"I was addicted for years" Neuroscientist TJ Power | #143 A Millennial Mind Podcast

Easy activities kill you on the long term if you think about any of them whether it's vaping or drinking alcohol eating sugar or watching porn but our brain loves it we feel happy when we watch porn or we eat McDonald's or we have a milkshake very temporarily you feel good I'm the creator of the dose effect an acronym for dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins in this episode we are deep diving into the world of Dopamine addiction is the progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure when you look at your life you may notice

that like when you start getting addicted to things the majority of your pleasure is coming from a few very finite sources it might be coming from a vape from social media and from porn and those might be the moments you're feeling best how the hell do we change that the reason dopamine evolved in our brain is to effectively make Doing hard things feel good because we had to hunt and find food and forage and build shelter and raise the kids and dopamine was rewarding any behavior that was advantageous to our Survival Let's just say I'm

really addicted to alcohol I drink every weekend three times a week and I get so smashed I don't know how the hell to get out of it I've tried to give up many times I don't know what to do what do I do TJ hello hello welcome to Millennial Mind thanks for having me very happy to have you here and very excited for this podcast cuz I feel like there is so much that I need to learn but for people who don't know who are tell us a little bit about yourself so my name is

TJ power and I've spent a huge amount of my life for the the last 10 years studying psychology specifically neuroscience and I've niched very hard in understanding our brain chemicals things like dopamine for example and whilst also studying This I've also had a great deal of difficulty throughout that 10 years with being addicted to various different things actually since when I was way younger as young as I can really remember and it's been kind of ironic learning a lot about my brain chemistry whilst also being addicted to things and then over the last sort four

or five years I've really found a path out of being addicted to various different things in our modern world and yeah now I'm kind of sharing that with the the world I love that and I really love how you said it's kind of like a journey of you battling through something and then also learning at the same time what kind of sparked your interest in learning about our braing chemistry what sparked my interest I initially when I was younger I played a lot of golf I was almost like one of the things that really helped

me with addiction when I was young was Channeling into a sport which we'll come on to discover why that can be pretty helpful got really into golf and then got was a kind of performance psychologist really young so started learning about psychology and I struggled a huge amount in school couldn't really get on with the different like lessons and stuff like that at College chose to study psychology and found it kind of interesting and then from the ages of 16 To 21 I had a pretty hard period in my life I lost five people in

my family within five years which was very hard as like a young fellow to go through that and that then began kind of a series of addictive experiences and then I thought wow I'm struggling studying psychology seems to interest me and then yeah went down that lens into brain chemistry stuff you said um first of all really sorry to hear that because I think that's a lot to go through mhm you said You started being addicted to certain things when you were younger what were those things so the earliest things I can remember is sugar

so like I can remember literally being about 5 years old very little and in my kitchen climb my mom would have this sugar like brown sugar on this top shelf this is funny cuz this is just coming to my head now but I was trying to think younger and uh I would climb up onto the cabinet in the kitchen then Climb to the top of the shelf and I could literally put spoonfuls of sugar in my mouth so from very young I had like that desire for like what are these big dopamine hits you can

experience and then as I got older I started smoking cigarettes super young I was probably 11 or 12 years old smoking cigarettes which kind of breaks my heart now yeah when I uh meet young kids like 11 12 years old when I'm training schools stuff I think how was I possibly smoking cigarettes Then but yeah that was kind of the beginning of the journey you know I think one question that people always ask with any any substance or anything that's addictive is how do you start because if you think about things like alcohol yeah or

cigarettes or drugs MH they don't taste nice yeah they don't taste nice at all and you know I kind of understand it a lot with sugar or vaping or you know things that give you an immediate serotonin and hit like porn or Sex I I kind of understand those things a little bit more when people are like I'm addicted to them straight away I understand the appeal when it comes to smoking I always think people always ask as well when I've had this conversation is like what makes that person pick up the cigarette is it

the peer pressure okay fine the peer pressure but the first time you smoke a cigarette it tastes disgusting so how do we become addicted to these things social media Was the thing I was going to say like with social media you can pick it up and know that okay well this is great and I'm really enjoying it and I'm learning something from it it's not directly something that you think is bad for you with a cigarette though I think the question always arises is how do people actually get addicted because you pick it up you

taste it tastes disgusting and then you put it down again it is interesting both cigarettes and alcohol Are aversive at first like our body actually very instinctively knows it doesn't like it yeah the challenge with cigarettes and alcohol is how much they've been culturally integrated into our society so from so young you're watching movies and you're watching TV shows and it's really creating this ideal image of smoking is cool like drinking is cool I remember watching like peeky blinders for example and that Tommy Shelby guy makes smoking look like The coolest activity in the world

and that alongside then the groups you begin to grow up in also will engag with the behaviors I remember when I was young seeing like my siblings or something smoking and I idolized my siblings now I'm kind of getting them in trouble but saw them smoking I thought all right so smoking's on the table and then when I was young and this probably was a component of the addiction being cool and being perceived as cool Was something I really valued in the last few years I've come more into just feeling like I can be myself

however that was something I valued and if it was like kind of cool and rebellious to smoke cigarettes or to get drunk I was all for it effectively how can we kind of stop that initial phrase because what I'm worried about and kind of what you said as well is that I still sometimes feel like I need the validation I still sometimes think that something looks Cool Y and it's ingrained in my head mhm you know I agree with you actually I actually think that on a man smoking is very attractive interesting and that is

bizarre I know that's bizarre yeah well kind of but also not because of I don't find it unattractive at all I I've never found it unattractive if someone's smoking in front of me and I think it is because it reminds me of Like the Wolf of War Street and alpha male or it reminds me of like The Great Gatsby Where they're smoking and it reminds me of exactly what you said and peaky blinders and all of these shows a lot of the alpha men are smoking cigars cigarettes and what's also interesting is my partner he

doesn't smoke but he actually said like but smoking a cigar is very different from smoking a cigarette and I was like why see that a little bit but for him he grew up watching things like pey blinders and other things like that or I don't know Something else where smoking cigars was acceptable and okay yeah but smoking cigarettes is like disgusting so his perception is always like if he sees somebody smoking gross but if he see someone smoking a cigar kind of cool which is really interesting I think uh in that lane of not getting

addicted to things or the beginning of the path of getting off of these things you do really have to go down the route of Shifting who you're idolizing because if you're on the path I mean I was like a teenager growing up watching crap like Jordi Shaw and all that kind of stuff so my Idols were the people that did all that stuff yeah and I think three or four years ago when I thought right I got to change stuff up I want to get healthy I want to feel good and work and all that

kind of stuff I really had to shift like the kind of mountain I was seeking to climb like who Was I aiming to get towards and if you are aing to get towards being like Tommy Shelby you're probably end up pretty hooked on like whiskey and cigarettes so I think yeah shifting who it is that you're looking up to I think is massive you know one thing with that though I find is that we're in this era of it's okay interesting I do feel that with everything at the moment we do say it's okay not

to be perfect which it is I'm not saying it we will have to be and I'm Not perfect by any means yeah but I do feel like we are in this era where it's like it's okay if you have one bad habit it's okay if you have one bad trait it's only one bad thing I'm doing in my life and when it comes with addiction a lot of us don't want to admit that we are addicted to things right so let's just say for example you're a smoker and you're you eat really healthy you maintain

a very healthy lifestyle it doesn't impact your running or your Weightlifting or whatever it is that you're doing doesn't impact your relationships that much you and occasionally smoke let's say like one or two cigarettes a day for that person they might say you know well look it's okay cuz it's my only only bad habit you know how would they start to change that because when we're talking about who we're idealizing and I completely agree with you on that we also say like no one's perfect so if nobody's perfect Then I shouldn't have to be either

I agree and I think it is challenging the addiction itself is providing you with some kind of pleasurable experience and because addictive things provide you with a very acute pleasure they create this really fast rise in that dopamine chemical all you think about the behavior itself is all that that's kind of what you've paired it with in your mind so say like watching porn it's like wow when I watch Porn I feel really really good because it's really stimulating or when I'm getting pissed it feels really good I think the most important thing is to

like lengthen out how you're observing The Addictive Behavior and instead of only observing in the acute moment you have to get very good at seeing the whole the whole impact it's having on you so with smoking for example if you start thinking okay how am I feeling when I wake up before the Vape and if You notice it's not you're just not feeling very good and then how feeling in the hours after the Vape and if you become far more familiar with how the whole behavior is impacting your life you start getting motivated for change

and I found this massively like I was like it's not that bad getting pissed on a Thursday Friday Saturday night that kind of thing yeah but then I started really coming in tune with like how do I actually feel on Mondays and Tuesdays And so many of us think like we just get like a physical hangover on a Saturday and Sunday got like a headache feel a bit sick have a Domino's watch some porn whatever it is people might do to try and get themselves out of that feeling and then it's like well The Hangover

is gone Monday Tuesday you think that's nothing to do with how I feel however on average it takes about 72 hours for alcohol for example to detox out of our system and throughout that 72 hours the Dopamine is going to crash like crazy and it's actually often the Monday and Tuesday that you'll feel the most significant mental side effects whereby you'll feel kind of depressed or anxious and you'll be overthinking your work or your relationship whatever it might be because it's a while since you've drunk the alcohol you think nothing to do with that it

actually is this problem worrying about and the more I got in tune with fully observing how the Addictions were impacting my life the more I started growing this feeling Within Me of like H I should actually see what life's like without this behavior and see if it impacts me and if you get really good at knowing the negative and then really good at feeling the positive of not having it change begins to occur do you think we're all addicted to something I really do I mean if I think through all my friends all my family

everyone I know and have Interacted with and with my work like thousands of people with the training and stuff like that I've never met someone that hasn't been addicted to something and I think it varies significantly I think our modern world is a world that's super hard not to be addicted to something like there's just so many options of what you could be addicted to and they're all within an Arm's Reach they're all super tempting whether it's sugar or Ving or porn like All these things are so easy to get hold of they're cheap they're

