Dr. Alok Kanojia
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
If you think about something like, you know, childbirth, like childbirth is not a dopaminergic activity, but it makes people hopefully feel pretty good about themselves unless there is a serotonin problem, in which case you enter the realm of postpartum depression and things like that. Right. So even there, it kind of makes sense.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So we have to understand that serotonin and dopamine are kind of like inversely related, where the more that you do things that are serotonergic and make you feel good about yourself, like make you feel accomplished, make you feel content, are actually not dopaminergic. They're the opposite. So when you work really hard and you feel good about that, that's actually not a dopaminergic release.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
It can be some dopamine, but it's serotonin. So I think a lot of times what happens is people are so focused on optimizing their dopamine that they ignore the real source of peace and contentment and even a sense of accomplishment in life.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And if it's both, what are some of the most common examples? How do we think about enhancing or optimizing our serotonin? So let's just think about this, okay? So the first thing is that the more dopamine we engage, okay? So when I do a lot of dopaminergic activities, what that literally does is strengthen the dopaminergic circuit in our brain.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So remember that the brain has a lot of like competing impulses, right? So like I want to eat a piece of fried chicken, but I should eat a salad. So some part of my brain is telling me I should do something. And another part of our brain is saying, I want to do something. So when we give into the dopaminergic part, it strengthens that part and allows it to become stronger than other parts.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So we kind of know this a lot from like kind of Eastern wisdom, right? That when you give into a desire, whatever you give into in your mind only grows. So if you let yourself eat unhealthy today, it becomes easier to eat unhealthy tomorrow and easier to eat unhealthy the next day. And that's once again, because remember, dopamine creates behavioral reinforcement, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So whatever we do, we're going to create cravings for and we're going to reinforce. So the first thing that a lot of people have sort of figured out is that when they use a lot of technology, that dopaminergic part of their brain is literally getting stronger and it starts beating out other parts of the brain that are telling you to do other things. So it becomes harder to motivate yourself.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
It becomes harder to like, you know, you become more irritable, you become more cranky. It's like if someone tells you to not use your phone, you'll get like cranky around that. So you like literally become more receptive to like dopaminergic activity. So instead, what we really want to do is focus on boosting our serotonin system.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So this is why we're seeing an unprecedented level of addiction in the world today. But we're also seeing an unprecedented level of hunger for meditation and mindfulness. And why is that? What do these do in our brain? So we know that, for example, meditation is an evidence based intervention that improves things like depression and anxiety.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And the primary medications that we use to treat those are actually serotonin based medications. So meditation probably boosts our serotonin transmission in the brain. But I would say that there are also like different kinds of like mindset kind of shifts that we can do. If you kind of think about, you know, what results in serotonin boosts, it's usually things that matter to us that are painful.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So social media addiction is like really interesting because the first thing to understand is that see substance use addictions. So these are things like alcohol, opioids, marijuana. These act in a very discreet way. Right. So I have a molecule of alcohol that crosses the blood brain barrier and then activate something called the GABA receptor. So it's like very targeted.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So when I think about like, you know, when I stay up all night taking care of my sick kid, that's not pleasurable. It sucks. But the next morning, I feel really good about it. Even if I feel physically awful, I'm cranky, I'm not happy, I didn't get any sleep. I feel good about it because like I did my job as a dad, right? My kid is struggling and I'm there to help them.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And that like feels really good. So the serotonergic system is a system that activates when we feel accomplished, right? The problem in society today is that we don't focus. We don't actually it's not that we don't focus on accomplishment. We want accomplishment. But literally, how do you spend your day? You spend your day not thriving for accomplishment.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You want to accomplish things, but you spend your day like wasting time on technological devices. And every time you spend time on that technological device, it's amplifying your dopamine system and reducing your serotonin system.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Stay the hell away from technology for as long as you can. So generally speaking, I will strongly recommend that people don't use a technological device for the first hour after waking up. Practically, this is very difficult because of a couple of things. One is that we no longer have magazines and bathrooms because we take our phones.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So it's really hard to go to the bathroom in the morning without your phone. So there are a couple of like really specific behaviors that you have to target and give up. And oftentimes when I work with people who have technology problems, the hardest tech use to give up when we're not like so addicted that it's ruining our lives is actually the technology use in between things.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
The issue with a lot of these technologies is that they're not nearly as targeted. So we see a lot more of a whole brain effect. And the different problems that you described each have like unique parts of the brain that they affect. So let's like run through those. So social media does a couple of fundamental things. The first is that it messes with our sense of identity.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So when I'm in the on the elevator, while I'm waiting for while I'm sitting in traffic or if I'm sitting in an Uber while I'm on the toilet, we we take our phones with us everywhere and they just infect all the parts of our day where we're not doing something. And anytime you do that, you're sort of starting to exhaust your dopamine for the day.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so your capacity for pleasure, your capacity for behavioral reinforcement goes down.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So I know we've heard it a thousand times before, but you really have to understand what the damage of 15 minutes of cell phone use when you're taking your morning dump with your cup of coffee or if you have your cup of coffee and you're sitting down and scrolling on your phone for 15 to 30 minutes before you start your day, what that really costs you.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And on the flip side, I think that one of the really interesting, you know, motivating things that I sort of like learned, you know, in the East and stuff, and I'm sure we'll get to that. We don't really understand where motivation comes from. So there is a dopaminergic motivation, which is the motivation of immediate pleasure.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So this is like the motivation of pleasure from like snorting cocaine or playing Candy Crush or something like that. But then there's also a serotonergic motivation, which is like the motivation that comes from the Sanskrit word dharma or duty. So when I'm like, you know, when I'm on call in a hospital, that's not pleasurable. Oftentimes it's very unpleasant.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
People will be like high on cocaine and like yelling at me and stuff. Right. I'm working in the emergency room. It's overnight. People are drunk. People are homeless. People are upset. People are hurt. People are suicidal. People are psychotic. That's not a fun job.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And yet when I go there, the attitude that I take, which is a huge part of serotonin, by the way, because when I work with my patients, what we do is we change their attitude. How do you see this? This a 15 minute clinical encounter. There's no question that it sucks. But as long as I'm I feel like I'm doing my duty. And this also relates to burnout.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Very effective at treating burnout, fixing burnout. As long as I'm like doing this for a greater purpose, right? Like if I'm taking care of my sick kid, that's worth it. If I'm at a hospital trying to help other human beings because this is my mission in life, it is worth it. And then something really cool happens.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
When we have a dopaminergic brain, we run away from pain and we seek pleasure at every moment. Life becomes a struggle of restraining my impulses towards pleasure and choosing things that I don't like. But there's one really simple way to short circuit that whole system, which is to focus on dharma. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if I if I'm like if I'm if someone pulls a gun on me, like I want to run away from the gun. I don't want the gun. I'm not I'm trying to get the hell out of that situation. I'll call the police. Now, if someone points a gun at my children, I'm stepping in the path of the gun, even though like this is literally a life or death situation. My motivation in that moment is
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
is to do something incredibly dangerous, then in a different circumstance, the intervention is the same. The gun is the same. The meaning is the same, right? It's like, it's dangerous. The more we sort of think about what is our duty in life? What's my purpose in life? What am I really like on this earth for? And as we start structuring a life that aligns ourselves with that,
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if we think about like on social media, I have a representation of myself. And then when that representation of myself gets activated, there are really primitive circuits of the brain of things like social status and social relationships and connectedness with other human beings. Social media activates all of those circuits.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Then something cool happens. The hard things become things that you step into the path of the things that you embrace. And you have kind of this deeper motivation that becomes resilient against pleasure. And whether things are pleasure, pleasurable or painful, you kind of like embrace it all. And then people feel like super, super motivated in ways that is very confusing sometimes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But hopefully people will kind of understand some of those analogies.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Yeah, so it is too big of a question, and it's a great place to start. So I would say if you're struggling, like this is the first thing that I would say. I think we're way too caught up in self-control. So if we think about what self-control is, self-control is overcoming your impulse, right? The beautiful thing, like the work that I do is not about building self-control.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I know it's weird because I do a lot of like addiction psychiatry work. I mean, we teach people how to pump up their self-control and meditate and all that good stuff. But really, it's about changing the way that they see their life. And then self-control is no longer an issue. When your body, your brain, your mind, and your spirit are aligned in the right direction, you don't need self-control.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
There is a spontaneity and an easiness of action, just like the gun analogy, right? So like when the circumstances are right and when I view the situation in the right circumstance, in the right way, then my behavior flows very naturally, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And if people are listening to this, I'm sure there have been times in your life where you did what you should do, you did the right thing, the right thing was hard, and it was easy for you. The hard things that we do in life are not always hard. Sometimes something happens within us, and that's really where the focus of the work is, is to sort of figure out, okay, what's going on inside you?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Why are you the way that you are? Why are your desires in this direction? And let's understand those things. Because in my experience as a psychiatrist, good diagnosis precedes good treatment. The problem is everyone is trying to change their life without really understanding what the problem is.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And the challenge that we really run into, just to give you like one really example, so a simple example is social media oftentimes leads to problems with body image, right? So we're seeing a rise in body dysmorphia in both men and women. And there are really simple ways that it does this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So here's my favorite step. And this is how I work with people, right? So the first step is don't use it in the morning. But that's not a goal to achieve, right? What I want you to do is pay attention to what happens within you when you don't use it. Right. So if I don't use it, what is my experience of going to the bathroom?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And oftentimes, like I know this is going to sound so weird, but it's like kind of subtle. But like you really don't want to go to the bathroom without your phone. Even though it doesn't cost like it's not like you get some great thing, but it's like this like you just don't want to. It kind of doesn't matter either way. Right. It's not like it's going to ruin your day.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
