal, the function of the ego is to make comparisons. And this is where like, you know, I know it sounds kind of weird, but like, you have to step away from your ego because the road that you have to live is the same road that you have to live, irrespective of what everyone else is doing. So if you really think about all of the mental energy that you spend comparing your situation to other situations, none of that is going to be helpful. And all of that comparison comes back to ego. So if you find yourself in this situation, I would start by really taking a look.

at like what it is that you believe you are and what it is that you believe you're entitled to. And like, where do you get those ideas? Like, why does your mind compare you to all of these other random people? Because that's going to be a battle you can never win. Because as long as your mind is wanting to compare you to people, it'll selectively pick all of the people to compare you to to reinforce whatever weird belief it has. I know that sounds kind of weird, but you're comparing to like, you know, these people who got into the combined programs, but what percentage of medical students are in combined programs? It's like less than 10%. So why does your mind selectively choose to compare to the less than 10% of medical students as opposed to like recognizing that 90% of y'all are in organic chemistry? Right. So you have to really pay attention to what your mind is doing and what is driving it to make that comparison. In what. what you will find is underneath the ego is some kind of negative emotion. So ego has a couple of functions. One is to compare. And the second is to protect.

So like if I, you know, get yelled at by my friend, what my mind and like I feel ashamed, what my mind is going to do is my ego is going to step up and it's going to be like, oh, you shouldn't feel ashamed because like that guy's such a hypocrite. You remember all these times that he did this stuff too? it's so unfair that I get blamed for like, you know, being late to pick him up from the airport, but he wasn't, I didn't blame him when, when, you know, he was late to pick me up. So if you look at that kind of thinking, that comparison where you say, this person got this thing and I didn't, that's unfair. What you'll find is underneath is some degree of usually shame.

And part of the, or not shame, some kind of negative emotion. And then part of the other problem is that when the ego is very strong, it'll incorporate cognitive biases. Like case in point, like this person is saying, oh, it's so unfair. Some people got the golden ticket. But like 90% of all, like you're actually in the majority, right? Like, why don't you compare yourself to the 300 people who are also in organic chemistry at your state school? Why does your mind so selectively compare to like the few people who are very lucky? Which, by the way, they may not be as lucky as you think they are, but that's neither here nor there.

So you've got to be really careful because what I see here is a sign of ego. And I don't necessarily mean like you're arrogant. What I mean is ego is in the eastern ego, which is a humgar or the eye feeling. And it has a couple of functions. And that's protection and comparison. So the question is, what are you protecting against? What is your ego protecting you against in terms of this stuff? So let me take a quick look.

Let's take it. So like this is where they say every dream or goal I want to accomplish has artificial barriers to it. what makes those barriers like artificial, such as a particular degree, a test score, or some prerequisite course? Like, I'm confused about this word artificial. Because isn't that usually what... Does that make sense, chat? Like, so I think this is where, you know,

the question that I would ask yourself is, why do you feel like these are artificial barriers? You know, what makes you think that you're entitled to the life that you desire? and you know like this is kind of where like ultimately useless courses such as organic chemistry but like so this is sort of like this isn't an ultimately useless course it's actually the reason you're taking the course the purpose of the course is to meet the requirements to apply to a graduate program so it's kind of weird but like I actually think that you know I still use organic chemistry as a medical physician like I love it you like all this neuroscience crap that

I'm teaching you guys, like, including, like, dopamine structure. Like, I hate to say this, but organic chemistry isn't useless. And so I don't know where, like, I think a lot of assumptions that this person has need to be, like, questioned and understood. So, like, what is the life that you always desired? Right? Because I suspect that there's something here underneath the surface. Like, I would ask this person, what is the first time that you felt cheated out of something

that you deserved? Because you don't get cheated out of what you desire. You get cheated out of what you deserve, right? So, like, does that make sense? I think that there's a lot of interesting stuff here. And I think ultimately, as you dig into this, you may find some unpleasantness underneath, but hopefully, as you work through it,

like you're actually going to be end up in, like, a better place. Right? It's kind of interesting. I feel like I've sort of talked myself into a corner. I don't know what to say next, but I also feel like there's more to say. But anyway, you know, I, I, I think this is where, like, the last thing that I'll kind of say is people will say that life is unfair, and you can certainly make that argument, but like, I don't know where fairness comes into it.