accessible or they're free and uh yeah I feel like most of us are why is it bad I know this sounds like a really stupid question so what if I'm addicted to watching porn so what if I'm addicted to eating sugar so what if I'm addicted to smoking this is I'm not harming anyone besides yourself F myself right I'll tell you like a different lens of why it's bad so this Is an interesting thought and I imagine people may not have thought about it like this before so one of the most important chemicals of being

a human being is dopamine okay and I've studied what's called evolutionary Neuroscience for the last like 5 to 10 years which is just the study of our brain over human history and for 300,000 years we were running around as hunter gatherers outside and then for the last a few thousand and then the last hundred we've Rapidly changed how human beings spends their time so a chemical like dopamine was completely designed for that world it wasn't designed for this one the reason dopamine evolved in our brain is to effectively make doing hard things feel good because

we had to hunt and find food and forage and build shelter and raise the kids and dopamine was rewarding any behavior that was advantageous to our survival so that humans would survive because obviously That's like our only purpose really when you come down to the most simple thing it's just survive on the planet just keep keep the humans going that's what any animal's purpose is so dopamine have this capacity hard activity reward you keep you alive in our modern world we've created activities that are complete opposites to that easy activities kill you on the long

term effectively so like if you think about any of them whether it's vaping or drinking alcohol eating Sugar or watching porn all of these things are doing the opp opposite of what dopamine actually want they're actually creating a worse experience in the long term for Humanity and when you engage with it just like our brain had the ability to reward the positive behavior it's going to do the complete opposite to you so progressively the more you engage in it the more poror and the more vaping the more sugar the worse and worse you're going to

feel because It's very simply the really intelligent instinctive part of us trying to send us a message saying this isn't a way for Humanity to prosper this is going to create great difficulty for our society and our brain and body so good at surviving and that's the message we're all being sent right now as a result of our changing behavior and then when you start changing going back to the other original dopam me sources you think [ __ ] I feel Amazing wow okay so explain this to me yeah our brain is basically like a

computer right that we have we have no control how to code it but it's been coded in a certain way yeah over hundreds of thousands of years hundreds of thousands of years so now we've got all these addictions that we're seeing in our society and our brain is almost rejecting them so what you just said just now with all those habits you said that our brain is going to tell us that We don't like it but our brain loves it we feel happy when we watch porn or we eat McDonald's or we have a milkshake

very temporarily you feel good so the way in which dopamine is designed to work is if you imagine a graph M and imagine you're just starting at zero so you got just like normal Baseline you're at just standard level if you took like an activity like hunting an animal like something that would be ridiculously difficult and that was really what Dopamine was for hunting an animal I might set out there with the group and it could take four or five hours in order to get that big rewarding experience So Dope means it's going to go

very slowly up on a curve you're going to experience a nice hit of reward and satisfaction and pleasure and then it's going to calm back down you'll still feel good you'll feel balanced in our modern world we've managed to artificially hack the dopamine so that Feeling we could get off hunting after 5 hours we can get in 10 seconds of scrolling Tik Tok so the dopamine Spike super super high and the brain is always seeking for balance that homeostasis word and the brain's like how the hell I got up here so then it crashes the

dopamine really low because it wants to get back to the middle line and each crash is what withdrawal is all of that urge you get of like I really want my vape or I'm craving watching porn or I Really need sugar that's because we're in what's called Low Baseline dopamine and these artificial ups and downs effectively just like brutal for our brain to experience and on the long term what happens is our brain is like can't deal with it I can't deal with the highs and lows so its response is I'll just produce less dopamine

and then when it starts producing less dopamine you can't focus on anything you feel kind of flat you feel a bit depressed low mood that Kind of stuff and if you think about those words so many of us live in that head space where we feel flat can't focus on anything procrastinate and that's simply our brain responding to the fact it can't cope with the big guys no way that is so interesting I'm like such a visual person so I'm like trying to understand it that makes so much sense to me okay so how the

hell do we change that yes can we change it we can and I Have managed to go through this journey and so have like many people so like it's definitely very fixable it is something that of course will require like a little bit of effort and discipline and that kind of thing but there is a a path you can follow effectively and yeah I mean should I take us down I'll I'll ask you yeah you've obviously had your own experiences with addiction and I think you know from what we've just talked About and how addicted

so many of us are to so many different things within our society I think that your story can actually help with really unpicking how we can go about that and also providing hope to people that they can also quit whatever habit that they have today so you talked about you know getting rid of your smoking addiction when you 11 let's start there how did you kind of get rid of stopping smoking okay so for context All of the addictions smoking might have been the first one smoking and porn probably similar time discovered porn way too

young which has obviously screwed up my bra in other ways so porn smoking alcohol and sugar I'm probably hooked on all of those by like 12 years old which is a joy and then like gradually more and more partying and that kind of stuff got into that world and I lived within that world of addiction from the age of probably 11 Till about 22 so I never never did anything about it during that time that was just the world I was in and the path I basically followed was at about 22 I had one specific

night where I was out and I was partying with my friends it was near the end of University and I took the partying experience too far and I left early I really wasn't feeling good in my head effectively what was happening based on what we've just discussed is that dopamine was crashing So hard and I was getting an extremely strong message from my body saying no no no this is not good this is not good went home and I lay in bed that night and I can remember it really well and I remember chatting to

myself just thinking like I really want a cool experience of life that's something I've always desired I wanted to build a business and I wanted to be able to do something fun with my career and have of friends and all that sort of stuff and I Just remember like really like effectively deeping how is this actually exper affecting my life what I'm doing right now went deep into it and thought okay like change has to begin from here like I have to start observing very closely how the negative behavior is impacting me so at that

point I didn't actually cut the addictions I just had this agreement with myself that change must begin from now it would be an absolute dream if this podcast itself Begins that step or opens that door for people that are listening if like if you're listening you think to be fair I'm hooked on loads of stuff or I'm hooked on one thing this is when the door opens for the next month I spent a lot of time still engaging with the addictive behaviors but when I was engaging with them and when they were wearing off and

I wasn't interacting with them I was really observing how it was making me feel previously I just Kind of ignored all the negatives and just being like Oh there's so much positive there's so much positive so I started seeing the negatives and very quickly when you start really observing the negatives like if you take something as basic as scrolling your phone yeah scroll your phone for like half an hour an hour in the morning whatever Tik Tok if you really sit and observe how you feel after scrolling Tik Tok you realize you feel [ __

] [ __ ] you feel super Flat dopamine crashes you can't really bother to work you procrastinate you don't feel that good and if you actually become in tune with whatever it is alcohol or how the VAP makes you feel when you wear off or porn makes you feel after those people that watch a lot of porn I think you'll be very familiar with exactly how you feel after porn it doesn't feel great and then I started observing it and thinking okay like I'm starting to build some kind of motive Within Me for change I

then decided to take that step further and the biggest the single biggest thing I ever did was I was so addicted to my phone like I just love social media scrolling the videos hooked on it and I set myself this challenge this actually when covid was kicking off and I set myself this challenge to go on to walk for an hour without my phone in the morning amazing and I was like that to me that was like next to impossible to imagine an hour no Phone went out there and out there I heard all the

negative [ __ ] in my head like I think a lot of us nowadays are scared of The Quiet like always headphones in podcas in music playing because at least I can ignore all these feelings in my opinion from a neuroscientific lens the reason we hate the quiet is because our body is sending us such a strong message saying please listen you're hurting me you're hurting me and I then spent an hour out there And came home and I thought [ __ ] I've got some work to do here because like my selft talk is

screwed in my opinion your the conversation your head is occurring as a result of how you're kind of treating yourself and your lifestyle and behavior and then I was like I had this very strong feeling that I just had to keep doing this walk every morning without my phone even though I hated the experience of doing it gradually with every day I had these conversations that Desire within me to change my behavior was growing and growing and growing because I was out there every day and I was thinking I don't want this to be a

[ __ ] experience in my head I don't want to be constantly critiquing myself you've been doing this you've been doing that so I started thinking why don't I add some positive stuff into this conversation and start adding some positive behaviors in whilst I try and work on getting rid of negative stuff Cuz I didn't just cut everything cold turkey got I was still drinking some alcohol then still smoking occasionally a cigarette something like that and that kind of began the path we can go further into this but that basically began the path really getting

observant of the negative and then spending a lot more time in the quiet specifically in natural environments because the brain and body is just going to be more peaceful there what you just mentioned About spending time in solitude yeah and spending time without a podcast is one of the single best things that has changed my life okay because I actually read a book called digital minimalism nice and is that Newport yes and for my whole life I thought that I was being super highly productive and I was always listening to a podcast when I was

walking and I was like wow I'm so productive and I think we're obsessed with this idea of productivity we can no Longer go for a walk without listening to a podcast we can no longer sit on the tube without learning or reading a book or listening to a meditation or doing some kind of exercise right like everything has to be coupled up with something thing and this is where you talk about habit stacking you know everyone's like stack your habits together while you're Wasing listen to your favorite podcast and learn a new thing every day

and when I read digital Minimalism I was like I'm no longer going to go for a walk whilst listening to a podcast I am just going to stop listening to music and just listen to my thoughts and actually I have found it to be the most amazing hour of my life because I actually really in that time like to therapy myself and I always find that when I go for a walk and I talk to myself and sometimes like now I forget I've lost my headphones so now people think I'm mad so now I have

to put my Phone next to my ear and I'm like you know what that's really B like I'll have to like therapize myself like that oh it just looks like someone's walking but you know we are obsessed with you know putting everything together and you know like I said I think it can get so consuming where you don't know what your own thoughts are and you don't know what you want and you don't know what you're thinking and that first step that you just said is just observe how you feel M So many of us

don't want to observe how we feel it is scary it's so scary and it's hard to hear those messages yeah it's like growing up as a kid and your parents trying to give you a really good piece of advice and you thinking no I don't want to hear it but like sometimes you just need to hear the piece of advice and coming back to that reason do is so significant and the hunter gather a journey and all that sort of stuff is our Instinct within us just wants us Here so badly it wants you to

stay alive and all these things are harming that and the message only gets strong ER so like it will only get louder if you go more into alcohol more into smoking more into porn whatever it might be the feelings within you just grow and grow and grow and the amazing thing is as soon as you open the door and start listening to the feeling they then begin to quieten back down and to a lot of people it would seem kind of weird to Think like wow I could spend an hour outside in nature and that