It's not like you're going to become a billionaire if you stop using your phone in the bathroom. It's such a little thing. It's such an insignificant thing. But then why are you so attached to it? So oftentimes what happens is, is that in our life we have we're overwhelmed with thoughts. We're overwhelmed with what we need to do.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You know, 50 percent of people under the age of 30 are now living at home with their parents. There's like, you know, record levels of inflation, like wages aren't keeping up. It's hard to buy houses like everything in life is getting harder. We want 15 minutes of relief from that. And this is what ends up happening is we don't really realize what we're using the cell phone for.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so the first thing that I would say is like, just don't use it for 15 minutes and pay attention to yourself and watch what comes up. Watch what that discontentment is, because then we get to another huge problem, which is that if you look at the brain, what motivates us is our discontentment. The most powerful motivators of human behavior are negative emotions. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if I'm like in a marriage and I've been in love for 20 years and my partner is unfaithful, that amount of negativity, that sense of betrayal, that sense of anger, that sense of sadness, the sense of shame. Those are incredibly powerful motivators for me to potentially get divorced, move on with my life. Right. Like so negative emotions are actually our most powerful motivators.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And one of the scariest things that we're doing is we have these negative emotions because we're not happy with our life. And we've evolved to have negative emotions to help us correct what we are unhappy with. So what happens when I have this negative emotion because I feel ashamed about my appearance, but then when I start using a filter and I don't go to the gym, the problem just propagates.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So anytime you use social media, there are a lot of apps now that will automatically filter and adjust your appearance. So if you take like a picture on an app like TikTok, it will apply a filter without you doing anything.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So instead of harnessing these motivators, because we're all about how to derive pleasure from making Excel spreadsheets, instead of harnessing these negative emotions, we're actually shutting them off with technology and the problems continue. So practically what I tell people to do is pay attention to what's happening to you and then listen to yourself.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
As that negativity starts to arise, really listen to yourself. What is it telling you? What are you discontent in for life? And this is where a lot of problems arise. People think, oh, I can't do anything about it. But that's also where like I would you'd be surprised, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Because when we spend a lot of time avoiding our problems, when we don't diagnose the issue, when we just avoid it and we just hope it'll get better tomorrow, then of course we can't do anything about it. But understanding of the problem is the first step. Wow.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Caffeine's a great example. So why do people get addicted to caffeine? They get addicted to caffeine for a couple reasons. Sure, there's like a biological portion to it. But caffeine is a very psychological addiction. It is an addiction to not feeling tired. It is an addiction to really wanting a high level of performance in the next couple of hours. I mean, I had this problem. I was in residency.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So I'm working like 80 to 80 hours a week on average. And I was up to three cups of coffee a day. I would have a cup of coffee at like 6 a.m. when I show up at the hospital. I'd have another one afternoon, like at one o'clock to stop that post lunch crash. And then around four or five o'clock, I'm dragging and I have a bunch of notes to finish, which is like really boring work.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so over time, what happens is we start to build up an identity of ourselves that is a virtual identity that gets a certain number of likes, dislikes, call it whatever you want. And then what happens is like literally when I look at like my pictures online, I'm a prettier version of what I see in the mirror. So I put forth this face to the outside world.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So I'd have my third coffee of the day. And if I really paid attention to myself, what I found is that first of all, when you get addicted to caffeine, it stops working. What caffeine really is, is a loan against future energy. So the way that caffeine doesn't give you more energy, it blocks your signals of tiredness and fatigue.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You know, when does something become an addiction? So we engage with all these things, whether you're talking about shopping or alcohol or whatever, because they do something for us. Right. So some part of our brain is experiencing a reward of some kind. The problem is that when we start to get addicted to things, these become solutions that create more problems than they solve.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So with this stuff, what we're really addicted to when I work with people who are addicted to caffeine and nicotine, what they're addicted to is the feeling of being of having energy. They hate being tired and they have to use caffeine in order to push through and get this work done because it's so important.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But then they create this situation where they're like just setting themselves up to fail. Instead of actually having energy, you're substituting with caffeine never really works long term. And so that's where we really have to understand what is the psychological, what is it that is the caffeine is really doing for you? And then what we want to do is like, OK, then let's fix that. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if you feel like you've got low energy. Let's actually figure out how to improve your energy. And when you come out on the other side and you are resting well and you're meditating and working out and all that kind of stuff, which I know sounds impossible, but when you're actually letting that negativity fuel you for progress, like you'd be amazed at how much transformation you can see.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And then out on the other side, when you're actually energetic, like it's amazing.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
The balance arises in a very simple way, and then I'll tell you all practically what that looks like in my life. So the balance is to not become dependent on that thing, as the only answer. So like when caffeine became my only source of energy where I couldn't get other sources of energy, that's when we really get an addiction. So an addiction is when we like, we start to rely on it, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
It's not an option. It's the only option. So very practically, like what my life, I still drink caffeine most of the time, unless I'm doing very serious meditation practices. But, and then what I've found is the way that you find that balance more practically is being able to tolerate tiredness. So what I found is that like, okay, on a particular day, I feel tired.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Like even today, like before this podcast, I was like, should I have a cup of tea before the podcast? You know, because I'm Indian and we have tea. I was like, I'll have like, I'll make a little bit of tea. It'll be all right. So like, and then I was like, do I really need it? Right? No, I'll just go into this. I'll feel a little bit tired and that's okay.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So the moment that I accept my tiredness is when I'm able to find balance. But I had a cup of coffee in the morning and like, that's totally fine. So I think a big part of it is just being able to sometimes accept the consequences of not giving into the addictive behavior. And once you become comfortable with discomfort, then addictions become way easier to handle.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And then I spend a lot of time and energy because now it's become a part of our jobs. It's become a part of our social circles, right? We have to be active on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, LinkedIn. So now I invest in this person. But then when I wake up in the morning and I look at myself in the mirror, I'm not that person.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Absolutely, people have purpose, 100%. So that's the first thing. Now, the question is, why is it hard to know what your purpose is? And that's because we spend the majority of our lives ignoring ourselves. So if you look at like what we do to children, what we do to boys, girls, this used to be very, very prominent for just women. Now it's starting to happen more to men.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So we spend the majority of our lives like getting conditioned away from who we are. Right. So I like like I'll give you a simple example. So when I was you know, when I went to college, I was genetically premed. I was premed because I'm an Indian kid whose parents are doctors. And when you're an Indian kid and you're 15 years old and people ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And you say, I want to be a doctor. So first I said, I want to be an environmentalist. No one was impressed. And then I said, I want to be a doctor. Everyone's like, oh, wow, amazing. Wonderful. Your parents are such good doctors. You're going to be great doctor. So already at the age of 15, I had certain impulses. I had things that I liked.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I started a business that was making $300 a week when I was in the seventh grade. And that was a lot of money back then. That was like real money. And then when my parents found out, my dad was like, he was kind of proud of me because he could see that I had that hustle, but he made me shut it down. He's like, you need to focus on your studies, Alok. So I had certain, some of these tendencies.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And if you have these tendencies, what life will do, what society will do is squash them. Then what life will do is they'll tell you, hey, you should do this. You should become a doctor. Right. Like that's the right profession because everyone's impressed when you're a 15 year old kid and you say, I want to be a doctor. And so then you start striving for things that you don't want.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
What you see when you look in the mirror looks different from the pictures that you take of yourself, especially when we start applying filters. So there's already a little bit of a disconnect between the person that I really am and the person that I put forward. Then what happens is I start to feel inferior to my virtual self, right? Because I'm just not as pretty when I look in the mirror.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You start striving for things that people tell you are good for you. And so then we choose a major in college, right? And then we choose a job. And how do we do those things? It's just kind of like, you don't really know what you want when you're 18 years old. You have no idea what it's like to work a day. You don't know what it's like to have a career.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You have no idea if you like engineering or medicine or whatever. You have no information. And then we get kind of locked in to a path. Because now that I've spent four years studying this, I have to get a job in this, even if I don't like it. And it requires so much momentum to shift tracks, right? And then everyone will tell you, oh, it's a waste. You wasted all this time. Look, do it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You'll make good money, money, money, money, right? And so what starts to happen is we literally, what we do is we take parts of ourselves and we squash them. And this gets worse with technology because the more time you spend on the internet, the more time you learn, you should be doing things differently. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You need to be like meditating for an hour a day and stay off your cell phone the first 15 minutes of the day and make sure you buy this clothing and make sure you look like this and make sure you use this and make sure be something that you are not. Nothing on the Internet tells you, hey, you're fine just the way you are. It's totally cool.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You have advertisers, you have marketers, you have AI that are measuring all these algorithms, figuring out what you want, figuring out what your weakness is. There was that whole scandal where, you know, Target or whatever figured out that people were pregnant before they knew and started mailing them catalogs. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So like people know and the Internet knows about you and it tries to create dissatisfaction with who you are. And then what it does is tells you, buy this thing and we'll fix that dissatisfaction. So if you look at this, basically it starts with a moving away from yourself and ignoring yourself. And then that gets amplified now that I'm unhappy.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And the reason that you're unhappy, by the way, is you never listened to yourself in the first place, right? Because you chose a career based on what people chose you to do instead of actually doing something that you found joyous. And that was naturally motivating. Like you would have worked your off if you like it. There's a disconnect. And now you feel a little bit empty.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You don't know what you're doing. And then along comes the internet says, hey, that emptiness that you've got, Use this body wash and it'll go away. Sign up for our course and we'll help you find the career of your dreams. And then it only amplifies it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so the more that we get disconnected from ourselves, the harder it becomes to find our purpose because the world can't tell you what your purpose is. They've been doing it and you've been listening and look at where it got you. So the way to find purpose is to fundamentally reconnect with yourself. And that becomes hard because you don't like what's in there, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Because you have ignored yourself for a while and you're not super happy with the person that you are deep down inside. And you recognize that there are some weaknesses that you try to keep at bay because other people sometimes see them too. And they're like, hey, you should really drink less. And you're like, no, I'm fine. It's not a problem. And then that evokes that denial. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So it really starts with connecting back with yourself. And we know because pornography addiction, one of the two variables that correlates with pornography addiction is meaninglessness in life. So if we're really thinking about overcoming that addiction, you have to have a good enough reason to resist all those impulses. You can't just cure addiction in a vacuum.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so then like we can start to feel dissatisfied with ourselves. And then what happens is, OK, so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start like using more filters. And then we almost get like addicted to filters in the same way that we can get like addicted to Botox, where we want to look a particular way. And why do people use Botox? It's because they want to look a particular way.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