Right. Like, so life is what it is. And this is where we can kind of draw a little bit about this Sanskrit principle of advaite vedanta, which means non-dualism. And so what I'd recommend to this person is, first of all, ask yourself these questions about, like, you know, where have I been, when did I start getting cheated out of someone? When was the first bad beat? right? Like when was I about to win the game and like my internet went out? Like that's a bad

beat. Is it unfair? Like absolutely. But what I'm feeling from this person is like a projected emotional energy that's like from the past that's creating a cognitive bias via their humkot or ego that is influencing the selective way that they look at things. Because everyone taking organic chemistry is like part of the, I mean it's part of the thing, right? And by the way, those people who got into the six-year accelerated programs or seven-year accelerated programs, they didn't get a golden ticket. They applied to things and were probably quite competitive applicants. So the valedictorian of my high school got into an accelerated six-year medical program. And she was also the valedictorian of my high school, which is what you needed to be.

Right? So then I'd go back to like when you were in high school, like, what did you think about yourself. Did you feel like other people were smarter than you? Did you feel ashamed of yourself? You know, it's kind of, it's interesting. So I think there's a lot to dig into there. Definitely a good example of something that, you know, if you don't want to see a therapist about it, our coaches may be able to help you with stuff like that. So if you're in that kind of situation where, you know, you're trying to understand like how your mind works, because I'm not detecting any kind of clinical illness here that warrants like, you know, clinical treatment. That's what our coaching programs for. Good question, though. Really happy you posted.

Okay. So I would love to hear your thoughts about this from the community. Unpopular opinion, I don't think your life has to have a purpose or you a grand ambition. I think it's okay to just wander through life finding interesting things until you die. Yeah. So I think that's perfectly fine. And I think that in and of itself could be a purpose. Right? So sometimes life is a game where you've got an epic quest, many steps, and a final boss that is, you're not. devastating, catastrophic, and you can be triumphant in the end. You can have a Dharma with a capital D. And sometimes life can be a sandbox game. That has no purpose. That has no broader goal.

That you can just build and create for the sake of building and creating. There are the epic JRPs of life and then there are the Minecrafts of life. And it's not like one game is more of a game than another game. It's just those are all different ways to live life. And I think it's perfectly fine for you to essentially take like, you know, cash in some of that sweet, sweet karma for an easy spawn and a chill kind of life that's relatively hedonistic. Actually, I'm not hearing hedonism here because I think wandering through life finding interesting things, I think is actually quite a fulfilling life.

It's actually very close to sort of an enlightened perspective, which is that, you know, enlightenment is about enjoying the present. It's not about accomplishing some great goal. In fact, it's completely getting rid of all of your goals and just appreciating every moment for what it is. And so that's how Buddha lived, right? He forsook all of his responsibilities. He didn't really care about raising his kid. He didn't care about his kingdom. He just literally wandered from place to place doing what he thought was generally interesting until he died.

And there is now an entire religion cropped up around that principle. So I don't, I don't disagree at all. Now, sometimes along the way, your karma will present something that you can do that we would call purpose. Right? I mean, this is sort of the way that I'm living life in the sense that I just kind of, you know, I was a psychiatrist and I was like, let me do an AMA on Reddit. And I was like, let me start streaming on Twitch. It's like, oh, some people need help. Like, let me see if I can help them.

I think it's a great way to live life. So this is important because I think a lot of people get caught up. That Haramo with a capital D, it's like, oh my God, like I have to save the world. Like, and if that's your calling, by all means, go for it. If that's the fire inside you, go for it. Right? If you, if you, like, want to, you know, save the world from, like, climate disaster, like, fantastic. Like, one of my good friends as an activist.

And I never understood it. He was like, he cared so much about stuff and he, like, did things. He would like go to Congress and he would like talk about, you know, religious discrimination and racial discrimination, things like that. Like all the more power to him, I think it's fantastic that he's doing that stuff never mattered to me. I was just wasn't my thing. So growing up, I still remember when I was, so we were both like, we're both Indian and we're both Hindu. So he's like a Hindu activist, which is cool and all. And then I was like, I don't really care about, you know, the plight of the Hindus in various places.

what I care about is actually studying these scriptures, and this is what I find interesting, and that's what he found interesting. So he has sort of like his path in life, in which he's trying to help people who suffer from religious and racial discrimination in the United States. I'm really glad he's doing it.