would be a fun experience like listening to the thoughts in my head people would think oh way could that but it can happen and that's remain like a really consistent practice when you say therapizing yourself that is exactly what you can do out there and I also think with mental health I some people are really struggling and there's kind of this like oh wait for therapy sort of thing and I Think therapy is Magic I've had therapy I actually am in therapy I have it every two weeks with a guy he's been helping me a

lot throughout these last few years so I think therapy is awesome but I also think we really underestimate our own capacity to solve a lot of our stuff if we just create the space for the messages to be heard like you just said your gut is such a powerful tool and your gut is your second brain and your gut knows when you're in danger or not So just how you said how your gut knows if alcohol is bad for you CU it makes you feel sick initially if smoking bad for you CU it makes you

feel a bit gross after you watch porn you always feel a little bit like you just said like ashamed those feelings it's the same when you meet somebody and you know that there's something not right about them and you're like your energy is weird yeah don't know your gut's telling you that listen to it because your gut does Know your brain might be distracted by what they're wearing and how rich they are and how successful they say they're going to make you but your gut actually knows who they really are and our brain can often

sometimes I think distract us from who somebody really is I don't think your God can do that I think your God will tell you if someone's a good good egg or a bad egg it does right we have such strong like instinctive feelings in us and you can tune in that At any time whether it's that whether it's like you're lying in bed you wake up and you think so you've listened to this podcast you think [ __ ] I'm addicted to social media and one of the biggest things is waking up and not going

straight into a quick source of dopamine yeah because effectively our brain wakes up and it craves dopamine so for the hunting gatherers that meant go find food go build shelter look after the Kids all these useful things wherever it gets that first hit from it craves in that direction for the rest of the day so if you get it from a vape or social media you're literally biasing your brain to want it even more the rest of the day no yeah what I know whereas like if you got it from something that was slightly effortful

you made your bed you brushed your teeth you had a shower your face anything your brain's like all right this person wants effort Throughout the day rather than quick pleasure so that first moment you wake up is everything and back to that instinct thought if you wake up I'm about to go for my phone if you instinctively check in with yourself you don't want the phone but your brain has got this like oh I really want the dopamine I want the dopamine and the more you just like take a breath and ask yourself okay what

does what do my body actually want and then it's like my body Wants to get out of bed and be a proper human it doesn't want to be this lazy piece of [ __ ] but like you have to listen to that feeling and it begins to guide you on a much much better PA oh my God you're so right whenever I get out of bed I'm like I'm not going to check my phone today and then when I do I feel sick cuz I'm just like oh even if nothing's bad's on there and it's

like Shani we're giving you a million pounds to go fly to LA and build your own Studio I would still if I put my phone down be like oh God I checked my phone because you're right my brain doesn't want that it doesn't and that feeling of guilt for example guilt is a really powerful feeling guilt again is a survival mechanism like the reason a human would experience guilt is because it's you're doing and engaging in a behavior that's not advantageous to you or somebody else like if a parent was ridiculously overly unkind to their

kid They' suddenly get rushed with guilt in their body and that would be the brain and body saying no no no that wasn't right that's not or you do something unkind to your partner or anything and that emotion if you're feeling like guilty a lot of the time that is a very clear sign like maybe I do feel pretty [ __ ] when I nail a massive cabri chocolate bar or whatever it might be and you don't want to feel guilt you want to feel proud of yourself that's The opposite of guilt is like oh

I feel quite proud of how I'm engaging in my life and that's why like when you wake up in the morning you're like holy [ __ ] I got up and made my bed I went for a little walk and that feeling of pride in yourself is Magic it's like one of the best emotions we can have and if you start chasing pride and then getting away from that guilt feeling your life ends up a hell of a lot better you mentioned an interesting point because I Was watching some of your real today and you

said we should be chasing the natural high instead of this fake high that we've made up in our lives and I agree with you because actually what you've just said is if you're chasing this feeling of proud and having a lot of Pride then then actually that's what what your focus is going to be on right however now I'm going to link it back to what I think that everyone's say in society right now is also like you Shouldn't be so obsessed with like being proud of yourself all the time and like you know you

can do things that you're not proud of and we're not all perfect and then aren't we basically encouraging people to just have this very success driven mindset where we're just focusing on one thing completely which is how much better can I be today I do agree that's a complicated complicated aspect of this but I also think in a world where it's very tempting all this stuff We do need a fair bit of discipline in our brains that does seek for that feeling of being proud of oursel it's really important to understand that's not necessarily just

proud of ourselves in our work or how productive we are as a human like you can feel proud of yourself because you took some time out of your day to help your mom with something and that's not bad that's like not like a addiction to productivity yeah so it's it's proud in any sense and Like again proud of that example of helping your mom survival mechanism helping someone in your family it helps the tribe like everything is down to that core feeling of survival within Humanity so I don't think it's necessarily that bad and my

favorite definition of addiction I've ever heard is by Andrew huberman and he says addiction is the progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure when you look at your life you may Notice that like when you start getting addicted to things the majority of your pleasure is coming from a few very finite sources it might be coming from a vape from social media and from porn and those might be the moments you're feeling best and on the other side of that a good life life is the progressive expansion of the things that bring you

pleasure and when you start getting out of addiction you start getting pleasure from helping your mom and going for Walks and your work and cleaning your house and cooking healthy food and once you start expanding and chasing the natural high expanding the things bringing you pleasure it becomes more and more easy to sacrifice these little acute moments because overall you're just in this much higher state and that's where we're all seeking to be in this like really nice high dopamine State I love life that's where we want to be and we're artificially spiking That experience

of feeling it but if we go into just like a more steady okay so I'm getting pleasure from all these more natural sources Suddenly It's like oh cool maybe I don't need all the addictive [ __ ] as much this is so interesting because how I'm looking at it is you're basically saying that there are things that we can do to reset our dopamine brain dopamine Source yeah and then we can actually start to see the real dopamine in our life and that's Going to make us feel better than all these artificial sources yes okay

how the hell do we reset let's just say I'm really addicted to alcohol yeah okay I hate myself for it it's ruining my relationships I drink every weekend three times a week and I get so smashed I don't know how the hell to get out of it I've tried to give up many times I don't know what to do what do I do okay step one observe the negative so we've covered that observe the negative it's Actually bringing to your life stop only focusing on the positive step two is you're going to start going on

walks and actually talking to yourself about the behavior okay no headphones no phone go on walks and you chat to yourself about it and even if it's hard discussions to have you have to have the conversation because motive has to come from somewhere and it's going to come from you no one else is going to change the behavior so you have to start like Adding wood to that fire effectively after that you need to really experience what abstinence feels like abstinence is not having the The Addictive thing the reason you have to have abstinence is

ultimately with abstinence you're going to find that you feel much better without it so say for example watching porn like I grew up teenager watching porn thought it was great really fun stimulating all that kind of stuff so then in my head is say why would I ever Quit this Behavior it's having that much of a negative impact on my life I feel fine I'm still like at University I'm still doing all right why would I quit it if I then go down the path of okay so I feel a little bit [ __ ]

after I watch porn so that's me observing it and I'm going on walks and I think it's kind of rank that I'm like watching porn in the evenings that's kind of disgusting and it's something making you feel a bit disgusted with yourself then that's a Good indication that change needs to occur then you have to have the abstinence to even know what the hell is going to happen without it and all I discovered is within about two weeks I was like right I'm going to see if I can do two weeks without watching it which

at the time like if you've watched porn every day for like your whole life that's actually quite a long time within a week I was like holy [ __ ] I feel really good I feel like much more Driven I feel more focused I'm waking up and getting out of bed much easier and I was thinking [ __ ] is this really just the porn and then I was like I I need to have more of a because of my like Neuroscience background I need a bigger study sample size effectively so then I go to

my brother my best mates I'm like right everyone you got to quit porn and they're like [ __ ] sake TJ's come up with another ridiculous experiment that we have to do and other experiments were More fun the ones I created when we were younger so then I got them to do it very quickly I hear the exact same message back within a week I'm feeling way more driven focused less kind of worrisome in my head and I start expanding it further so then I'm like right I have to have the courage to post this

on the internet and I'm like I don't want to be that guy that talks about porn but then I'm kind of like [ __ ] it the world needs it I'm just going to sacrifice myself and make This video about porn Okay make the video about porn and then we start getting hundreds of messages on my Instagram from men say mate I stop watching it suly feel much more driven and much more focused and it's simply because you're literally about to go to sleep your brain's like right here's my big sleep restoration dopamine period just

before you go to sleep you annihilate the dopamine and then it doesn't get that big climb that it Wanted it's just trying to recover off the porn so you're waking up low dopamine you feel like [ __ ] but you don't actually know you've just made that normal so you don't think that is feeling [ __ ] because you've never had the abstinence so if you have the period away from it you start having this growing motive of I can change this behavior and then nowadays say for example I'm like oh it' kind of fun

to watch some porn it's not like the Thoughts have gone from my head I then have this thing that I can think about I'm like oh no but if I don't watch it I feel this certain way whatever the behavior is whether it's like you're trying to come off vaping or you're trying to scroll your phone less or you're trying to stop drinking as much you have to really build a big seesaw on the other side of this is all the pleasure it gives me I get really [ __ ] it's really fun and I

have good bance With my mates say with drinking Alco but you're not thinking about the negative if you get really clear on the negative and then you start building a positive on the other side of the Seesaw of all the things that happen if you don't have the substance suddenly the Seesaw begins to tip and gradually like for example with me with alcohol I came to discover that just like my life is a significantly better experience without alcohol but I was convinced that that Was the opposite way around so those are the beginning steps I'd

follow through okay but I'm going to challenge you because hit me somebody who uh takes let's just say drugs like once a month let's just te someone who takes drugs once a week for them they are saying look Friday night has come and whether this is actually drugs or just getting a bit drunk Friday night has come and you're now asking I know I'm going to feel [ __ ] on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I know that on Monday I'm not going to be my most effective and I know that on Sunday I'm going to have