There's got to be like motivation behind it, really something that is worth the pain. And that's where dharma comes in. Right. So when you are overcoming an addiction, that process is filled with pain, not pleasure. So you need some fuel that will make you stick with that. And that's purpose.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Is that accurate? That's accurate. There's only one tiny inaccuracy, which is that you said it's a small thing, right? It's a tiny way. It's not small. It's the whole nine yards. It's everything. It's 100%. If you can do that. So I want you to think about all the things that you're doing in life that you are unhappy with.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Every single one of those things that you are doing is because you cannot tolerate discomfort. Why am I not going to the gym today? Because I'd rather sit on my . It is the discomfort of going to the gym that keeps you at home. If you think about diet, right? What's the problem with diet?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Well, I like the way that this makes me feel, and I don't like the way that this other thing, I don't like the taste of salad. It's uncomfortable, I don't like it. So all of our negative behaviors, come from the inability to tolerate discomfort. And so if you can get really, really good at that, it is enough.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So I want you to take any problem, anyone who's listening to this, think about the problems that you really struggle with. When you struggle with those problems, what is it that you're running away from? It's discomfort. And if you can just learn to tolerate discomfort, you don't even have to fix it. That's the other thing a lot of people think they have to fix their problems.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You don't have to fix your problems. You just have to be able to tolerate the negativity of them. And that in and of itself is like... arguably the whole nine yards.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And now you can do that virtually. And so at the same time, what we're doing is like creating kind of a false version of ourselves. And then we kind of have this like part of us that we don't like. And then we like the false version more than the real version. So we invest more and more time into our online presence and we start to like lose ourselves in the real world. That's just one aspect.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if we look at meditation, meditation is like the most overpowered thing that you can do because it leads to cortisol improvements. It leads to even visualization. In one study in a geriatric population, you can have a geriatric population that visualizes working out. They don't have to get up. They just visualize it. It can improve hand grip strength by up to 68%.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Just the visualization of working out can improve your actual strength. It's kind of weird, but you can look at meditation. Meditation is a treatment. It's really bizarre because generally speaking, when we look at mental illness, we have different treatments for mental illness, right? Psychosis is treated one way. Depression is treated another way. Bipolar is treated another way.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Anxiety is treated another way. Personality disorders like narcissism are treated another way. But meditation is the one thing that treats them all. studies for improvements in psychosis, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, even personality disorders. How does that work? So there are some fundamental principles that make us better at being human. And one of those is the frontal lobe.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So anytime you tolerate discomfort, there are signals coming from your brain that this needs to change. So I feel hungry. I want I'm craving something or this workout. I want to stop at seven reps instead of eight because I feel exhausted. So if we look at like, what is meditation doing? What is the translatable behavior that gives you benefits everywhere?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
It is simply strengthening your frontal lobe because the frontal lobe controls everything else. So you get better at tolerating your emotions. The tolerance of discomfort can apply to physical activity, emotions, difficult conversations, going in and telling your boss, hey, I really deserve a raise.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And when they don't give it to you, saying, looking for another job, walking in and then handing your resignation. You don't want to disappoint them. They've done so much for you, right? And like, we get so caught up in all of these emotions, all of these cravings, and simply the tolerance of discomfort is kind of like, the magic bullet.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so as we train those in any way, it actually helps all of the others.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So self-control is fascinating because I don't think most of us really understand what it is. So if we look at where self-control comes from in the brain, It comes from probably this part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex and other parts of the frontal lobe. But what's really interesting is that part of the brain is also the same part of the brain that monitors internal conflict.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
A second aspect is comparison, right? Because social media is very, very, very good at making comparisons and making all kinds of comparisons. So the social media algorithms have figured out that the way to keep you addicted is by making you feel bad and making you feel good in an alternating way.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So I want you all to think about a moment where you are trying to exert self-control. When you try to exert self-control, you are conflicted. You can never be trying to exert self-control unless you are conflicted. Does that make sense? Yep. Right. So and then there's a couple of other subtle things. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And this is what's fun about like doing addiction psychiatry work is really tunnel down into like what's subjectively happening. And I would ask my patients, you know, how do you know whether you're going to like win or lose your battle with like like an addiction? And oftentimes what happens is they stop thinking about it. So what happens is you kind of know like, OK, like I'm going to give in.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I don't know if this makes sense, but you kind of know that you're going to give in before you give in. And what starts to happen is that you stop monitoring the conflict. You stop paying attention to the conflict because the conflict goes on and on and on until it's over. And you think one side wins, but it's not that one side is winning. It's that you stop paying attention to it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And if you look at most of our behaviors where we struggle with self-control, it's when we're behaving on autopilot, right? I ate one potato chip and then the next 99, I struggle with the first one, but the next 99 are on autopilot. So self-control and awareness, we think that these are two different things. I have to be aware of the conflict and then I have to control it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But it turns out that these are actually the same. And as long as you are aware of your internal conflict, you will, that's actually the same thing as self-control. And what kind of happens is we like lose sight of it. I don't know if that kind of makes sense. It slips away from our mind and then we're like, ah, like whatever, right? That's what we do in our head. We stop thinking about it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
We stop focusing on it. And there's a really interesting technique called urge surfing, which we use in addictions, where if you think about like an impulse to use, that's not going to last forever. Right. So the the nature of the human body is that, you know, when I get hungry, if I don't eat, the hunger goes away and then it'll return and it'll go away and then it'll return. It'll go away.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
What happens is any time I have a desire to do something, that desire won't last forever. So really, the war, this is where a lot of people get messed up because they think I have to conquer this. You don't have to conquer it. All you have to do is watch it and wait it out. You don't actually have to win. You just need to focus on inaction.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
All you need to do is sit still for long enough and then it'll go away on its own.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So it'll show you things that make you feel good about yourself or maybe feel superior to other people. And then it'll show you things that make you feel bad about yourself. And so it's kind of like messing with your sense of identity.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Yeah, I mean, I think feeling discomfort is huge. So if you think about people who spend 30% of their calories snacking, they are not aware of what they're doing, right? So you like board the train and then the train takes you to wherever you end up. That's their experience. So you may be aware at the very beginning, but they're not usually aware of the whole journey.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So what I would strongly recommend is that first of all, you don't make it easy for yourself to snack automatically. So tech platforms are really good at this. We have things like biometrics so that we can auto log in. It saves our login. They make it super easy for us to engage in technology, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if you have an impulse to like watch a TikTok, TikTok is designed to help you satisfy that impulse within a second. Because if they can get you started, they can hook you for 15 minutes. So all of the tech platforms are trying to reduce the time between you having an impulse and you engaging in the technology. And what we've learned, and this is actually really fascinating.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So even if you look at the research on suicidality. So most people, everyone thinks that people who kill themselves are like planning for months in advance. The research shows that 60 to 70% of people who decide to make a suicide attempt do so within five minutes of the attempt. 40% within 60 seconds. So people have this impulse to kill themselves and then they act on it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So what we really need to do if we want to control our behaviors is stretch out the time between impulse and action. So don't carry chips around. make them far away from you, make it so that you have to get in the car and drive to the corner store and then like pick up a, so then you have 15 minutes to like overcome that impulse. That's the first thing.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And usually within that process, what happens is we have space for awareness because when you're driving there and I've done this, we're like, I'll drive to like a fast food place, but on the drive there, I'll turn around and go home. I'll be like, I don't want to do this. So you need space for the part of you that wants to be healthy to get a say.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And it really kind of gets messed up because if we look at the way that our brains have evolved, we haven't evolved to compare ourselves to millions of people, right? We evolved in tribes of like 300 people. So your social status was like somewhere between one and 300.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
It's like saying, oh, hey, we're going to have an election. The election is in 30 seconds and whoever's here right now gets to vote. That's not how it works. So you need to give yourself time. That's number one. Second thing, and there was actually, it's funny you talk about snacking because I had a teacher, a guru, who was addicted to potato chips and they were a monk.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so their teacher, they were like, I'm addicted to potato chips. And so they would like try to control their addiction and they were living in a monastery and stuff. And it like worked for a while, but they'd always relapse. They'd always relapse. So they went to one of their teachers and they're like, how do I overcome this? I'm trying to become a monk.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I'm trying to become desireless and conquer all my whatevers. And so their teacher said, so don't, resist the addiction anymore instead what you should do is be aware of it so actually carry potato chips with you wherever you go keep a bag in your room keep a bag in your backpack everywhere you go you should have access to potato chips but