It's not what I want to do, but I think it's great that he's doing it. I appreciate all of the people out there who are activists because I'm not really an activist. Like I support all, you know, I support that stuff, but my path is different. So by all means, find your own path. And if your path is a little bit more chill, like, that's totally cool.

And I'm grateful for all the people who are out there, you know, fixing their, solving the world's problems, problems with capital P. Yeah, so one person saying, Flipy Jam, saying, I kind of want to be an activist and a psychologist or psychiatrist or something too much. Yeah, so like, I'd say take it one step at a time, right? You guys don't have to be everything all at once, you know, do a little like volunteer, an activist in place and apply for a PhD in psychology. And then, like, as you become a psychologist, you can do a little bit of activism here or there.

Or you can go down the route of activist with a lot of psychological training. And that's what I basically did. I was like, I want to be a monk. And I was like, eh, maybe I'll be a doctor. It's like, yeah, I actually don't really like, I don't want to be either of those. So I'm just going to do my own thing and kind of mix them together. And I also like video games. So, like, let's throw that.

maybe I'll just stream on Twitch. Right? Yeah. So, tech teller saying, Vata your way through life? Like, absolutely, right?

You don't have to have one lifelong purpose. I didn't set out to be what I am today. Like, that's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. It's just stumbling through one thing at a time and appreciating what you can, learning what you can.

Try to make the world a little bit of a better place each step of the way. Help a human being here or there. I think it's a great strategy. And if you're more bit then by all means like, you know, apply to a six-year medical program at the age of 17 and determine your life to become an orthopedic surgeon at that young age

and go for it for the next 20 years. Different strokes for different folks. Love the posts, by the way. Okay, we got time for maybe one more. Y'all doing okay today, chat? We just vibe into like this good? All right, I'm having fun. Sometimes I wonder a little bit about like whether I should be doing like more

stuff. Like, do you guys want, like, more, like, like, what can I do better? Like, we're just chilling, right? We're just like talking about life, like, maybe learning things. But do you guys like, like, how was that lecture at the beginning? You guys okay with that? Like, I figured we'd do, like, a little bit of lecture. Like, we'll formally teach you guys something like learnable, a little bit of neuroscience. Learn about, like, something practical, like, how to dopamine detox. And then, like, we're just going to talk about stuff. Right? We're just chilling. Okay. Teach y'all chill we'll do one more maybe do a little bit of meditation okay okay how do i feel like a how do i stop feeling like a failure if i never win i'm a 27 year old straight white male from eastern europe

i've never been in a relationship gone on a date or had sex the most i've done with a girl is kissing at a party one time i know about in cells i know there exist people who are like me in this regard but i don't know any personally none of my friends seem to have too much trouble with getting into a relationship or at least finding a friends with benefits or something. Me, on the other hand, every time I ask someone out, which admittedly hasn't been more than around 20 people, they said no. I asked girls out in person over text on the phone. Some after knowing them for months, others after knowing them for days. Some I was very interested in others. I just wanted to see what happens if I asked them out. The result was always rejection. I'm kind of introverted, so I

probably won't randomly go up to people on the street, but I don't have trouble superficially befriending women and talking to them, or anybody really in most settings. But every time I show interest beyond friendship, I met with rejection. I still won't stop asking girls out if I'm interested in them, but with every rejection, it's getting harder and harder to think that maybe next time I won't get rejected. It's getting harder and harder to think that there is nothing wrong with me on a fundamental level. I just haven't found the right person yet. And this feeling, this feeling probably causes me to behave in certain unattractive ways, even if I don't see it, which in turn makes me even less likely to get a yes. My question is, how do I stop feeling

unattractive and unlovable if nobody was attracted to me in that way thus far? How to not get tilted if you took several breaks, tried to improve yourself, and are still 0 and 20? How do you adopt a, well, you win some, you lose some attitude if you never actually win some. Oh, chat. Such a good question. Okay. So the first thing is, I'm sorry, bro. Second thing is like, it's okay to feel like, you know, telling you to believe in yourself after you've gone 0 and 20 is like kind of silly. Right? Like, it's kind of silly. So like, I think it's reasonable for you to start to lose hope. And at the same time, I'm going to do something that I very rarely do on stream, which is I'm going to give you some advice. Okay. So here's what you do.