McDonald's and that's not going to make me feel good or have the dominoes or whatever right yeah first of all I bloody love McDonald's and dominoes and having it once a week is not going to kill me yeah secondly I'm doing really well in my job and actually I just got a promotion last week so clearly I'm managing my best thirdly I'm not talking about my own Personal experience by the way um thirdly I play sport three times a week nice um again not talking about me I do like bton and rugby and something else

uh tennis and so actually you know what TJ drinking on a Friday night and getting absolutely hammered and you know taking Coke or MD or whatever heroin is not it's not really a big deal for me it's it there's not that much negativity and if I'm honest listening to this podcast yeah I probably am addicted to Social media on my phone um but who isn't fascinating question you basically described all my friends so like I the reason I did that is because I wanted I wanted us to kind of talk about somebody who at home

is like yeah get what you're saying but I'm not at that stage where it's making me feel sick I'm not at that stage where I feel [ __ ] about myself I'm at the stage where I'm actually doing well in all eras of my life and I know I've got one thing that I'm addicted to But I don't really care why should I quit so as you've challenged me I'm going to slightly challenge you back and I would say the only reason that person has got this far in the podcast is cuz there's a part

of them that is curious about this piece of advice and I would simply ask loads of my mates do all these things and I'm not the mate considering I also was like the main party one I'm not there to now judge them I think it's great that they want To have loads of fun and people can do whatever they want with their life if you absolutely love your life and your life feels amazing and you're happy with your career and you feel healthy and your relationships are strong and you feel physically good then like keep

on the path that you're doing if that's how life feels good for you I think the the most important advice is if that isn't the case if you think hm I do feel pretty [ __ ] at times and I would like to Feel better then it's time to open the door and change the behavior I think it's all down to you I think a lot of people like for example I'm in my 20s all my mates probably think like I'll just sort it out in my 30s and I imagine like maybe they will sort

it out in their 30s and that's fine I think for me I maybe took the behavior too far too early and maybe I wanted to change I also think like I wanted to experience like highs from all like a more Prolonged period of my day like as much as I loved being like super uh party Lifestyle on like Friday Saturday that kind of thing I was feeling good for a really acute period of time but I discovered like I just really like feeling good the majority of the time like I like on a Monday sitting

in a coffee shop with my laptop and feeling really good in that period I don't want to feel all crap whilst I'm having to work because that's just not a fun Experience for me so I think if you feel like the majority of your life feels good feels fun feels amazing keep doing whatever you're doing if you feel like your life could feel ahead of a lot better then begin the path I think you're so right I think the thing is that so many people have got this far in the will be like there is

something that I want to do so let's help them MH how quickly can somebody break an addiction fast I really believe fast I really I Think sh shifts can happen really quickly how quickly I honestly believe that night that I talked about where I had that conversation myself I think every like literally the addiction basically ended at that night when I had a proper discussion with myself about it I can remember it so clearly and I was also drunk at the time and normally get a bad memory and stuff and it's like this crystal clear

conversation in my mind of like This just isn't going to lead to a sick life and I want a sick life so as in a good life yeah not a sick life like and uh I think then like then the whole relationship with the addiction begins to shift because for a long time you've been lying to yourself about the fact there's no negative and now it's time to like at least begin the that conversation there are then some really important steps to take we've talked About a number of them one of the biggest things for

our dopamine system and at the end of the day you're just craving dopamine like humans crave dopamine hunts gather is that where it meant they went out and Hunt found food rais kids whatever yes we're all craving dopamine and now there's a million different ways in which we don't have to always get it from our work and gym and stuff we can get it from all these crappy sources and we now are like Predisposing ourself to need a lot of dopamine in our brain to feel good that's not necessarily a bad thing for you as

a human if you find one main what's called Flow State activity in your life flow state is when you get so immersed in a task that you lose track of time that's the simplest way to understand what flow state is say for example actually out of Interest like what would you say is the answer that the podcast okay so currently your brain Will be building a ton of dopamine because you're entering what's called Flow State if you look at like a hunter gatherer actually having to hunt an animal can you imagine how deeply focused you'd

have had to become in order to successfully do that and all humans need a flow State activity that's going to build so much dopamine that their brain's going to be less like less crazy of all the crappy sources so whether it is in your career there might Be something in your career that gives you Flow State it might be playing sport gives you Flow State it might be an artistic activity I know lots of people now are getting into these things called like high rocks and like CrossFit and all those kind of like gym activities

what they're experiencing is Flow State there's also loads of other benefits to exercise and all that kind of stuff but their brain is getting so deeply immersed in something that is building The dopamine like crazy and it's really interesting like there's such a movement on Tik Tok for example in London of people that get super into this like healthy lifestyle they start joining run clubs or they start joining H rocks and and suddenly they also start going out a little bit less and being like maybe I don't have to get [ __ ] every Friday

night and all that sort of stuff and the re it's not coincidence that occurs the brain is suddenly satisfied with how Much dope meit of receiving from the CrossFit session for example so it's like maybe I don't need to screw myself up with the alcohol as regularly and again it's not about completely eliminating these behaviors you don't have to do that OMH drink they sometimes ask me questions about not drinking I'll share my thoughts but I say keep doing whatever is making you happy however if you just start finding a more of a balance with

these behaviors life's Going to get so much better life's only [ __ ] when your life becomes completely immersed in The Addictive stuff I think also the conversation you have with yourself is just so important in terms of what you just said about not being like I hate myself for this um last week it was really funny it was a Friday night and I was at home by myself I had no plans and everyone was busy and I was like I don't actually want to make plans because I've been so busy I want to Spend

an evening by myself but it was the first time I'd spent an evening by myself in so long I felt so uncomfortable interesting yeah and I love being alone I love being alone but I felt really uncomfortable and I remember talking to myself being like why do you feel so uncomfortable and I was like maybe because I haven't done this before and I felt so sick and I was like okay what's going to make you happy so I went to Sainsbury's I got some of My favorite foods okay I then came back home and then

I made it and I was like how lovely is this and then I also put myself in the future and said when you have kids one day and you're married you are going to Crave this evening more than anything and you're going to be like why did I not enjoy this evening by myself and I still felt upset I still felt anxious now in that moment one of my friends message saying hey do you want to go out I didn't want to go Interesting I didn't want to go I had an event that evening it

was International women's day by the way can you imagine there was like millions of events going on that day I said no to every single one of them I didn't want to go and yet even though I didn't want to go and I was at home my brain was still like wait you're unhappy this you're alone like why are you by yourself and I I was registering those thoughts at the same time to be like why am I feeling this Way and I think it's about in that moment instead of being like I have to

just like Escape because that's exactly what I want to do I don't want to be at home by myself on a Friday night it was about really like sitting with my thoughts and being like okay well actually the reason for this is I haven't done this in a really long time and I feel bad maybe I feel scared that I'm not going to get to do this again for a really long time mhm and maybe I'm Scared about the future where I'm never going to get this opportunity again and I'm feeling anxious and there was

so many different thoughts that went through in my head and then the next day I woke up and I went to a run club and oh my God I have never in my life felt that happy really I'm not joking for a long time I felt so bloody happy I don't know I literally went up went to this run Club I was so out of breath I like couldn't really run went to this run Club met the most amazing people and I and by the way I don't go out on Friday night and party a

lot so it wasn't un usual for me but you know I took that evening to rest and I actually felt well rested in such a long time and I felt like that massively increased my mood so you said that you weren't feeling that good initially on that night then you went and bought a nice dinner and stuff and then had a chilled evening but had a little bit of complication with it and The friend text you saying you want to go out yeah if she had text you before you went to get the food would

you have gone no no I already I know there was loads of international women's day I didn't want to go what was the craving for the night in what was creating the desire the thing is is that I feel like I'm always going to stuff these days and like I said I've always been someone who likes to spend time alone yet I'm so always with people so spending time Alone when someone's in the house is very different to being completely alone agreed this is what I always tell people is like if your parents are in

the house or your friends are in the house it's very different to like sit in your room and spend time alone but actually being alone with nobody there nobody to ask any you anything is a very different feeling and I almost wanted to challenge myself because I was like why am I not spending enough time alone also last Week it was raining a lot so I didn't go for my walks alone so I felt like I hadn't got any thoughts out like processing exactly it is almost like Pro the time alone is like time to

clean all that crap that buzz around in your head and like has to have its little moment to be thought about yeah I really think spending time on your own is really good for you I think it's ridiculously important like even within this addiction conversation but any Conversation that you like have a good relationship with that voice that's in your head like you have to be mates with that person and it's pretty easy to not be mates to kind of like in the choir actually hear like a bit of a [ __ ] like talking

to you telling you off etc etc or telling you you're not cool or not fan enough or whatever it might be this like voice comes in and with any relationship if you meet like a new partner and you're trying to like get Connected with them you have to spend a lot of time chatting with them in order for that bond to build and with ourselves like we don't really give that much time for the bond to build so then we don't build one and then it's like a really negative relationship one thing I would say

is when you're spending time on your own is the phone has to be gone because it's extremely confusing for your brain to observe other humans socializing while You're not and it creates this big like Envy jealousy experience within you and that doesn't mean no Tech like you sit watch a movie watch your favorite TV show on Netflix cook your dinner whatever it might be but if you sit there scrolling you'll just feel this like deep dissatisfaction with the fact you're on your own and yeah on your own I think it's good whether on the walks

or an evening in on your own when you're at home scrolling I mean I watched one Of your reals the other day when you were like stop scrolling while you're watching TV that is something that I do all the time yeah it is honestly shocking and the thing is is like when I'm like I said when I was up Friday at home by myself I was watching people I was on my phone I'm not going to lie I was on my phone I was scrolling as I probably when I made that video a part of

me was like why is it that I don't want to be at home by Myself right now now but if you pay me a million pounds to be at that place right now I don't want to go there I don't want to go and I was watching very weirdly how to be single and it was showing them on a party night out and I was like thank God I'm not out thank every time I'm out I always feel I wish I was at home every time very very few occasions in my life by the way