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
When you eat the potato chips, you need to be fully aware before you eat them, when you eat them, and after you eat them. So what is this desire for potato chips? Where does it come from? Where does the desire exist within you? Pay attention, really look at it. As you eat the first chip, what happens to the desire? How many chips does it take to end the desire?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And after how long does the desire return? How long do you feel satisfied? What is the satisfaction of the first chip, the 30th chip, the 50th chip? And as this person engaged in this practice, now this person had some meditative training, which I think is kind of necessary before you do this, but it works really well. I've used this with my own addictive tendencies.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
you'll start to realize that your addictive behaviors don't actually satisfy anything. All they do is create more problems. And once that realization sets in that, and no matter how many potato chips I eat, I will always want more chips. This is an exercise in futility. I only buy myself temporary enjoyment And then I want more later. It's like it's never ending.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Once that understanding really settles into your brain, once your frontal lobes understand what the real advantage and disadvantage are, then the addictive behavior will start to melt away.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But now on the internet, no matter how successful you are, how you look, you will always find someone who is doing better than you, who is more attractive than you, who is more successful than you. who is doing a better job of being a parent and having a career. So like no matter where you go, you're going to end up feeling inferior. That's kind of the second aspect of social media.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Yeah, so I don't think it's more useful or less useful. I think it's more accessible or less accessible. Let's understand the problem with the first method. The first method will help you resist, but it won't change the craving, right? We're basically setting up an environment To bypass ourselves, we're assuming that we're always going to lose, right? Does that kind of make sense?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
We're not actually conquering anything within us. We're just shaping an environment. It's like we're not learning how to swim. We're just putting on floaties and jumping in the water. We're having the external environment do the work for us. So that's a great place to start. And your instinct is right there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And when I'm working with an alcoholic or someone who's suicidal, one of the best evidence-based things that we can do is remove the suicidal means from the home. So get rid of your gun. So we absolutely need to do that. But even that's what I do with my patients the first day. Let's get the noose and the gun out of your house. Good job.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
That will, that's only, that's going to help some, but it doesn't really change you as a person. It doesn't really allow you to be conquered, but conquer the addiction and be free of it. And long-term, that's our goal.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Like long-term, it's not that we need to structure our environment so that you're like a robot who's like, you know, responding to this environmental stuff and you're not really in control. Long-term, what we want is I want you to be surrounded by potato chips. And I want you to be able to control yourself because you understand yourself.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And in the patients that I work with that are suicidal, you know, we'll get to the point where even when they're happy, they'll have suicidal thoughts, but they're truly centered and like in control. So they'll even tell me, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
A lot of times psychiatrists freak out and they'll say like, oh, you know, I'm having suicidal thoughts and I'll just ask them a couple of years and I'll be like, is that something we need to worry about? And they'll be like, no, like it's okay. And so what we're really talking about is what do you want to shape? Do you want to shape the outside to make things easy on yourself?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Or do you want to shape yourself so that like easy and hard is the same difficulty for you?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You know, I grew up the son of Indian immigrants who were both doctors. And so, as I said earlier, I was genetically pre-med. And so I went to college, but I didn't really care about, the only thing I cared about for being a doctor was like the prestige that comes with it. So I was like, I was 18 years old. I went to the University of Texas at Austin.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I was going to be a doctor, not just any doctor, best doctor. I'm going to go to Harvard, right? Because that's what good Indian kids do. So like, that's what my goals were. But like, I had no actual motivational drive. So I played a bunch of video games, started in high school, started to become a problem there. But then I basically failed out of college.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Third aspect, you talked about motivation. So this is another thing that a lot of people like don't understand. So when you wake up in the morning, you have a limited stock of dopamine. So we tend to think about dopamine as like being regenerated throughout the day.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So my first year in college, I had less than a 2.0 GPA. Half of my transcript was literally Fs. And then so I was on academic probation and barely made it through my second year. So I was on the verge of getting kicked out and like had all I had to do is get higher than a 2.0 GPA. And so I had managed to get like a 2.1 or something.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So two years of college in, I've got like an average of less than one. So I had a 2.1 my last semester. And before that, it was like a one point something. And so, and my parents tried everything. They tried to like, you know, punish me and they tried like tough love and love, love. And like, they just didn't know what they were dealing with because I was really addicted. So I went to India.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I spent three months at an ashram studying yoga and meditation and like fell in love with it. So my whole life, like I wanted things, but I could never get myself to do them. So I had like desires, like I had goals, but I couldn't motivate myself. And on the flip side, I was like a slave to my desires when it came to video games.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And I was playing video games for like 16 to 20 hours a day, like seven days a week. like just wasn't going to class for like a month at a time. So I would like order fried rice by the pound and fuel myself with like two liter bottles of soda and like pounds of fried rice at like 20 hour stretches.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And so what I loved about India is I discovered like a system of learning that teaches me about myself. So in the way that we can learn algebra, like we learn about desire. Where does desire come from? What happens if you satisfy it? All that kind of stuff. So I decided to become a monk.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
spent the next seven years studying with different like teachers in India, went a little bit to South Korea and Japan, and I was going to become a monk. My teachers at the age of 21, I tried. They said, you need to come back when you're 30. And then if you still want to do it, we'll take you. But they still continued teaching me.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Ended up meeting my wife, decided that the monk thing wasn't necessarily the path that I wanted to be on. And then I was kind of stuck because like I graduated from college, had a 2.5 GPA, but then like, what am I going to do? So decided to apply to med school, got rejected from 120 med schools over three years before I finally got accepted to one.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But there are studies that show that if you take mice and you give them cocaine and then you have them do other behaviors, their ability to experience pleasure from the subsequent behaviors, as well as be motivated to act afterward, actually goes down. So we have this limited stock of dopamine. And anytime we activate dopamine, we create cravings and we reinforce behavior.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And then went to med school, was going to do oncology, but then fell in love with psychiatry because I loved the mind. So I ended up training, doing my psychiatry training at Harvard. Big irony that I wound up there. And the interesting thing is when I went back to med school, I didn't care at all about going to Harvard or anything like that. I didn't even look at my grades.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So it was really super embarrassing. But I didn't go to the award ceremony like when I graduated and I won two awards. And one of my mentors was like, where are you? Like I was I wanted to present this award. And I was like, I didn't know I was going to win anything. I never looked at my grades. Because I didn't care about grades. I was just like, I'm going to learn medicine.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
That's what I'm here for. So ended up training at Harvard and then started this whole healthy gamer thing. So when I was there in 2015, I went to one of my mentors and I was like, tell me about technology addiction. Like, what are we doing there? And no one really knew anything because everyone was focused on the opioid crisis. So I started getting interested in it as a second year resident.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Started working on technology addiction in 2015. And then I started streaming on the internet. and streaming on Twitch, which is a gaming platform, and started teaching gamers about video game addiction. And someone was once like, isn't that kind of like holding an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And I was like, yeah, that's probably where we should hold AA meetings, because that's where the people who have alcohol problems are. And was stunned when Healthy Gamer grew. We were the fastest growing stream on Twitch for about three months.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Um, and really discovered that people like want to learn about themselves and was really surprised because when I started streaming, I was thinking like, okay, I had done neuroscience research at Harvard for a couple of years too. And so I was like, okay, I'm prepared with like my neuroscience stuff, my psychiatry stuff, my clinical stuff. Like this is what people are going to want, want to learn.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And what I discovered was a gigantic appetite for the spiritual stuff, all the stuff that I've learned in India over the course of seven years. All these things about meditation and purpose and the soul and like all this other weird stuff. And so now what we try to do is like combine both of those. So what is the neuroscience of enlightenment?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
How do we understand addictions from a karmic perspective and a neuroscience perspective? And so something about using both of those methodologies has been very, very helpful for people.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
What I would recommend is that people actually try a practice. So I don't usually do this, right? I teach meditation on a podcast, but I feel inspired today by the direction of your questions. So I would tell them to do a practice called Kayashtiram. So Kayashtiram means stillness of the body. The practice is super simple. All you do is sit still and don't move anything. You can breathe.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
but you don't move anything. So usually what we wanna do is sit in a way that your spine is straight, your neck is straight, your head is straight. So the spine should be straight. You can even do it lying down, but I think it's better to sit.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