If you're looking to meet women, and by the way, we may have another lecture on this coming out next Monday, okay? So, a couple of things. So let's like start with where you are. All right. So like the first thing is like if you are noticing certain psychological or emotional things that may interfere or present you in a certain way that will be unattractive to others, you must work on those. Number one. So the things that you can control and the things that you can't. So number one is like if you feel like you're a reject,

and like that people don't deserve to like you, that's going to seep through in some way. Okay? So you got to work on that. So you can work with a coach, work with a therapist, journal, go on hikes, you know, sit with that feeling, meditate, acknowledge to yourself that, yeah, I've been rejected a lot.

I've asked out 20 women. It's okay for me to feel like something is busted with it. It's okay for you to feel that way because it sort of makes sense, right? Your brain is like problem solving and it's like, hey, maybe I'm screwing something up. So I would definitely work on that feeling. Pay attention to the behaviors that come out of your lack of self-confidence.

And to a certain degree, fake it until you make it. Okay? Step two. So I'm going to tell you guys a little story about little baby Dr. Kay. So I still find it bizarre that you guys think of me as a Chad. Like, because I don't feel like one, right? So I grew up, you know, had a crush on a girl in middle school, talked to her once. never went anywhere. She was with the popular kids.

I had a boyfriend who was popular and bullied me. High school, I still remember. There was one day where, like, one of the, like, the hottest girl in my freshman class sat next to me at the library and made small talk with me. And I was blown away. I wasn't particularly attracted to her, but I was just stunned by, like, how human she was and, like, why would she want to talk to me? Like, it still, like, sits with me to this day, like how confusing it was. Like, I was like, is there some joke going on?

Like, am I about to get prank? Because she's just sitting and like talking to me like a regular human being. And I found her to actually be like a wonderful and pleasant person, which was also confusing because I had built up all these ideas in my mind about how she's like, you know, a cold and evil woman, girl. Right? And then like had a girl that I was interested in asking to prom with, but didn't grow a pair enough to be able to ask it.

and then college came along. And then I was like, I'm a reinvent myself in college, right? I'm going to become a Chad. I'm going to like go to parties and I went to a bunch of parties and I met a bunch of girls and like, you know,

like asked a bunch of them out and then like had a series of terrible experiences with women where I didn't understand what the hell I was doing. And then I went to India. And then I was like, I'm going to become a monk.

And then something magical, happened. I was like, okay, no more, like, I can hang out with women, absolutely, but I'm not interested in dating, not looking for a girlfriend. I'm just going to become a monk and like might as well have some fun in the meantime. So I started like hanging out with people. And then like, I found myself being unburdened with all this crap because I said, I'm not interested in dating. So I just had a fun time. And then suddenly like the stakes have changed, right? Because I don't think, it doesn't matter to me whether she laughs at my joke. or not, I'm going to make a joke because I think it's funny. And if some of them laugh,

cool, if they don't laugh, no big deal. Like, I'm just live my life and I'm going to become a monk and I'm never going to have sex. I'm going to become the ultimate in-cell. I'm going to take that which is involuntarily celibate and make it vol. I was a volse. On the road to becoming a bull. I think that's what a bull cell is, right? I'm going to become a monk. I'm going to conquer my sexual desire. And then as I started just becoming myself and being like, okay, screw this stuff. I'm going to abandon this life anyway. I'm sure that I said some things that, you know, pissed some women off. But, you know, some of them found me charming and funny. And I was very, I didn't really care. And then I even, like, I started dating my wife, right? And, like,

even at the beginning, I didn't think that we were actually going on dates. I was like, do you want to hang out sometime? Right. And then, like, she was like, sure. I was like, cool. Like, this chick is cool. Like, let's go hang out. so we like started hanging out. I didn't even realize I asked her out. And then like something even weirder happened. So like years later, right? Like I still think of myself as like not a very attractive dude that women aren't interested in

because that's, you know, what I experienced for like eight years of my life. And something weird happened is as I sort of like, then I replace the monk with, okay, this is my girlfriend. Done. Never, you know, I'm not going to, not interested in anyone else. I'm off the market. I'm in a long term. So this is especially like in medical school, okay? This was when this started.