do I feel I'd rather be here it's interesting that thought because then you get into The thought of like does that mean I don't like socializing and every like you're an extrovert so I'm like what's wrong with me but I just think some like where we're seeking to experience that social connection shifts throughout our life like you for example said it was the happiest moment of your life when you're on that run that was socializing but maybe it's just you don't like what a night out is anymore and I've come to experience never I actually

moved out of London like last year cuz I just like wasn't super connected with like the nights out I was going on effectively I still spend like a good few days here a week but I think it's okay to just decide what you like and actually follow that path like I really enjoy like having new friends like at the gym and going for like hikes on the weekend and stuff and that might not be cool that all my friends are in London getting super pissed and that's maybe cooler However like the more you actually listen

like spend time with yourself and listen to what you really want and the more you do what you really want the happier you're going to become effectively and it's important the TV thing is interesting because the whole game plan of this whole addiction thing is try and stop destroying your dopamine system that's like what I'm the message that is trying to be shared here and earlier I explained those curves with With you those dopamine grass curves so you're hunting for an animal really slowly Rises 5 hours then it slowly falls back down not bad for

the dopamine at all actually the absolute Optimum for dopamin Tik Tok for example really quick Spike really quick crash because you open the app and like Tik Tok literally entertains you so F faster than any other app has ever done it that's why they're now like the fastest growing and now all of them had to clone it because They're just like jealous of basically how quick a dopy spite they're getting and these companies are super aware like they are having neuroscientists like myself working in these teams and figuring these open spikes out and the faster

it spikes the bigger the crash that's why like cocaine is worse for you than alcohol cuz cocaine will spike it faster than alcohol will for context alcohol would 2x your dopamine two times your dopamine in about 15 minutes Whereas cocaine would 2.5 times your dopamine within nine minutes so one goes up pretty quick and crashes one goes up really really quick and crashes and that's where like the extent of the negative impact of it is a bit stronger with the cocaine than the alcohol both and what's Tik Tok they don't have the numbers yet I

Lov give I I actually imagine like it's probably pretty similar to what cocaine does your brain I really think it will be but that that Study has yet to be done so but smaller know because when you open Tik Tok it tells you the notification like how many people have followed you how many people how many likes you got same with Instagram it's almost instant it's not actually the likes and follows that are doing the dopamine as much as the content itself no yeah what yeah okay explain that to me if I go on and

it says I've got a th likes compared to let's just say your real that comes up About don't watch TV while you're don't be on your phone while watching TV you're telling me that your content of telling me not to be on my phone my content is amazing just joking that is uh but you see what I mean if you follow good pages that are really good for your mental health and really good for understanding your patterns I'm not talking about you know watching one of those you know those things they're really satisfying Have you

watched them well yeah I've seen a lot of satisfying typ yeah or like you know like a burger being made you're telling me that the content is more addictive than actually likes and followers on the sh I also experien that follower and likes and Views don't for me an addiction for sure I have to really manage it myself like I have to have rules where I post at 300 p.m. that's like the time of which day I post and then I'm not allowed to then look at Instagram until I've cleaned up my dinner that's like

my rule so don't get a spike like don't get I do get a spike but it's the frequency of the hits is actually worse than just like one moment effectively so if I check it all afternoon whilst I'm trying to do my work and [ __ ] it's going to completely screw my dop me and if I've checked it before I goes to the gym everything's just lowered open me lowered open me so it's better for me to just like do a Load of hard stuff get my dop me nice and high and then deal

with either like it's going to elevate more or you get that disappointment feeling when a piece of content doesn't do well which is very annoying yeah all time inevitable very normal Everyone by the way very normal the important thing to understand though with that is obviously only a small percentage are posting and seeking for thousands of likes the majority of people engaging with social media aren't Posting content they're simply consuming it they're not going on Instagram because they're checking whether they've got followers or like they might be checking for DMS if like someone they fancies

messag them that's quite like a dopam type thing however the majority is just the stimulation of the videos themselves like Tik Tok for example didn't do a better job of showing you your likes and followers than Instagram they did a better job of showing you Stimulating content than Instagram and they became the one that people spend the majority of their time on that's simply because our dopamine seeks for high stimulation loads of novelty lots of excitement color realism all that kind of stuff and that Tik Tok feed is just slightly more of that than the

Instagram feed fascinating okay so we're going back we we've digressed sorry we're on the TV thing we're on the TV thing tell me so let's say you open Tik Tok within 10 seconds you're like f it's quite good this is quite stimulating and you start your scroll if you click play on a TV show on Netflix it is going to take at least probably five minutes until you're entertained and then you're going to have to remain very focused on it to receive Joy from that TV show and you'll notice if you watch TV show with

your phone in your hand and you don't have deep focus on one of them you don't even enjoy it at all really the TV show And again that's coming back to that flow State thing the brain just wants to be focused on one thing at a time so if you watch TV really doesn't damage our dopamine system that badly and this is hilarious because what I'm in schools all the time and like kids don't watch TV anymore that's not what they do at their time they only scroll Tik Tok like in some of our testing

processes we're seeing average daily screen times of 15 hours a day in kids 50 and like like Yours might be five or seven or whatever it might maybe less I should look at mine shouldn't I but they're spending a lot of time on these phones and now I'm in schools as part of some of our teaching literally trying to convince kids to watch more TV and if you went back 20 years that would be seen as like the worst piece of advice the neuroscientists could give is like kids watch more TV but comparatively to Tik

Tok based on the dopamine Spike and Crash TV still not nowhere near as good as any kind of healthy Behavior but it's still a hell of a lot better than Tik Tok it's like having a lower alcohol beer than having a strong alcohol beer effectively that is so interesting because I think a lot of parents will say you either have TV time or screen time you know screen time is all in one either TV or iPad or laptop or whatever they very different all all screen engagements are very different people Are perceiving that like oh

Tech is bad for dopamine Tech is by no means bad for dopamine if you sat on your computer and you were doing some kind of creative building of like presentation or you were coding something or even if you were gaming and it was a very challenging game that you were playing if any effort was engaged within that engagement with the computer then it would be building dopamine not crashing it because your brain is just rewarding Effort that's all it's trying to do is reward effort and then try and negatively reinforce don't do quick stuff so

if you look at say like a kid's playing on an iPad and that's scen is really bad if that kid was playing like some kind of strategy game on that iPad that wouldn't be that bad for their brain of course it'd be better if they're running around in nature with their friends it's not like you can even compare it to something like that but if They're on that compared to if they're playing Candy Crush which is like that the biggest like success app of all time is Candy Crush in terms of games the reason it's

so successful is because it's so so easy like it even draws the line for it's literally like a game for toddlers but adults play it it draws the line for you put it you click it and then loads of colors burst and it's so basic so then it's spiking the dopamine and crashing out and I see it on the Tubes all the time people sitting there playing those a Candy Crash and you would think of that as such a harmless Behavior that's not going to do anything negative to my brain but it is you'll then

get on the train on the way home you think I feel kind of flat and you're worried about your work or your relationship and it's not your work of your relationship it's low dopamine levels that's occurring because of the engagement and all you're doing is just Pacifying it you're just giving yourself a pacifier by playing it constantly 100% And then when you start letting go of these babies I was hooked on all this [ __ ] so it's not like I come from a place of judgment with it like I was worse than probably the

majority of people that will be listening to this podcast but it's like that's why when I came away from it and started experiencing what it's like to feel really good I was like [ __ ] people need To know this like it's so nice feeling really good and feeling really happy and I think so many people don't necessarily even know what feeling really good feels like anymore because we've got all these subtle behaviors in our life that we don't even realize it impacting us then you start stepping away [ __ ] feel quite good you

told me earlier that the first step making sure you identify the negative behavior observe the negative that it's creating observe the negative Second was start going on walks and actually like spending some time having that conversation with yourself preferably in nature yeah in nature the third was giving yourself that abstinence mhm and then the fourth was so the fourth is going to be talking to someone about these experiences that you're having for me my whole family are addicted to everything we've all been through this journey so like and there is genetic Predispositions to these things

there's even this thing called the A1 variant of the drd2 gene which people don't necessarily need to remember but if you have this Gene you're more predisposed to finding things super addictive you basically have slightly lower levels of dopamine within your brain naturally so anything that's going to give you a dopamine hit is going to give you a really big high so things like vaping or sugar up on anything is going to feel Extra good everyone it feels good everyone but these things are going to feel extra good oh wow and then some people are

really non-addictive like some people just like no I don't really care about any of that stuff and they've got naturally really high dopamine anyway so they're not getting that big a buzz off things because they're like yeah it's all right I feel pretty good anyway my family and I all super Hooks and everything we've all been through Journeys with alcohol all that kind of stuff and for me and my brother and sister who have all been through this process of trying to get off this stuff having each other to talk to about it has been

really useful because we've been able to actually have a discussion around these are the benefits I'm experience ing as a result of not engaging the with the behavior and it starts to then affirm these feelings because it's really really difficult to Quit an addiction and you need to build a ridiculously strong powerful force within you that wants that so whether it is observing the negatives or you're going out on the walks and building that conversation with yourself you're having the abstinence you really learn what the positive actually feels like and then you're having conversations you're

then really affirming right this is a change I want to make MH then if I was going to the fifth step it would be you have to To find your Flow State activity this is the final step and if I didn't find Flow State in aspects of my work which I've discovered like Niche things I discovered that I absolutely love designing slides on canva which is super Niche always thought I was [ __ ] at Art my whole life discovered that I absolutely love that activity and I would happily do that on a Saturday morning

for fun effectively I would see that as pure joy designing things Visually and you're hired the yeah I'm to get a job the uh reason I share that it's so Niche is that it means you have to really experiment and find something that you really enjoy You're simply looking for something where you it makes you lose track of time that's the easiest thing but if you find something that builds dopamine naturally and your dopamine starts Rising just like I was explaining there how some people are more prone to addiction because they got Low dopamine less

prone because they got high dopamine if overall your dopam levels are much higher then it suddenly becomes like okay your brain and body wants it a lot less there's a good thing I can give an example of that how that relates if you look at nutrition for example one of the greatest difficulties we're all having is craving all the crappy processed food it's really challenging and I've had this there's also another addiction I've obviously Been in McDonald's all that crap and for ages I tried to constantly tell myself nope you're not allowed this you not

allow that no crisp no chocolate and it was just like well that's not achieving much like you eventually go to supermarket you think a so somehow you have to actually get rid of the craving itself you have to try and make that once less and I moved on to a diet whereby I had this framework in my head of I'm only going to try and eat foods That Earth can produce itself and not foods that humans have produced and like that means you're basically cut down to just like meat fish fruit veg Dairy eggs and