If you wanna sit in a meditative posture like lotus posture or something like that, sit cross-legged, you can sit with a small pillow underneath your hindquarters so that you're a little bit elevated and you can sit up straight more easily. So if you wanna sit up straight naturally, by the way, all you need to do is have your knees lower than your hips and you'll naturally sit up straight.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So you just want to elevate your hips, keep your knees low, cross your legs if you can, and just sit still. That's it. That's it. For about five minutes. Perfectly still. There's a beautiful introduction to meditation because it's really, really hard. So 60 seconds will go by and then like you'll start to have an itch and then you'll start to feel uncomfortable. Your muscles will ache.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And then by the end of about five minutes, your body will be in an absolute state of torture. It's going to feel terrible. And then something beautiful happens when I teach Gaius Theorem. What people discover is that the breath that they take for granted becomes blissful. So as long as they're concentrating on their breath, all of the sensations of the body will be tolerable.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So one of the biggest challenges that we see is dopamine is our primary motivating neurotransmitter. And if we kind of waste it all on social media, we've got no dopamine left to experience pleasure with normal things.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But if you're not concentrating on the breath, then the body... lights on fire. Like it's so uncomfortable. Now, if you have like a slipped disc or a medical contraindication or something like then don't do this practice. Always talk to your doctor if you've got a medical condition like that's really important.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But it's a beautiful practice because what you learn is like to be with yourself like you're here in the present. You're not going to think about anything. You're not going to worry about paying your mortgage. You're not going to worry about what you have to do for dinner today. All of the thoughts will leave as you struggle to just survive this moment.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And a lot of beautiful things happen with Kailash theorem. One is that you start to fall in love with your breath. And then you start to realize like you learn a very important lesson, which is that no matter how much pain I'm in, I can concentrate on the breath. And for three breaths, for a few moments, I can find solace. I can find peace. And that is transformative.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So the ability to find a few moments of peace when everything is falling apart will change the way that you live in the world. Now you no longer need the world to give you peace. The basic problem that we have in life is we become dependent on the world to give us peace, happiness, or unhappiness. Oh, I want this promotion. If I don't get the promotion, I'm going to be devastated.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And if I do get the promotion, I'm going to be grateful, right? So my happiness becomes dependent on anything except for you. Does this person love me or not love me? Do they say yes or do they say no? Did they forget my birthday? Remember my birthday? So we're going through life and our happiness is outsourced to everybody else.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And no wonder we're unhappy because we're not in control of our own happiness. And we think that controlling our happiness means achieving our goals. It isn't. Because what happens when we achieve our goals? We move the goalposts and we have new goals. It doesn't work. It's not like you, you know, work for your eighth year and you're like, oh, this is the final promotion. Now I'm done.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if you look at someone who's struggling with like alcohol addiction, they may be using the alcohol to cope. with negative feelings, depression, things like that. We use alcohol as liquid courage that helps us socialize better, be more comfortable at places. We can have a couple of drinks when we go to an office party so that we feel more relaxed and we feel more sociable.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And what's even more dangerous than that is like normally if you like work hard, right, if I wake up and I like work productively for four hours, I will feel some sense of accomplishment afterward. And that's because I have a lot of dopamine. So when I finish, I get some rush of pleasure. I'm like, oh, man, I'm done. Like, awesome. I did a great job.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
That's not what happens. We always want more. So Gaius theorem is a beautiful practice that shows you that your happiness and your contentment in this moment is is dependent on, of all things, your breath. And there can be other things too. But you will find some way to find solace, which is like beautiful. And then you can use that technique anytime you're like struggling.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You can tap into your breath and be still. And then it does all kinds of other things, right? So it teaches you to tolerate discomfort. It teaches you how to be in the present. See, this is where a lot of people struggle because they say, oh, meditation is about being in the present. I don't know. How do I be in the present?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
The way you be in the present is by engaging in a practice that forces you into the present. You don't have to try. Another great example of being in the present, stand on one leg. For how long? Until you're in the present. It's not going to take very long. You can't think about anything else. Maybe for 15 seconds you can do it, but then your mind is forced to the present.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
That's the way that meditation should be learned. Meditation is not about trying to get your brain or mind to do anything. When you have a competent teacher, they will show you how to swim. And the swimming will be automatic as long as you stick with the practice. And then you will learn how to be in the present. You will learn how to tolerate the discomfort.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
All that stuff will happen automatically. That's the beauty of it. So I think, you know, that's where I would say people should start. Now, where do they go after that? I mean, you can get an app or whatever, but I find that going to a real meditation teacher like is really good. Because these apps and stuff are like, they're great in a lot of ways.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Like they can make it easy for you to stick with a practice and stuff. They're not bad, but they really are based on, you know, they're not based on spiritual growth, which is really what this like tradition offers. And really like mastery of the self, right? I've never heard of anyone becoming enlightened from using an app. So it's a great place to start and then find a teacher.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I'd say like just absolute desperation. So like I had tried everything. Like I knew I was screwing up my life and I couldn't fix it. My parents were saying, do this to fix it, do this to fix it, do this to fix it. And I think there was a really great, you know, I asked my dad and so my dad suggested it. And it wasn't less. So a couple of things. One is he didn't force me. It was a suggestion.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And then it's actually easier to work tomorrow, right? Because you've got some momentum. You feel pretty good about it. But when social media enters the picture, it empties our dopamine stores.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So like one day I still remember it was like two in the morning and we was like talking about like, you know, what's going on with you? Like, what are we going to do? And so he's like, you need to go to India. And I was like, what am I going to get there? And he's like, I don't know, but you need to do something. And that was the right level of emotional energy for me. That's where I was.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Something needs to change, but I have no idea who it is, what it is. And then also when my parents were like, this will fix it. I don't know if this makes sense, but if y'all have struggled with something, sometimes the last thing that you want is like answers from other people. And that's because their answers aren't going to work because they're not you.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So people will suggest things all the time. But like, it's not going to work for you because they don't understand your life. They really don't know what they're talking about when they give you random ass answers. Like, sure, on some level, it is theoretically the right thing to do. But in terms of your motivation, where you are, even spiritually, it's not right. And you know that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So you like reject their answers. So my dad was like, you know, you should go. You need to go. And I said, what am I going to get? And he said, I don't know. And so I just took a leap of faith because I was desperate and nothing else was working.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Therefore, our capacity to experience pleasure and behavioral reinforcement actually goes down for the rest of the day, which is what creates this experience that people have where like after you spend some time using a device, you don't feel like doing anything else. And when you do it, it requires like it's like a slog, right? You have to force yourself to do it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Yeah, so it's a mess. And I think you already touched on a couple of the big parts. So here's what a lot of people don't really know. There are two bacteria in your gut that protect you from anxiety. There are two bacteria in your gut that make you more anxious. There are two bacteria that protect you from depression. And there are some bacteria that make you more depressed.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So we know this is something that we haven't really understood until now. But in Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Indian medicine, their first line treatment for mental health issues is dietary change. And so it's really interesting because they claim that they can really improve mental health. And I've started instituting some of that stuff with my patients. It works really well.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So I'll start my patients on things like SSRIs, which are serotonergic medications. And then eight months from now, whether they can go off of the SSRI and whether they don't relapse or they do relapse depends on the degree of their dietary change. That's what I've observed clinically. So when they make the dietary changes, they don't need the SSRI.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So what I found, so if you really look at it, the first thing to understand is that your gut has a bunch of bacteria. And the bacteria that grow there depend on what you feed them with. So some bacteria can break down complex carbohydrates. Some bacteria use simple carbohydrates. So there are certain bacteria that will love processed food.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And when you eat processed food, those bacteria, you're fueling them. And they're at war with the other bacteria. And they'll actually out-compete those other bacteria. And they'll destroy those bacteria. Now, the problem is some of the bacteria in your gut do things like make serotonin precursors. So the building blocks for our neurotransmitters come from some bacteria.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And that's probably why some bacteria are protective against anxiety, because they produce they have some kind of tryptophan metabolism, which then enhances your serotonin production in the brain and you get endogenous serotonin production. So that's just one of the many avenues that we know that your diet will very, very directly affect your mental health.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So there are other systems at play as well. We haven't even touched on inflammation. But some bacteria, our body has learned over millions of years of evolution, like lactobacillus is a really good example. This helps us digest milk. And like lactobacillus, like our immune system is like, oh, that's my ally.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if lactobacillus is hanging out in our gut, like our immune system doesn't usually get upset. But when we have these ultra processed foods that select for these new kinds of bacteria, our body thinks, and rightly so, that these are not our friends. They haven't lived here for a long time. They're new. So it creates an inflammatory response. That inflammatory response can be whole body, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And then you don't get any sense of satisfaction, even though like in a different circumstance, doing like a solid chunk of work will like make you feel good, right? You're like, yeah, I did it. But that our brain is just empty. So we don't have those feelings.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So it's somewhat localized, but also travels to the brain. And we know, for example, that people who are depressed are having inflammation in the brain as well. So we know this, and this is super common sense because when you get the flu, what happens to your mood, right? You feel like, and that's like biologically driven. It's not like, you know, you're not depressed.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You just feel depressed and you know, it is a consequence of inflammation, right? And that's evolutionary, by the way. So depression is actually our body's way of telling us to conserve energy. So don't get out of bed. Just hang out. It makes you feel weak. It makes you feel energy energy less. And that is because it is trying to encourage you to rest.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And that's why we feel sad and cranky and stuff. Right. So there's a lot of stuff there that's evolutionary. But those are just two of the mechanisms through which like food is incredibly important for mental health.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Absolutely, right? And I think you touched on another really good thing, which is ultra processed foods are highly dopaminergic, which means that they elevate that dopamine, serotonin imbalance gets enhanced. So when you eat a bunch of ultra processed foods, you don't feel peaceful, content and accomplished.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
You've given into that dopamine and you feel like some degree of regret and guilt afterward, right? So it also is working on that level.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Yeah, so I have two thoughts. The first is a really short one. So a recent study came out about ADHD information on TikTok and found that 95% of ADHD information on TikTok is wrong. So the first like kind of PSA is be super careful about mental health information on the Internet, because at least on one platform and one diagnosis, the majority of it is like just wrong. So be careful about that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