So like then we were like in a committed relationship. And so when we were like medical school like got engaged. And so then like I had sort of version two of that, which is I'm done with dating and stuff. So I'm just going to be me. And like boy did that, did I get so much female attention? I was done. Because I was still like a skinny Indian kid, right? Like with, you know, but like so much female attention.

And I don't. think a lot of that was, and it was like kind of weird, because like the more I just try to like be my best self, right? Like I also like took care of my appearance and stuff, right? I wasn't like wandering around unshaven and smelly. I was just like, I'm going to be a human being and like if I can have fun and make friends, like that's going to be totally cool. So you want to be you, like, so the point of being you is that you want to free yourself of all that mental crap that gets in the way, which this person thinks it gets in the way. And when you let go, of looking for a relationship, you will be a much more, like, confident and natural person.

But it involves letting go of that relationship. And now we're going to give you guys, I hate to do this, but like some techniques, okay? So, like, this is where, you know, if you're good at making friends with women, don't ask them out. I'm going to give you guys like a little bit of a cheat code here. Tell the female friends that you're like not interested in a relationship with them, okay? they are off the table, mentally put them off the table. Take care of yourself, like, get dressed properly, you know, exercise, wear clothing that is clean and fits you well. You go to your female friends, which you're good at making, or even like that you don't know them very well, and you can say, hey, I'm looking to upgrade my wardrobe.

Can you help me? They love that stuff. My wife loves it. She still is trying to upgrade my wardrobe, and I'm wearing a black t-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y. shirt or the same shit all the time. They love it. Or maybe they don't. Here I am generalizing all women, which is idiotic. So once again, the ones that will like it will say yes. The ones that aren't into it will say no, which is totally fine because I forgot for a second that not all women are the same. But it's totally fine. You're like, hey, I'm looking to upgrade my wardrobe.

Can you give me a hand? Would you be interested in helping me? And then some of them will be like, oh yeah, I like that. And some of them will be like, oh yeah, sure. Everyone will say yes. Some of you can like text them and they won't respond and someone will be like absolutely let's do it can we go shopping sometime then as you start to form a relationship with these people then you ask the next question you're ready for it hey i'm looking to meet someone do you have any friends that you could maybe set me up with right so like you don't want to ask her and then she's like then one of a couple of interesting things is going to happen right okay chat so also Maybe I'm just basing this on my wife because she loves to play matchmaker.

But a lot of girls that I know love to play matchmaker, okay? So then they love to play, let's set you up with someone. Okay? And if they don't, like occasionally, like this is where I, I know it's a long shot. Okay, it's a little bit of a AMC, GME kind of thing here. But I'd venture that if you ask two or three girls that one of them is actually going to be into you. And then what you can also do is these are female friends, right? So then if they say,

oh, I don't know anyone. And then, like, after, you know, a week or two, you can even ask them, like, hey, is there, I'm looking to meet people? Like, I really appreciate our friendship. Is there anything that you think I could be working on? And then listen to what they have to say. Right? They'll say, like, oh, yeah, like, maybe you should, you know, shave, shower, wear deodorant.

And, like, actually talk to them about it. And if you do these three things, because it sounds like you're a friendly, like, dude. who just kind of struck out for some reasons, maybe has some psychological stuff going on that keeps you from presenting your best self. Because I think you should be who you are, but I also think you should present the best version of who you are. Because you are trying to attract someone else.

So you don't want to like... And this kind of frustrates me because sometimes on people on social media are like, you know, if they don't accept me at my worst, they don't deserve me at my best. And it's like, well, sort of, right? Because maybe like, maybe you're kind of just a tiny little piece of shit when you're at your worst.

Like if you're egotistical and uncompassionate and you're, you know, you don't care about other people's feelings at your worst. Like, maybe no one should accept you. I know it's crazy. But maybe no one should accept you at your worst. Like maybe you should strive to be better than your worst. And if you really care about someone in a relationship, you shouldn't just force the worst part of you down their throat. What you should do is strive to be at your best all the time because you care and love the other person that you're with. And they deserve the best part of you because you love them and you want.