I was like I'll just try it see if it makes feel good I enjoy experimenting and I was doing that I wasn't even really thinking about the processed food thing I just heard those Foods were good for you and I was like okay maybe I'll just see what happens if I eat them ate them for like two or three months really Went hard down that path and then I suddenly observed I suddenly realized like [ __ ] I'm not craving any of the crap anymore and it's because you're so densely saturated in all the nutrients

that you need that the body is no longer actually looking elsewhere for anything else it's like oh I don't actually want it anymore because I've got everything I need whereas the majority of society isn't eating enough of the good food so the body is sitting there low on Resources and then it's like where's a quick thing that could get satisfy this feeling and urge within me whether it's food in that sense that essenti goes into things like serotonin when you're looking at addiction if the dopamine desire within you is satisfied from your Flow State activities

because you're getting really immersed in something you're having a great career or sport or art or hobby or whatever it is that you're getting better at suddenly the Actual urge to want the things begins to reduce and reduce wow that is so fascinating so find something that you love that you can be in a flow state in and naturally your body will just get the dop from that and therefore no longer need it from things like your phone or porn or whatever it is if you look at people in our world that have been really

big addicts that then have built careers out of sharing that message Russ Brown for example is an Interesting case because he was like an extreme addict two HS and all this stuff and nowadays he's not an addict but he's still putting a huge amount of effort into his life and making videos and all that kind of stuff and you can see like when I observe that path whether you agree with Russell brown or not I'm only describing him as just like an observation of someone managing dopamine he's effectively transferred that addiction of all that crap

into an Addiction to making videos and sharing a message but he's still he's now receiving so much Flow State from that that it'll be keeping the addiction at Bay and if you said to Russell BR suddenly like no career's over you can't do that it'd be very likely that his brain be like holy [ __ ] I'm going to I I could go backwards I could turn towards that stuff because it's craving dopamine loads of people in our world like they get really into an addiction and then Suddenly they let go of the addiction they

get very very good at something else and it's because those that are addicts are craving dopamine hard if you start getting a good natural source of it you actually have a predisposition to get really really [ __ ] good at that thing because you're like your brain is wanting loads of dopamine like if for example hunter gatherers this is pretty interesting with something like ADHD mhm ADHD is low dopamine levels that's what Creates ADHD in the brain it makes you inattentive and hyperactive and all that kind of stuff and you either can be genetically predisposed

to low dopamine which something like I've experienced for example and lots of people can or you can behaviorally screw up your dopamine and end up with low dopamine levels if you took a hunted gatherer with ADHD so they're born for some reason they've got low dopamine levels just happen in their process of genetics They were born low dopamine levels they're going to then grow up and the group's going to say right you got to get there and hunt and build build and find shelter and all that sort of stuff that person is not going to

be worse than everyone else they're going to end up better because they're going to experience bigger dopamine hits than anyone else in the groups they're going to put more effort in they're going to be really high performing effectively And that's why there is actually such a correlation between High performing people and addicts because like addicts want loads of dopamine and they also can get it from something that's high performing in their life so finding that flow State thing is what's gonna eventually begin to reduce the addiction if dopamine is linked so much to ADHD yes

is that why people are saying that everyone has ADHD now yeah it's fascinating to me this Because man making ADHD for every human on the planet because we're all addicted 100% by 2030 whole world diagnosis of ADHD I really believe I really believe 100% of people will pass an ADHD test and that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone actually has ADHD but we designed an ADHD test over the last 50 to 100 years that was designed to effectively duu someone that has low dopamine because humans PR we were genetically predis disposed to have that However now

you wake up in the morning you think everyone's online is talking about the fact they've got ADHD so I'll probably go for one of those ADHD tests before I go I'll have a nice sugary breakfast and scroll Tik Tok all morning crash it over me now and then head off for your test and then you turn up for the test you got really low do me and you've got ADHD and that is what we're doing in our modern world and then this dopamine thing like humans are only Getting better at artificially stimulating dopamine like once

upon a time we created the cigarette now we have like a sugary Vape that you can have 100% of the time and it tastes way nicer and it's cheaper that's a progress not good progress but it's progress in terms of artificial dopamine and if you take something like this New Vision Pro headset these Apple headsets they've begun creating if you think it's stimulating scrolling one Tik Tok feed Imagine scrolling five at the same time and that's what's coming like in these Virtual Worlds so it's really important like to get this stuff under wraps like you

have to start figuring out okay some of this dop [ __ ] is screwing me up I need to start figuring out health dopamine observing the negative dopamine getting familiar with how I'm actually feeling so by the flow today what are some healthy sources of dopamine because if I'm somebody who wants to quit an Addiction today yeah how the hell do I start nice so going to start at the beginning of the day okay so you wake up in the morning you've listened to this podcast and you're like okay tomorrow morning I'm going to do

something this is my final day of addiction tomorrow morning is when I begin you wake up in the morning and you think [ __ ] I want my vapor I want my social media or whatever it may be and you're going to go oh no I listen fun and TJ and they were chatting About this I'm just going to try this for one day and only stay on the day you're on don't think ahead don't think like oh but what am I going to feel like in a week Irrelevant for now okay stay on the

day you're on you wake up in the morning and you're going to immediately just force your way out of bed no matter how hard it is you're just going to get out of the bed okay and you're going to walk to the bathroom and you're going to immediately start brushing your teeth Before you do anything you might be in a really doy State you're just going to start brushing your teeth because at least your brain is having to engage effort and Doan is then on the climb and that's very different to what it's been on

for the last five or 10 years when you've woken up and gone on social media every single day and that's likely what most people do again no judgment for it I did it too so you wake up you go and start brushing your teeth and you're Gradually waking up after you brush your teeth you're going to put a fair bit of cold water on your face cold water is something that's really stimulating for this doping system and that's why like cold showers and stuff is such a big trend for example I want to talk about

ice baths as well but yeah continue with this dream day so you brush teeth cold water on your face go to the bathroom come back now you got to make your bed okay all of these activities are simply Beginning the path of dopamine being on the rise and the more you get your dopamine High the less you're going to Crave the crap that's exactly what happens that's why people get so into these like Health crazes and they're suddenly like really healthy person because their brain's like addicted to the healthier dopamine instead of the unhealthy once

you made your bed got to get sunlight that's going to be like your main main thing so wake up brush Teeth cold water make your bed and then go outside whether it's cloudy or sunny doesn't matter they're both going to build dopamine if it is sunny you want to try and look towards the Sun obv don't actually hurt your eyes but the sun in the morning evolutionarily is designed to create tons of dop in our brain so hunt gather was really motivated for their day like all these systems were just being designed like that the

question what if you up early Like I do and it's dark what do I do so you do those other activities those are fine I'm do my work is that what you typically do do your work so I always have this thing in my mind because sometimes I wake up when it's dark especially in the winter months I have this thing in my head where I start saying straight to Flow State straight to Flow State I repeat this sentence to myself in my mind CU it's very tempting to be like oh I just like lie

and watch My iPad and watch some YouTube for a bit or like I'll just bit of time on social media yeah yeah always but then it's like boom do me destroyed and then like getting yourself into a productive work state or whatever it may be is going to be really difficult and where you think oh but oh there's all that joy in watching YouTube or something when I wake up real Joy is going to come when you finish that task that you know you need to do that's what's going to really Satisfy the feeling you're

seeking for so if you wake up done those little things and it's still dark outside you could go in some kind of work task and I've actually had this thing where I'm like but you have to start work at 9:00 like we have all these Frameworks in our head of when work can start and like oh it's not 9: yet so I may as well set my phone until 9: but I'll just be like if I'm up and I'm awake and at 7: a.m. for some reason my brain's woken up earlier Then I'll just sit

down on my computer and do like 30 to 40 minutes of a task once I've done a number of challenging things then I am allowed to engage in some kind of pleasure but if if you've had doping way on the climb it can then cope with a bit of a crash but if you start with a crash you're then having a nightmare trying to get anywhere near the behaviors that will climb you back out of it so I would say simply focusing on your mornings is the key few hard Things when you wake up brushing

teeth cold water making your bed if you can get sunlight if you if it is sunny come back when you come back from the sunlight don't go into social media go into your work do some work and then eventually go to have some time on your phone and the kind of framework I work with is I really like my morning coffee it's one of the greatest things in my life to be honest and I tell myself like that I have to earn that coffee got it Rather than just being allowed it for just like waking

up and watching YouTube so once I feel like I've done a decent amount of work I'm then allowed to like sit down can have a coffee I can check my phone and stuff like that and it is difficult to do these things at first but all you have to do is try it and then you'll think [ __ ] I actually feel really good and then as soon as you start feeling really good drive then you're grow like when I talked about Adding wood to the fire of like the desire to change that's how you

do it you start feeding the experience of feeling good for change so powerful I mean the thing that you just said around the dopamine hit and the crash and kind of how you start your day like that and then it's going to continue like that is so alarming to me because one of the best things I've learned in this podcast is like your screen isn't bad I automatically thought if I wake up and I Go on my laptop I'm doing a bad thing anyway so I might as well scroll social media interesting yeah and the

TV thing actually I saw your real and you said this is my nighttime routine and you're watching TV and I actually went into the comments to see people being like Oh my God I thought TV's really bad for you I thought TV was really bad for you the thing is it's not that it's good for you by any means like but it's not the same as social media not the same as social Media and it was interesting when I made that video because that was a nighttime routine and like I'm obviously in control of what