The second thing is in terms of I think what people are missing is that we're trying. We're not focused on changing ourselves. We're focused on altering our environment to make things easy for us. So it's kind of like we have a society where if you look at everything, we're like, okay, what are the tips? How do we detox off of dopamine? How do we brain hack or biohack or all this kind of stuff?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And I know you guys cover this stuff, and I think it's good. It's good to inform people. But there's a subtle thing that's going on, which is that we're trying to make things easy for ourselves. So if I take these nutraceuticals or I take magnesium before I go to bed at night, it helps me sleep. That can be good.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But I think what's really, really subtle here is that we're relying on our environment to make our life easy instead of learning how to live a hard life, instead of adapting and becoming like stronger. It's almost like, you know, at some point we started having escalators and elevators instead of stairs.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And now what I'm seeing in the wellness space, which I think people need to be super careful about, is are you basically like creating an elevator? for wellness, where you're outsourcing all of the work to a particular protocol or a particular regimen or a particular thing. And I'm going to do it this way, this way, this way. And I'm all for that stuff. I think that that stuff is healthy.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And that's why I kind of like your term of like a PSA, but just be a little bit careful about what are you doing here? Because oftentimes what I end up seeing is that when people are like so focused on optimization and productivity, they like kind of lose sight of like, like, you know, they lose sight of the big picture very easily.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And they're trying to optimize, they're trying to harness their dopamine, maximize their dopamine, boost their motivation in a particular direction. And in doing so, all they're trying to do, they're not really gaining control over themselves. They're just using this instrument like in a different way.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
They're like taking a donkey and like putting it down a particular track, but they're still not in control of the donkey. I don't know if that kind of makes sense.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So what I would say is that for all the stuff that you're trying to optimize in your life, I would say go a little bit deeper and ask yourself, why do you want to optimize this? What is the end goal for you? And what are you, if I could wave a magic wand and give you the perfect protocol where you could like, what would your life look like? What are you really looking for? Right? What's the end?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So if I want to make more money or I want to be more successful, like what's the point of that? What is the end dissatisfaction? that you are trying to fix by fixing your life. And then what you need to do is ask yourself, what makes this so dissatisfying to me? Why is this so important to me? I think that's really the important question.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Because if you want to ask, like, you know, you asked, like, well, how did I go to India? And the biggest thing, I mean, I'm still the same guy, like whether I failed out of college or I'm teaching or whatever, like faculty at Harvard Medical School, whatever. I'm still the same dude. And the biggest difference for me is I started accepting what I was unhappy about.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I started saying, OK, this is who I am. I I'm a loser. And like, that's me. And that's OK. That's huge. Right. It doesn't mean that I give into it. So what it means is that I accept that I am a flawed human being and I'm going to do whatever I can to move forward. So I think really getting to that root, because I work with a lot of people.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
I work with some people who are like degenerate gamers who are 26 years old, don't have a job, don't accomplish anything. And I also work with people who are billionaires who have accomplished a lot and they're still unhappy. And so really think about, by all means, improve your life. I'm not saying don't improve your life. But what is the psychological need that you're trying to fulfill?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And really get in touch with that. Because you may not need to do all of that stuff to fix that. You can come to peace with that. You can accept that. And you can be pretty chill here and now. You don't have to solve every problem in your life to be happy. That's great advice.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Yeah. So I think you mentioned that there are a lot of, you know, women in your audience. So like a couple of things. One is like, I wrote a book on parenting and I know it's kind of weird, but like how to raise a healthy gamer is the book. And it's a book about like how parents can understand screen time and screen addiction and how to prevent it in your kids.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So that's one thing that if there are parents in the audience that are struggling with like having kids, which I know is like a problem that I'm dealing with, like I have a seven year old and nine year old. So that's one resource. And second is just check out our YouTube channel. So I know we're healthy gamer and that's how we started five years ago.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But I would say that, you know, less than 10 percent of our content is about video game addiction now. It's just really mental health for the digital generation. We had an amazing video recently on female bullying, which I think is like one of these things that is like under discussed.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So there's a lot of like passive aggressiveness and a lot of nastiness with especially women bullying other women. So we cover all kinds of different topics just around mental health, motivation, understanding the neuroscience, understanding the spirituality. So check out our YouTube channel, which is Healthy Gamer GG. Amazing.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Yeah. So I think the thing about all those boundaries and enforcement and stuff is like, it's so much work. So like, I think if you settle what's on the inside, life becomes just way chiller. I like that approach. Well, thank you again for coming on.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
All addictions start out as like solutions to things. And then over time, what happens is we start to become dependent on the behavior and the behavior starts to create problems. And then despite it creating more problems, we find that we can't stop. And that's really when we've achieved an addiction.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
We have these different circuits, like we have the sense of identity. We have a sense of community. So these are different parts of the brain that are getting activated. But I think a big challenge that we have is that, you know, a lot of what technology does and a lot of what we struggle with has nothing to do with dopamine.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So a really good example of this is if we look at the amygdala and the limbic system. So the amygdala is our survival center of the brain where we experience fear and anxiety. And then our limbic system is more broadly like our emotional circuitry in the brain. And technology is addictive for a couple of reasons.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
One is that it activates dopamine, which gives us pleasure and reinforces the behavior. But then the other thing that happens is anytime we use technology, it usually suppresses our negative emotional circuitry. If we look at addictions, all addictions do two things. They give us pleasure and they take away pain.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And usually what happens over time is we will actually acclimatize or build tolerance to the pleasure. So if you look at someone who's struggling with alcohol, the first couple of drinks they have, they're having a blast or maybe they're enjoying it. And then later on, like when you're on drink number eight or drink number nine or drink number 10, it's no longer fun. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So when I have patients that are like carrying fifths of vodka around and like like tucking them away in purses or in drawers at work or things like that, and they're drinking throughout the day, they're not drinking to have a blast. They're drinking to numb certain parts of their brain. And that's what we also see with technology. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And in terms of what's going on in the brain, well, it turns out that depending on what your choice is, whether it's alcohol or shopping or social media, what's happening in the brain is actually like quite different. So that's kind of the common pathway. But then there's a lot of detail about what circuits are affected and things like that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So like when you're kind of like when you're stressed out and you go and you like, you know, sit down for a couple of minutes and you pull out your phone and 30 minutes go by. It's not like you're having a blast and laughing and full of pleasure. It kind of numbs out all the stress and all the that you have to deal with.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And you got to pick this up on the way home and you have to do this for your kids. And then you got to do this and you got to pay your mortgage. You got to answer these emails. So it helps us kind of like mentally numb out. So I think that's one example of like circuits besides dopamine.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
But then there's also a lot that we don't understand about like motivation and behavior and how that can come from other parts of our brain in a more sustained way, which is why I like if we get stuck with dopamine, it doesn't really work very well. Just
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Serotonin and dopamine, I almost think about them as like inversely correlated. So the more dopaminergic your brain is, generally speaking, the less serotonergic it is and the vice versa. So let's just run through a couple of examples and what that means. So dopamine, first of all, is the neurotransmitter that governs pleasure, right? So it governs like having fun or pleasure.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Serotonin is a lot more associated with contentment or peace, right? So if we think about like, you know, someone who is suffering from like a mood disorder, like major depressive disorder, and we prescribe them a serotonergic agent, an agent that boosts their serotonin transmission. These are not happy pills. They don't make us happy. They make us less discontent. Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So what they kind of do is they take some of these like depressive feelings and they quiet those feelings. So it's not actually making you happy. It's it's moving from like negative 100 to zero. That's really what serotonergic medication does. And so when we boost serotonin transmission, we are sort of moving more towards contentment as opposed to pleasure.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
So when you engage in a ton of pleasurable activities, do you feel content at the end of that? Right. So a lot of times when people think about like when I play a bunch of video games or I drink a lot, I'm having fun, but I don't feel like content and peaceful at the end.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
Maybe in the case of something like a vacation where you have a lot of relaxation and stuff and you're away from stress, you can get some degree of contentment. But generally speaking, people who like party really hard are not like Zen yogis who are like peaceful with their lot in life, right? They're not like chilling out. They're actually like really hungry.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And the more that you activate your dopamine, the less content you'll become. So a lot of times you'll also see this in your kids, right? So when kids engage in video games and other dopaminergic activities, are they peaceful and content after like six hours of playing video games? Not at all. I see this a lot with people who I've worked with who like party really hard.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
And when you party really hard, you don't feel like accomplished and proud at the end of it. You usually feel like pretty bad. So when people are addicted to video games and they play video games for like, you know, 40 hours a week for three months, they don't feel peaceful at the end of it. On the flip side, if you ask someone, OK, what makes you feel peaceful and good in your life?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why You Need a Dopamine Detox: The Science Based Way to Master Self Control & Break Addiction Patterns with Dr. Alok Kanojia
It's usually some degree of accomplishment. Like if I go to the gym and I work out really hard, that is not dopaminergic. There's no dopamine. In fact, it's the opposite. There's a lot of suffering. Right. There's pain, suffering, difficulty.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
If someone else wants a fraction of what you have, 10% of what you have, they don't need to duplicate your actions. They need to duplicate what's going on on the inside. This is exactly my point.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Exactly. Yeah. Right? So let's understand a couple things. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, Stephen, beautiful. So a couple of things to understand. We think about healing as a – is one spectrum, right? So if I'm at negative 100, I can't also be a positive 100. Those two things cancel out. That's not how it works.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So if I give you a glass of water, and then I piss in it, and then I add sugar, it doesn't remove the piss. These are both independent things. This is what tends to happen. This is what we don't understand about trauma. Removing the piss requires removing the piss. No amount of sugar will take it out of the drink.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So no amount of, this is mistake number one, no amount of building something good will remove something bad. Okay. So healing, and it's also like, you know, if I break a leg, no amount of bench press will heal my leg. Like I can build as much as I want to. I can fix my hair. I can brush my teeth, but the leg is broken. The leg is broken. Same is true of the mind. Okay. Second thing,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
is what happens is we have like our consciousness is divided. Now we're gonna get kind of technical and off the rails. So we have all of these like dormant pieces of our consciousness that activate in certain situations. And all you have to do is pay attention to yourself in a five minute period and you'll see this. So when I walk into a bathroom that I've never used before,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