You want them to have the best relationship possible, which means you need to step the fuck up and be like as good of a partner as you can. I know it's radical. Crazy. Crazy. But I think that that's something to consider. So should you be yourself? Should you change for another person? Sometimes, actually I know it sounds weird.

Yes. I changed a lot. I was going to become a monk. And then like, I was like, okay, I'm going to alter the course of my life for the sake of my relationship. And then my wife also was like, I will alter the course of my life for the sake of this relationship. She was also like, okay, at the age of 26, you have a net worth of zero dollars. You have no career prospects. You have applied to medical school and been rejected 80 times.

My marketplace value according to the in-sells or pickup artists or whatever was like nothing. Right? Like, I'm sure if she talked to her friends, they were like, the dude's a fucking loser. you should dump them and move on. And sometimes you make stupid decisions for good relationships, which I think is fine. I think it's fine to alter who you are. Now you've got to be careful because the other person has to be willing to do it too, right?

You don't want to create a situation where one person isn't changing and the other person is like doing all the changing. That's not healthy. But it's sort of like she kind of altered her life for me. I altered her life for her and we continue to do that. Like back and forth. It's like, okay, what sacrifice am I going to make for your sake? Anyway.

So try to become a monk and get late. You know, I got to be honest. The thought has crossed my mind. But, you know, I think it's like, be the best version of yourself. And like a lot of people will do this, like, the people who feel not confident in themselves will sometimes test people. And they'll be like, oh, like, I'm going to do this thing where I'm going to be like a little bit mean to them and I'm going to see how they handle it. Don't do that crap. don't test another human being

it's it's like arrogant and cruel how do you like being tested it's dumb be the best version of yourself ask for help especially from your female friends upgrade your wardrobe ask them to set you up with someone

ask them to look over your Tinder profile whatever you want to do be like hey I need some update like help me out with my Tinder profile right what if you don't have female friends okay what if you don't have female

friends from butt farm poker. I don't even know what that means. But I got to, I'm trying to be fair here, but I have to wonder if there's a correlation between the name but farm poker and your inability to have female friends. Right? Like what? Like I, right? I just, I just don't, like, it's unfair because, you know, not saying it's actually true.

It's just the thought pops into my head. And this is where I'd say, like, okay, so if you don't have female friends, like, start, I know it sounds weird. I know this is going to sound weird. But if you're capable of making male friends, you're capable of making female friends. It's going to be radical. It's going to be mind-boggling. But making friends with a human being applies to both genders. So what, I know it's weird.

But I would say, and this is maybe there's, maybe I'm painting myself into a corner here because I would say do whatever you do with the male friends, and then hopefully you can make friends who are female doing the same thing. But it occurs to be that maybe your friends are okay with the same thought process that led you to the name of But Farm Poker, whereas maybe women will be a little bit put off by that. I'm not sure. So this is one that I'm a little bit stumped for, and maybe I need to like reevaluate. but I like I know it sounds weird but if you're capable of making male friends you're capable of making female friends at the end of the day like I know it sounds shocking the neuroscience of the two genders humor in both genders and for the most part men and women are about the same like most of what's

different about us is the genitals okay now you can say you can say lots of things about how the world treats us differently and things like that like that's all fair because men and women are traded differently. We are conditioned differently. We are psychologically somewhat differently. But generally speaking, it's been my experience that if you can make a male friend, 70% of that will apply to making a female friend. Like be a good human being. Like ask them how they're doing. Try to support them. Have fun with them. Tell jokes. Listen to them. Learn about their lives. Like all of that is not gender dependent. Right? What about being funny? Yeah. So maybe you should alter. Being funny is the one. So this is why I love, just chat. Y'all are so good,

man, because I think sense of humor is definitely something that is like a little bit different depending on the gender. Now, I've certainly had female friends that have more of a sense of humor that my like male friends and I have together, like we can make penis jokes. But I will, I'll be the first to admit that in my experience, making penis jokes, their jokes go over differently depending on which gender you're talking about. I think that's a good difference. Right? Okay. Meditation? Okay. Let's meditate. Okay, we're going to do chakra meditation round two.