I put in these videos and I could so easily have gone like I'm a neuroscientist I get in bed do some deep breaths and fall straight to sleep in a second do some reading and that would yeah do some reading but then like I just don't feel like it's useful to not give full honesty and transparency and I was someone that lay in bed every Single night since I was about 10 years old scrolling my phone and in order to get that to a place where I fall asleep quicker I did transfer it to an

iPad and then I now sit and I watch something and whilst it would be better to read in bed 100% I'm just not going to do that every night and you have to be realistic with yourself and it's like in our modern world there's so much addictive stuff that we're trying to manage and sometimes you have to make a trade-off Of like what is worse effectively and I find if you have like say for example in bed like how I explain like the porn destroys the dopamine before you sleep and you wake up feeling much

flatter exactly the same if you scroll Tik Tok till you go to sleep like porn and Tik Tok identical with all of these behaviors if you put someone in a brain scanner and they sniff cocaine or they drink alcohol or they scroll Tik Tok or they smoke a cigarette you wouldn't be Able to tell in the brain scan of which one is which they would all do the exact same thing to the brain it's just some would be slightly different variations of how high it takes you and that's also based on how much you personally

enjoy the experience of them so it'd be very what unique so if if I you put my brain next to somebody who did cocaine and did somebody next to somebody who did heroin well heroin is very strong F cocaine Tik to alcohol porn Nic can't tell the Difference can't tell the difference especially because each person has a unique level of dopamine Spike depending on how much they enjoy it and you lie in bed and you think the average person might be like like having like a sugary pudding and then getting into bed scrolling Tik Tok

maybe watching some porn and having a few hits of their Vape before they go to sleep then they wake up and they feel like [ __ ] and like I can't be [ __ ] at work and I feel Really tired and Life's a bit [ __ ] depressing or it's raining outside blah blah blah blah but it's really just your behavior that's creating that feeling in you it's not real thoughts that's the big thing to understand that it's not real thoughts that are occurring it's the behavior and if you can like have a decent

dinner and then have like yogurt and fruit and honey something that's still giving you sugar Cravings but it's like healthy sources of sugar so it's Not artificially spiking it as much and then yeah you might go on your phone a little bit in the evening text people watch a little bit of social media I always try and think of like going on social media is like a maximum of a 20 minute window that's about the max the brain can possibly deal with without a big crash so like go on Hammer your videos or whatever you

need to do for 20 minutes again obviously it's great to not do these things but it's better to Be realistic and then much better off in the evening then just watching TV and like phone has to be out the room if you have people you live with and like Partners or housemates or whatever they also really need to get on board with this sort of stuff because there's this thing in our brain called anticipatory dopamine which is basically if you've ever say like walk past a pub seeing people having glass of wine and thought [

__ ] I want a glass of wine it almost Excites you the thought of it your brain basically experiences a rise of dopamine without even having the behavior just at the anticipation of the thought of the behavior and that's the same as like you're sitting in a restaurant with your partner they get out their phone and before you know it your phone's in your hand and it's because the brain has seen the dopamine rise within them and it's suddenly like [ __ ] I want that rise as well so if you're trying to get off

Addictive stuff you can't have the other person engaging with it because the Temptation is going to be too great so you both watch TV in the evening put your phones away not one of you doesn't nail a tub of Ben and Jerry's while the other one eats their shitty Greek yogurt you both got to have your shitty Greek yogurt and just enjoy it learn to enjoy it and then you get in bed and if you can put some Netflix on low really low brightness is important based on all That melatonin and stuff and how our

brain works and then just lie there and watch it and at least your brain will progressively reduce in stimulation whereas we're lying there and most of us almost try and Max stimulation out so much to the point where our brain forces itself to turn off like so much Social right I'm going to go to sleep now like kids for example like literally they Tick Tock themselves to sleep where they lie there just keep doing it until the Brain turns off because it's that exhausted like a car running out of petrol effectively whereas if you can

just lie there put something fairly chilled out on Netflix or listen to a podcast or music whatever it might be all these like subtle shifts are going to create massive differences in how you wake up and then you wake up and that routine that I suggested you do is much more achievable because you wake up with a little bit of dopamine in your brain So you're like oh okay I'm going to give this a try I'm going to brush my teeth and splash cold water my face and make my bed and go outside for a

little bit of sunlight and you do these things dopam me Rises and Rises and then once you're in this high do me State you start thinking [ __ ] I feel amazing and then you're like maybe I don't want as much of that native stuff you know what this has really scared me because you know what I do I hate brushing my teeth And I hate taking my makeup off by the way I hate doing it I hate taking my makeup off do you yeah a nightmare of a task I hate it as in like

I really really really if I didn't have to do it I wouldn't I didn't for years by the way until I realized that like okay I'm going to like clog my Paws Up and my teeth I have like 15,000 fillings mhm I watch Tik Tok while I'm doing those two things as a no as then I say it to myself every Day okay come on it's time to brush your teeth and take your makeup off you reward yourself with openly say this to myself like and so you brush your teeth whilst doing that every time

it's the only way I'll do it and how did you do it with makeup I then I put it on the thing and then and I'll watch a talking video Splash my face with cold water this where this is interesting three and a half minutes cuz you Tik Tok is now YouTube so this is where the whole TV Versus phone theme becomes interesting if you are scrolling to Tik Tok and you choose to watch one of those long videos that's way better for you oh thank God I only watch I only watch long videos by

continuing to scrub uh I only watch because again it's all about the spike of the dopamine so if you watch a slow video obviously these people that make these videos are really good at a good hook which spikes dop that whole concept of a hook is a dopamine Spike that's why We're trying to create hooks we're trying to spike the other person's dopamine in like curiosity and Novelty and oh yeah that's all a hook is just a dopamine Spike [ __ ] [ __ ] let's all make loads of Good Hugs that's a nightmare so

we're all part of the system we are I'm part of the system I'm literally tried to create good hooks about addiction put a good hook now that was a good hook that was a good hook and uh yeah so if you're watching longer videos that would Be good if you take that a little bit further it'd be so much better to sit and like put an iPad there and watch a YouTube podcast for example because it's slower pleasure you want slow pleasure not quick pleasure that's the whole goal and that's why like exercise or anything

work or anything they give you the most satisfaction because they're the slowest form of pleasure you don't start doing a task [ __ ] I feel amazing now it's when you nearly finish it that you feel good So true and uh yeah when you're doing your makeup you're brushing your teeth I think that abstinence rule could occasionally be good maybe just with the teeth and not with the makeup yeah so with the teeth you could try just the peace and quiet and use it as like some I'll chat to myself relationship building time just my

grateful thoughts like celebra an achievement or something yeah yeah that's a good one yeah same things you're grateful for at the end of The day or like you said watch a 10-minute podcast yeah that kind of thing good idea the Gratitude stuff is really important because when I was out there on those quiet walks and I was hearing all this negative [ __ ] it was so annoying but I was like I'm committed like I I'm am fairly good at like once I commit to trying something I'll be like at least give it a go

and I was committed to the party lifestyle for example so what choice did I have but When I committed to those quiet walks I rediscovered what the whole reason is that we do that whole gratitude thing it's just because like I was in this deep state of comparison constantly thinking about what I didn't have I don't have enough money or not good-looking enough or I don't have good enough like friends or home or career whatever it may be and where comparison is constantly thinking about what you don't have gratitude is thinking about What you do

and I was suddenly like oh no I've got these things and these things and these things and it makes that voice in your head much more like positive and a nicer experience so if you're going to do some quiet time maybe try going sleep in the silence or you brush your teeth in silence whatever it may be grateful thoughts are a very good way to make that a lot more peaceful sleeping silence is something I can't do by the way I really really struggle with It I have to podcast I put it on a sleep

timer though but I always listen to something nice before I go to bed because otherwise it's chaos but one thing I do want to ask is let's talk about some quick wins people can do so you can quickly scroll Tik Tok and it will give you a dopamine hit but there are some quick things you can do that will give you a dopamine hit that are good for you y like an ice bath y talk to me about ice baths the benefits of Them why we should do them and also how the hell we do

them because I can't imagine myself getting into a cold freezing ice cube the Ice Bar is an interesting one because an additional component of how dopamine operates there's this lady called Dr Anna lmy in at Stanford University in America and she invented something called the pleasure pain balance and if you imagine a seesaw effectively when dopamine was developing in our brain it was developed In an area called the hypothalamus it's like deep in the center and hypothalamus is is the area of the brain where we can experience pleasure feel good feel Joy and so on

and then also feel pain and not feel good and these two experiences operate on a sea so say the hunt gatherers do something that's quote unquote painful like they're surviving outside in the cold or they're putting a lot of effort into building shelter hunting animal chasing an animal they're Doing painful things the Seesaw was tipping and giving them a pleasurable response in their brain to make them feel really good to reinforc the behavior so we continued to do it the difficulty in the modern world is we've created loads of high pleasure stuff vaping social media

Tik Tok porn Etc and it's tipping the Seesaw back the other way cuz just like it was trying to reinforce the positive behaviors the sea operates the other way and it tries to Tell us no these going to make make you feel [ __ ] that's what hangover is or that's what withdraw is from a vape or whatever it might be it's this pleasure paining balance seesaw the funniest thing about this cold bar thing it's like boomed across the world it's like such a thing is it is pure pain it's pure horribleness and it tips

the Seesaw back the other way effectively into that pain and then a huge pleasure Spike increases to give you context of how big I told you earlier that alcohol can two times the dopamine cocaine can 2.5 times the dopamine cold water is the immersion is the only thing they found that can also 2.5 times the dopamine the same as what cocaine can do and rather than a 9 Minute Spike and crash they can see Rises for about 2 and a half hours there's this great scientist called shamic who's discovered these things and he actually discovered

them a number of years ago in the early 2000s and Effectively something like cold water immersion is just going to give a [ __ ] ton of dopamine and you see exactly that because people start getting addicted to it they're like oh now I'm the cold water guy and I go every day and I'm going to post on the internet about it and all this sort of stuff the reason that happens because brain's like holy [ __ ] so doping reinforcement survival all that kind of stuff and then suddenly they want to do it all

the time so yeah If you can have a cold shower or anything like that it's good for you you know posting on the internet some people find like oh I don't know why you're posting about it all day on the internet I mean if it makes you do something and you stick to it post away yeah for you know like if I story yeah because it gives you accountability I mean when I go to a gym class there's a class that I do called at B Exile called climb I don't know if you've ever done

it before It's basically a stair Master for minutes I always post before I go into that class because every single time I'm in the class I want to leave and I'm too embarrassed to leave and because I know that I'll then have to tell my followers I left the class and I don't want to encourage people to go into a gym class and leave so now I've just got into this habit of every time I go into the class just post that you're going into the class because then if I do leave I know That