There'll be particular times where if I'm a little bit, like if I like treat you in the wrong way, like you'll notice that you feel like that kid again. When you're idle, you feel like that kid again. So that psychological, that neuronal wiring is there, right? So you can build all this wonderful stuff and there's authenticity. It's not like you're faking it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Then I start thinking about, okay, where's the flush? Where's the toilet? How do I use this toilet? You know, so like I'll activate dormant information all the time. So if someone asks me what's, you know, the quadratic equation, that information is there and dormant in my mind and it gets activated.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Right? So the injury just goes dormant. Then there are certain things that happen that can trigger that injury. That's what we call triggers, right? So if I'm traumatized, if we look at like PTSD, and I've been traumatized by, you know, a bomb going off, Literally, my brain has certain circuits that scans my perceptual environment and decides what to activate.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
No amount of fixing your life will make that kid go away. So like when I work with people who are, I see you smiling. So like when I work with people who've been traumatized, they will build amazing lives, but they still carry that kid with them. And the kid will come out at times.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So there are ways stillness makes you feel small. And fuck you if you're ever going to be small again. Never again, never again, never again. I would bet money that if you sit by yourself and you're not occupied, right, that's why you have to watch crime shows. Because if you don't watch crime shows, you're going to be still. And if you're still, that's unacceptable. Okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So dormant things have to be healed where they belong. You don't need to worry, by the way. It's in your karma. It's going to get healed and it's coming.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
And people would kill for that, right? So many people out there are like, oh, man, I would love to be you. No, you guys don't want to be Stephen. I know you think you do, but this is the crazy thing. We each as human beings have our own journey. And are you privileged and should you be grateful and should people aspire to be you? Absolutely, but they don't want to be you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Like your own problems are enough. They don't need yours too. Amen. So now the question is, how do we heal? So I think the problem is like no amount of fixing things over there is going to go back to this. And this is where we can look at the science of healing trauma. So here are the steps. First thing is safety so that we can get neuroplasticity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Second thing is emotional awareness and emotional regulation. And this allows us for number three, which is really important, which is identity. So if we look at our human sense of identity, how do you develop an identity? So if I were to ask you in three sentences, Stephen, who are you? My identity? Yeah. Tell me, who's Stephen?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Tell me about Stephen.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Okay. So I think those are three features, right? So I've read your bio. So the other thing that you tend to do in your bio is there's a narrative, right? You were a college dropout. you started a company, right? You talked about this Louis Vuitton bag phase, and then there's the post-Louis Vuitton bag phase.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
This is a really common misconception that are you faking? No, you're genuinely confident. You're genuinely authentic. You can't fake it and get to where you are. And at the same time, the wounds that we experience leave scars. Yeah, 100%. And the real way to heal is to go back to that moment and like deal with that kid, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
And even before we had this podcast, you were talking to me about the phases of your life. So identity requires a timeline.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Now, the interesting thing is if we look at the formative moments of your life, they all have emotion. So this is what's really important. If you have an identity... that is bad in any way, you can never change that identity without emotions.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So what happens, so my, like when I tell my story, it's like, I was a kid, nine years old, I got put on these expectations, dropped out of college, went to become a monk, went to medical school, became a doctor. Now I started this whole helping random people on the internet thing. So each of those were emotional experiences. So who we are is a narrative of our most emotional experiences.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
And we see this in all of our like superhero movies, right? Batman had this tragic experience where his parents were shot by the Joker and then he became something, right? There are all these moments, these powerful emotional moments. So if your emotions are dulled by drugs, by technology, by pornography, by watching serial killer shows, you will never change who you are. It is impossible.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
The neuroscience of your identity and development requires emotional experience. Okay? So with trauma, that's the next thing that happens. Once we have access to emotions, then we can become someone else. Now, the problem with trauma is that before we become someone else, the beliefs we have about ourselves... become our destiny. So if I think to myself, I'm a loser.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So when I was interviewing for residency, I went to an interview somewhere on the West Coast. And the director of the program called me at the end of the interview. And they're like, we don't understand why you're here. And I was like, what do you mean you don't understand why I'm here? And they're like, your application is really good. You could end up at any program in the country.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Like, why did you pick us? And like, I was like, I picked y'all because I liked the way that your hospital works and I like that the city it's in and I'm super into complementology. Like, what do you mean, why am I here? But the way that he approached it with a lack of confidence, he's like, our program sucks. And they had some problems at the program at the time, so it kind of makes sense.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
But this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I go into a job interview and I feel a lack of confidence, if I believe I'm a loser, then I'm not going to get the job. You used to go to clubs and buy bottles of champagnes and thought that you were a loser, didn't end up where you wanted to go. So this is what a lot of people don't understand. Everyone's focused on productivity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
But the single most important thing that will determine your future is your sense of who you are. And that's not like some, oh, spiritual, get connected with you. This is like fucking science, right? If you believe you are a loser, the empathic circuits of other people's brains will detect that in you and they will treat you like a loser. You carry who you are with you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
You have to dismantle the worldview that you have, which is how you heal trauma. Is when we get traumatized, we adapt. In order to come out of this situation, I need to learn this particular thing. So some kids that I've worked with adapt by becoming invisible. That's what I did. I got bullied a lot. So what do I do? I learn how to be invisible. Some people adapt by being successful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
That's why you get into failed relationship number one, failed relationship number two, failed relationship number three until you changed. And when you change, your sense of identity changes, then your future will change. The last thing to do is on a more microscopic level, look at these responses within yourself.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So you asked me at the very beginning of the podcast, and now we're coming full circle, how do you start understanding yourself? So you look at the drives within yourself, right? Why can't I sit still? And this is going to be so hard for you because if I told you, if I told you, Stephen, if you want to heal your trauma, you need to go to Bali, you need to sit on a beach and you need to do nothing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
You will still turn that into growth and progress. Because what you'll say is, oh, this is what Dr. K told me to heal my trauma. So now I'm doing even more important work than a podcast for 10 million people on the internet. Now I'm doing the healing of my trauma, which is the goal. And you're still running away from yourself. There's no way you can run away from it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Your mind will transform the very thing that you do into the problem. And that's what trauma does. I'll give you a chance to respond because I've been waiting. I'm waiting for the solution, Dr. K. Yeah. So, I mean, in your case, I think it's like sit. Just sit.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
And you have to be careful because if your mind turns the sitting into a goal that I have to achieve, oh, I need to sit and that will be my growth. No, no fucking goal. Just sit. Waste your time. What you need to learn how to do is waste your time. Do nothing, sit, be with yourself and watch out for that mind. The second thing is awareness, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So as you sit, you will notice all of these things come up. So this is like, you asked me a question at the beginning, how do you start? So what I would say is sit for five minutes, 15 minutes. Sometimes we'll tell people to stare at a wall for an hour.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
and just look at what on earth goes on inside you, you will discover that it is a zoo of thoughts, feelings, emotions, drives, panics, worries, distractions. Your internal environment is such a mess. So what we need to do is just kind of calm that stuff down by like just letting it kind of run out of steam. So this is a principle of the mind that if we feed our mind, it'll continue to grow.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
But like what we need to do is just let it run out of steam. So just sit and do nothing for a while. People don't realize the part of our brain that exerts willpower has something to do with this part of our brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. The anterior cingulate cortex is a piece of where willpower comes from, but it is also the part of our brain that monitors conflict.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So willpower and monitoring a conflict are actually technically the same thing. The same part of the brain activates. And if you guys, if you pay attention to your own internal experience, what you'll realize is anytime you're using willpower, there's an internal struggle that you are paying attention to. It's like, I don't want to order chicken. I want to order fried chicken.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So there's a monitoring of the conflict that goes on. That's anytime you're exerting willpower, there's this thing this way and this thing this way, but you are aware of it. You can't exert willpower if you're behaving automatically, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
That's why it's so easy to get lost in doom scrolling because you're not even aware of what you're doing before and then four hours have gone by and you're like, what? What happened? You're not aware. So this is the crazy thing from a neuroscientific perspective, and this is what the yogis will teach as well. Awareness is willpower. Awareness is self-control. And I've worked with tons of addicts.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
They come up for air. And maybe you've done this and maybe people at home have done this. You go on this binge and then you come up for air and you're like, what have I been doing for a couple of days? What have I been doing for a couple of hours? Then you gain that awareness again. So the more that you are aware in the present moment, the more your problems will literally melt away.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So if I'm successful, it's an antidote to my shame. I don't have to be ashamed anymore if I'm successful. But that old injury is still there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
It's like crazy. I don't quite know how it works, but this is what yoga teaches you. That as you are aware, as you are aware, as you are aware, you stop rejecting things. You start accepting things. You focus on the present. All the stuff that everyone talks about is actually rooted in awareness.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
And we live in a society where I say – if I say you don't need habits, you don't need willpower, you don't need discipline, all you need is awareness, people – will reject me. That doesn't mean it isn't true. And the more that you explore awareness, the more you will realize, like I used to think it was like 50-50. I'm now at like 90% of the problem is awareness.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Okay, so let's understand this, okay? You work really hard, Stephen. Is it hard to work hard?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Okay. So now we have to understand, why is it not hard for you to work hard?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
So your problem, see, this is the whole problem that everyone makes. So Stephen, you started a company when?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Okay. And you started how many companies or been involved in how many companies? 10, 20, yeah. And made like millions and millions of dollars and stuff. Yeah, right. Started a podcast. You've got how many millions of subscribers now?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: This Is The Real Reason You Can't Change Your Life: Doctor Alok Kanojia