All right. So if you haven't done round one, I recommend you go watch that YouTube video. All right. Let's go. Meditation. So sit up straight. So remember, we did round one. Round one of meditation was we're going to breathe in and we're going to pay attention to the front part of our various chakras.

Okay? So there's Agna Chakra, third eye. Vishudha chakra, base of the throat. Anahat Chakra, which is the solar plexus, Manipura Chakra, which is the navel. Swadistana Chakra, which is the top of your pubic synthesis, which is where your pubic bones fuse. Then Mula Dhara Chakra, which is the perinium,

which is also known as the taint, or in men halfway between the scrotum and the anus. In women, it is somewhere around the G-spot, I believe. lots of memes ha ha ha okay but seriously that's where it is um i don't know if it's against to show a picture of anatomy so we're not going to do that but okay so those are the front parts so now for round two and remember what we were doing is as we were breathing in we were putting attention on each of those as we go down and then as we breathe out we were reversing that attention to each of those so over the course of my breath just to demonstrate

As I breathe in, I'm going to pay attention here. And then as I breathe out, right, I'm going to just rotate my attention through those spots. So we'll demonstrate one round and I'll guide you all through it. So close your eyes. Take a deep breath in. Focus on the Agnachakra, your third eyebrow, I mean the eyebrow center. Sorry, we're going to start over. I'm a little bit.

Not tipsy, but I don't know. I fought that today. So we're going to start over. So deep breath in. Focus on the eyebrow center, then the base of the throat, solar plexus, navel or belly button, top of the pubic synthesis, and the perineum. And now exhale, start at the perineum, focus on the pubic synthesis, the navel, the solar plexus, the throat, and the eyebrow center. Got it? So solar plexus is like the bottom of your rib cage. Okay? Perinium for men is halfway between the scrotum and the anus,

and is at the top part of the vagina for women. By top, I mean the anterior part of the vagina. Let me think about that. Yeah, the anterior. I think it's the anterior part is where the Mula Darra Chakra is. So the part that is closest to the front. So the wall of the vagina that is closest to the clitoris is where the Mula Darra is. okay

right y'all can just Google move a vatic chakra and you'll see a picture of where it is all right so now for round two what we're going to actually do is we're going to go along the spine at the back end

of where each of these points are so for example we're going to go as we breathe in we're going to start kind of at the back of the head and then move our attention to the back of the throat or the spine across from our throat,

the part of our spine at the back that's kind of behind the solar plexus, back behind the navel, and then the mullahdhar chakra is going to be basically the same for both parts, right? So like it's in the middle. And then as we breathe out, we're going to go up. So as we breathe in,

we're going to put our attention to the back. And as we breathe out, we're going to go along the front. Does that make sense? so, right? So like, for example, when I breathe in, I'm going to pay attention to kind of the, what vertebra is this?

The bottom of your cervical spine, maybe? Right? There's like a particular vertebra that usually kind of juts out at the base of your neck. So as I breathe in, back of the head, top of the spine, like the top of the back, I should say, because you have your cervical spine above that.

and then kind of like mid thoracic spine like behind the solar plexus and then kind of like mid lumbar spine behind the navel and then kind of the coxics which is your tailbone

right which is sort of behind the pubic synthesis if that makes sense and then perennium and then as we breathe out we're going to go up the front so pubic synthesis naval, solar plexus, base of the throat, agnachy chakra. I know that most of chat is meming.

So this is the reason that we don't teach advanced techniques on stream is because most of chat memes. But this is for the few of you who are actually like doing the practice. Okay, so hopefully that makes sense. For people who did the practice, does this make sense? So you put your attention on that part of your body. Okay? So like you put your attention on the back.

So it's almost like a circuit that your attention is like rotating between a circuit. As you breathe in, it goes along the back. And as you, so as you breathe in, it goes along the back. And as you breathe out, it comes up the front. And that's one complete breath, okay? If that makes sense. All right. Okay, so let's practice.

Okay. So I'll go ahead and guide y'all through it. So sit up straight. It is hard. this is not an easy meditative practice. It requires a certain ability to restrain, control, and direct your attention, which is not easy. How accurate does the focus point have to be? Not too accurate.