I'm accountable to my followers on saying that I left that class and I don't want to be that person that's like hey guys I'm leaving every week at 30 minutes because I hate this class every time I do it it always makes me be more accountable so if you're one of those people that's wanting to be vegan or wanting to eat less sugary Foods or wanting to go on an ice bath or wanting to go on a run every day at 5:00 a.m. and you're scared to post cuz people are Going to judge you I

don't care post it if it's going to make you do it because you're trying to make yourself better as a person I think we need to like stop judging people for doing that agreed and also just stop like worrying about so much about what other people might think of you posting that thing like it's so easy to get in your head about oh what people going to think of the fact I've posted about going to my stair master or whatever it may be but and that's Something I've navigated as I'm sure you have with posting

content online but you come to discover that like everyone's just in their own heads caring about their own life they don't really give a [ __ ] about like anyone else except themsel and that's not mean like it's just reality like we're all very immersed in our own life like we do a lot of like social anxiety training with young people for example helping them build their confidence and so much when You're in social situations we can experience that like Spotlight anxiety where we feel like everyone around us is judging what we look like or

what we're saying or whatever it might be but everyone has that mechanism we're all too busy worrying about oursel to even analyze anyone else and it's the same with like posting on social media everyone's in their own world so if like something's going to make you feel accountable it's going to make you feel Good posting it put it on the internet I agree there's a lot of parents at the moment that are struggling with their kids in terms of addiction and they're really worried that their kids are going to be addicted or stay addicted yeah

what advice do you give to them 100% the most important thing is that Flow State activity in their life it's the only way to solve it I started the podcast talking about how golf was a real help for me and from the ages of Like 10 to 13 whilst they got into this addictive stuff the only time I was away from it is because I got really keen on like I want to be a professional golfer and managed to like Channel some of that addiction into it and if a kid after school doesn't have like

some kind of activity they're trying to get better at like they go for music lessons or they do some art at home or they play football or they do coding on their computer they do something that they're Trying to get better at at then inevitably it's going to be like well I'm not doing anything so I may as well scroll Tik Tok and unless there's something that's going to replace the Tik Tok they're just not going to change and the important thing for parents to understand about young people is we're all addicted to [ __

] they're a whole another level because their brain is so much more malleable and they've grown up inside Tik Tok for example like Co it Was just like 10 hours of Tik Tok a day for three years so their brain is so addicted to really high dopamine level stimulation so if a parent is like just don't go on your phone this evening and play a board game with us as a family like that's so sweet of that parent cuz I know they have their best intentions but that that board game is going to be so

boring to that kid that they're going to resent you for even suggesting it the only way you're going to get them off The Addictive stuff is if something also stimulates their dopamine to a similar extent to what the Tik Tok is providing so taking them to the Sea and getting them to jump in the cold ocean that is going to give them a huge dopamine here taking them to a climbing wall and getting them to climb up a climbing wall huge dopam head sport music but unless they have something that they're going to get laser

focused on getting better at that is stimulating to them there's No way they can navigate the addictions themselves so that would be my number one piece of advice and what about for an adult because if you're an adult and you're listening to this right now you know one of the buzzword that's going around is how do I find my passion how do I find what I'm good at TJ how do I find my flow state if I'm somebody who's sitting at home and doesn't know what they're good at so you don't necessarily have to be

good at the thing that's one Thing you only have to just like potentially find it intriguing or interesting or potentially enjoyable to you it's really important to understand you don't have to be good at it it's one of the real difficulties we have now is like oh okay I'm going to learn to draw and then you get a pen and a piece of paper think well I'm [ __ ] at drawing compared to those people on Tik Tok so that's not my thing so I'm not going to do that one and then you try another

one Oh I'm [ __ ] at this one anytime you start something that's new you're shy at it I just described earlier that I like designing canvas slides they look decent now if I do say so myself they did not a few years ago when I discovered I enjoyed doing that so first thing is understanding you might be [ __ ] at first the next thing is I got asked this really interesting question the other day I was in Switzerland delivering this ADHD Theory and I was talking about kids Finding their passions and stuff like

that how important that is I call it finding their talent and this teacher said I do talk to these kids about it but all they say is the only thing they enjoy is scrolling social media so like how am I going to figure out what they do like when we're scrolling social media there are certain videos that we really enjoy watching we might really enjoy watching cooking videos or videos where people draw or sing or play music Or dance or clean their house or play sport when you're scrolling social media observe as closely as you

can what the main content is that you're enjoying watching because it's very likely that that thing is something that you actually instinctively are potentially good at and could get good at and I really believe that all humans have the capacity to create we all have this like desire within us to create in some way whether it's like within a sports team Or whether it's within art or music or whatever it might be but with that urge it's getting moderately Satisfied by the fact we're scrolling social media so we're not even trying whereas if there was

no social media we'd all get so bored that we'd be like oh that thing with in me that wants to knit a sweater or do this sport we would go and do it but because we're scrolling on social media we're like n can't really be bothered because I'm at least observing Someone else doing it so whilst you scroll social media really tune in what's most enjoyable and like I for example when I was younger used to love watching people make videos I always thought like that's so sick when people make cool videos out of Nature

and I just never thought maybe I could do that and like four months ago I bought a camera cuz I wanted to actually get like a bit better into the content and discovered that I [ __ ] love being in Nature taking videos but I never realized that I was watching it because I could do it I just thought it was cool that they did it so if you get really in tune with what you're SC on social media figure out what you like and then start testing those things and doing them yourself that's where

your Flow State and passion lies that is the best piece of advice I think I've ever heard that is honestly amazing I was just thinking while they was telling me and I realized That recently I've been constantly commenting on people who edit their videos well nice and I'm obsessed with their way they edit like your video one of the best ones I saw I was actually really horrible this morning because I was watching it whilst I was in my pajamas scrolling your bloody Tik Tok or your Instagram and it came up with a video and

was split screen and the first one was like if you start your day scrolling and you're laying in bed and And you keep scrolling I was like for [ __ ] sake I've been doing this for the last hour because I woke up and I was feeling ill today and um it was a split screen and one was like you get up and you like do all these amazing things and the other one was that you sit there and you keep scrolling I scrolled from your one into the next one and then I was like

I've got enough questions for him today and I scrolled into another one and I looked at my phone I was like That's exactly what you're doing and I was just like the edit was so good and then I commented on someone's video going oh my God this edit is amazing yeah so maybe some of your FL lies in editing it does and I would say I hate editing by the way I hate editing I love the output of editing and I'm always so proud when I've edited a video that's very creative I'm very proud of

myself when I've done it and sometimes like things that good for you they're not Necessarily always fun they might be eort like it wasn't necessarily really fun to run through a forest for 4 hours to get an animal but it was fun once we had the animal yeah and it makes me feel proud it actually always makes me if I think about now all the times I felt very proud of my content is when I've edited it very well there you go and then that means that's a really important activity for you to solve addiction

because if you not necessarily You are addicted to things but like most of us you probably are and if you have this activity that is providing this really good natural high stimulation of your dopamine system then you got high dop me you're not going to Crave the crap as much when we're in low DOP mean that We crave lots of crap and uh just that final Point like say for example when you're already hung over the addictions are the hardest things to manage The Hangover is when it's like All the Uber Eats watch some porn

smoke my VAP all day eat my Uber Eats the reason it's so hard is because the alcohol has put you into low dopamine so then you're craving this like trying to get out of it you're trying to climb out of low dopamine so with that say you're doing lots of editing you're getting yourself into this really nice high dopamine State your brain's going to be like hm don't really need the Vape or the social media or the porn or the Sugar whatever it might be that someone's addicted to wow so tune in to what you're

enjoy most on social media and try and get good at of yourself honestly amazing I love that advice before we close I just want to ask you what's one thing that everyone can do today to increase their dopamine that is accessible for everyone wake up tomorrow morning and splash C water on yourself on your face make your bed and go out in sunlight and look towards the sun no Phone involved before until you've got back you have to have in your head sunlight before social media that's the sentence I have to see sunlight before I'm

allowed to see social media then it at least sets St me on the right path for the rest of the day and what will that do if I do that for two weeks change your life if you did that every day for two weeks can you imagine imagine you spend 10 you just have so much drive really that's what do mean is Here to do give us drive and like anything in life that you want whether you want a really good relationship you need to put effort into that or you want to eat really healthily

you want to be someone that goes to the gym you want to do great in your career the only thing that's going to make all those things happen is if you have drive and waking up every scrolling your social media is killing all of your drives so you're just moderately sat satisfying all these Things that you want whereas if you woke up every morning didn't go on social media brush your teeth made your bed go outside sunlight then social media you suddenly have a [ __ ] ton of drive and you suddenly think [ __

] I'm in the pursuit of all these things and I've experienced this like I was lazy and addicted and now like I have been fortunate over the last few years to experience like a big shift in like my life and career and relationships it's Only happened because I got dopamine in check this is amazing I feel like let's do it together everyone from the moment you listen to this podcast whenever it is from tomorrow for 2 weeks cut social media out in the morning get sunshine and let's see what happens let's do a live experiment

like comment on this post back in two weeks and tell us what's changed and let's hopefully hope that it completely changes your life spread need it it will happen if you do That for two weeks your life will be different I get these messages all the time on Instagram from tomorrow it works it really does work just do it if in two weeks you think M I feel absolutely [ __ ] go back scrolling your social media every morning but I literally believe 100% of people it will feel phenomenal I feel like there's been so

many moments in this podcast where my mouth has been like because I'm so in shock at how simple some of these things are and I Think they are simple because if you think about what we're addicted to they're also very simple we're addicted to such small activities that we think are so hard to change but actually we can do it and we can do it by making small changes we can do it by listening to podcasts like these and learning from you and I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and

sharing all of this wisdom with me thank you for having me thank you