I know it sounds kind of wild, but as you do the practice, the point will become natural to you. You will find the point. It'll like fit. It's weird. Okay? Yep, I'm going to guide you all through it. So the first point is going to be the back of the head. So I'm going to breathe in, back of the head, base of the neck, middle of the back, behind your solar plexus,

middle of your lower back behind your navel, coccyx, tailbone, same thing, perineum, that completes the inhalation. As we exhale, you start at the perineum, go up to the pubic synthesis, exhaling all the way, go to the navel, solar plexus, base of the throat, finish your exhalyel, you start up the perinium, go up to the pubic synthesis, exhalation, focusing on your eyebrow center. Okay? Coxics is C-O-C-C-Y-X. Abdominal breathing is better, but you have to use both. It's impossible to breathe without using your lungs and your abdomen. Are we skipping the heart? Sort of. We're not skipping the heart. The heart chakra is actually in the solar plexus. It's central. The heart is on the left side, but it's in the middle. Okay? All right. Here we go, chat. So start by taking a deep breath in and out, and now breathe

Then put your attention to the back of the head, bottom of the neck, middle of the back, middle of your lower back, tailbone, perineum. And now exhale, perineum, pubic bone, navel, solar plexus, base of the throat, and eyebrow center. Now we're going to breathe in again, back of the head, top of the bottom of the neck, middle of the upper back, middle of the lower back behind the navel, tailbone, perineum, exhale, perineum, pubic bone, belly button, solar plexus, base of the throat, eyebrow center. We're going to go one more breath and we're going to

slow it down. So breathe in, back of the head, base of the neck, middle of the upper back, middle of the lower back, and perennium. And now breathe out, perennium, navel, solar plexus, throat, eyebrow center. And now again, even see, slower. So deep breath in, slow, slow, slow, back of the head, base of the neck, middle of the upper back, middle of the lower back, tailbone, perineum, and now exhale, perineum, pubic bone, navel, solar plexus, base of the throat, eyebrow center. And now continue at your own pace. We'll practice for about. 60 seconds. And what I want y'all to try to do is keep as little gap between inhalation and

exhalation as possible. So really try to make it a nice smooth circuit where inhalation naturally flows into exhalation. And exhalation naturally flows into inhalation and begin. Go ahead and come on back. Well, hold on, chat. Everyone's like, oh my God, it's so hard. Yeah, this is an advanced meditation practice. Like, you all have to, like, this is stuff I've been teaching meditation on stream for like a year and a half. This is for the people who've actually been doing it. Like, I'm not trying to troll you guys, but this is not introductory meditation. This is why I don't teach advanced meditation on stream.

Because, like, a lot of people have trouble doing it. Like, I had nothing against you. It's just, this is why you've got to practice the other crap. Right? It's like, so if this is too hard for you, By all means, go back and do the other stuff. Do Nari Shodana. Do om chanting.

Do some of these introductory techniques. Kapalpati. And even if it's hard for you, if you haven't done that stuff, but you can barely do it, that's okay. You'll get better with practice. Okay? And this is also week two.

So week three, we're going to make it more advanced. So you've got to practice every day. I'm going to teach you guys next Monday. I'm going to teach you all another one relating to this. Okay? Do you have YouTube videos? I think so. There should be.

Yeah, so look, listen, let's just clarify one thing. You guys figure out, like, who am I grading, by the way? Tell me that, too. Okay, so here's what we're doing with meditation. For those of you, I'm not mad or anything. It's just, I understand why it's hard. It's because if you haven't practiced, it's going to be hard. Even if you have practiced, it can be hard.

So let's just get on the same page. For those of you who have practiced meditating, this is a good technique to try. It's an advanced technique. For those of you who haven't practiced meditating, now is the time to start if you want to do things like this. I'm not trying to shame anyone. It's just like, yeah, like at some point, you know, we're doing a higher MMR stuff. It's like more advanced techniques. So start practicing. Join us. Right? Like practice every day so that you can do this because there's more stuff I want to teach y'all. It's cool. It's going to be good. Fair? Cool. And no, no, you know, if it's hard for you, no big deal. Like you don't have to, you don't have to do. this. You can do an introductory meditation technique or not meditate at all. Just listen.