Okay, cool. Right. So like this is a lot of work. And everyone's like, oh my God, I want to be like Steven. But the whole thing is, it's not hard for you. It's hard for you to not do it. So this is what I'm saying. You don't need to focus on the action. It's the internal thing that drives you like a fucking slave. that is responsible for your success.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like podcast. Have you ever wondered how it feels to watch your house burn down, be attacked by an alligator, or learn that your spouse hired someone to kill you? What Was That Like is the podcast for you, if you're that person. Not the person who got hired to be killed, but the person who wondered, more thankfully.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, that's not the equality we're kind of going for, is it? Nope. It's strange because we need to evolve as humans to deal with this stuff, and that's a slow process. But it's almost like these apps have made it so you don't even need... humans, I guess, in many ways, right? Delivery food, online gaming, online dating that doesn't go anywhere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
AI girlfriends, I'm going to ask you about that in a little bit. But then it's also like, well, actually, our brains still need relationships to stay healthy. And if you're only getting AI relationships or online relationships, it's kind of like diet soda, right? Like your brain still thinks it's sweet, but it's not really doing the thing for you that the sugar does.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Not that sugar is good for you, but relationships, it's like, I feel like I have friends because I talk with these people on Reddit all day. And it's like, well, yeah, but they're not there for you. If so,
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional drug trafficker, former jihadi, astronaut, or tech luminary. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, and of course I always appreciate it when you do that, I suggest our episode starter packs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I feel like I've heard about this in the context of Romanian communist orphanages where the nurses just never had the time to even change the kids because there were so many. Yeah. And it was like run by three nuns had like 60,000 orphans, you know, to take care of. And there's all these like they don't have any money.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
So it's just like the kids are like soiled for the whole day and that they're not picked up, cuddled, nothing. And they ended up with much higher levels of mental illness and damage than other kids.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
What I what I find interesting about this is, well, it's super insightful, but also there's this current. trend of everything is just habit change right so you know guys like James Clear friend of mine love that guy really good content and topics and game changers for a lot of people however I think for a lot of this stuff habit change is kind of a red herring because
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Me doing it, let's say I'm playing video games for 18 hours a day. I live in my parents' basement. I have gone, I dropped out of school. I went nowhere in my career. I'm not moving forward. It's not like, oh, I have bad habits that I need to break. Like this is beyond that. This is not just like I need to quit video games. There's other things going on here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I don't want to put words in James' mouth. He's not selling habit change like, by the way, everything that's wrong with your life is because you have bad habits. He's not doing that. But I think a lot of people are kind of like, I bought Atomic Habits and now I'm going to get out of this basement and not be depressed anymore. It's like, whoa. I don't know about that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Today on the show, the internet's favorite psychiatrist, Dr. Alok Kanoja. His YouTube channel discussing mental health and related topics boasts nearly 3 million subscribers. His wisdom is really relevant, really practical. I love the stuff that he puts out. In our conversation today, we explore drive, purpose, and lack thereof, depression, hopelessness, and what we can do about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Or is that just my gut bacteria talking? That's just my gut bacteria talking.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I only have them like twice a year, but it's just so glorious that it's like I can see why this stuff is so addicting. It really is like drugs in some ways, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
One thing I heard you say that I thought was particularly insightful was to your brain, the normality of eating, let's say, whatever, Chinese takeout, playing video games, watching Netflix all day. That is your brain is skipping to the end of the movie. I don't want to butcher this too hard. You know where I'm going with this?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Your brain is like, hey, you could work hard and have a career and you could sacrifice and then you could build a life and then you could retire and watch movies, eat Cheetos and Chinese and play video games all day. And your brain's like, I have an idea.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
How about screw the career stuff and all that other hard work, just stay where you are right now and drink diet soda and watch Netflix and play video games all day. You could just do that. It's like a hack.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Real people come on every episode to explain the unbelievable situations they've been through. I think it's a funny concept for a show. I kind of wish I'd thought of it because I always get crazy stories from people. Not everything turns into a Jordan Harbinger episode. But What Was That Like?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
We also discuss anger, especially in men. We touch on incels, pardon the pun, the rise of figures like Andrew Tate and more. We used every minute of our time together and scheduled another appearance already, so there's a lot to chew on here. I really like this conversation, and I know you will as well. Here we go with Dr. Alok Kanoja.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yes, exactly. Like, that sounds fun. Dream about it. Talk about it. Yeah. Log into StarCraft.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
It's like, sailing? There's a black box around that and it sounds hard, but you know what? There's a bag of dopamine in your pantry right now. Absolutely. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Speaking of escapism, here's some stuff for you to buy. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every single week, It is because of my network. I know networking is a dirty word. It sounds like glad handing. That's not what we're talking about at all. I'm teaching you a system that doesn't make you look like an a-hole. It's free.
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It's over at sixminutenetworking.com. The course is about improving your relationship building skills, inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And the course, again, non-cringy, down to earth, not awkward, not going to make you look bad, not going to make other people feel bad, just practical stuff that'll make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer. Six minutes a day is all it takes, and many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
You'll be in smart company where you belong. Once again, that's free over at 6minutenetworking.com. Now, back to Dr. Alok Kanodja. Do you think a lot of these people who are stuck in that trap, you said they're a slave to their sort of external desires. Do those come through advertising, friends, social media? Is that kind of what you're talking about?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Because I know like it can be very hard to turn off what other people want from you, maybe even your own parents, right, and your friends. And I know in, well, for example, the community in which I assume you grew up in, there's a lot of external, like you need to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer or you're somehow a failure, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
We're not those Indians. No engineers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Well, show fans have been telling me to interview you for years, and so here we are, Final Adel. It took me a minute to get off the block. Some of your insights into depression, motivation, escapism, they really resonate with me, maybe with past versions of me, if that kind of makes sense. Absolutely. I was never addicted to video games or anything like that, but I think a lot of us...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, that makes sense. When I see somebody on Instagram on a travel vacation, I don't get depressed. I don't even care. I can do that. But I know a lot of my friends are like, they see that and they sigh and then they like... lament about how that's never going to be something they can do because they're just out of college or whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
These panels behind me being crooked is driving me nuts. Speaking of needing therapy, that is driving me insane, and I hope nobody else can see it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And I don't know how to fix it. Clearly the camera's like a little off. I'm tempted to also leave it just to watch a thousand people upvote the one comment that's like, what's up with the crooked panels in the background? It's definitely the camera because the whole thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
It's not even the panels. The camera like moved a slight bit off center. It's just absolutely annoying.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And for that reason, I'm going to leave these crooked for the rest of the show. And then the other reason is because I have no idea how to straighten the camera without taking a bunch of time and wasting your time, which I'm not going to do. Yes, that was great. And I appreciate that. I was going to edit that out, but now it's like we got to leave that in. Yeah, right. Top comment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
What's up with the crooked panels?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah. Oh my goodness. That is so dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. That is incredibly dangerous. I'd love to discuss the sense of purposelessness that I think a lot of people are feeling. I know we're kind of already edging into that, but... I've read statistics that porn addiction is on the rise.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
No surprise with the availability of porn having gone through the roof in the last, you know, 10 or 15 years. Suicide is on the rise. You mentioned that, especially among men. I think also, especially among Asian Americans. And that always confuses me because in the UK, Indians are Asians. And in the US, Asians are Orientals. But we don't say Oriental because it's a little bit gauche. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
So I'm going to assume that means just everybody who's not... It's not white. Suicide is up. I don't know. This is horrifying because that means if you're like 18 to 24, the most dangerous thing in your life isn't even your car anymore. It's yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, I appreciate the clarification there because it's such a big topic. This is part of the problem, right? Like guys are sitting around going, okay, I should probably exercise. You know, I should probably study something for my career, get certified, I don't know, whatever, like Microsoft certified in something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
That makes me feel worse, actually, because it's like, well, I'm supposed to feel happy. If you told me I was supposed to feel crappy, like I get in law school. First year is horrible. And everyone's like, it's supposed to be miserable. Then it ends. And you're like, okay. So when it's miserable, you go, everyone's miserable. It's supposed to be miserable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
It's much better than somebody being like, wait, you're not having the best time of your life. Everyone else is having a great time. What's wrong with you? You're the only one that's miserable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Of which we're not getting a whole lot of. Yeah, I guess if getting purpose externally worked, then tiger parents, whatever the Indian version of that or the white person version of that, that would work really well. But it doesn't. But it doesn't.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
So, you know, I'm watching this on YouTube, but for the past three hours, all I did is watch like,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I feel like I might be talking about something separate here, so stop me if I am. But when I was young, when I was like eight or nine, a friend of mine who I grew up with, who I saw recently, reminded me of this. He's like, you're doing exactly what you wanted to do as a kid. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You're talking on, I mean, it's not the radio, it's the modern equivalent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And I was like, oh yeah. And he reminded me of how We used to build FM transmitters in the basement and got plans and went to Radio Shack, which doesn't exist anymore, and soldered the thing together and put an illegal antenna on it that we fished out of someone's garbage and tried to figure out how to power it. And the guy at Radio Shack was like, this is definitely illegal, but whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
crappy stupid gaming things on youtube that didn't further my career or actually teach me anything other than how to farm for gems and warcraft or something and like i need to get my shit together but also i had a pretty good time watching three hours of youtube eating cheetos by the palette you know like what do i do where do i start chipping away at this massive problem
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
We're like 10 or 11 or 12 whatever years old. And then it was like decades went by or a decade at least went by, decade and a half. And I became an attorney of all things, right? And my friend was like, I never saw that coming. And I'm like, I'm thinking, I never wanted to do that. What happened?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And I remember even when I went to law school, one of the reasons I went is because I was like, I just don't know what else to do. I have no idea. But the whole time, and when I started doing this, the podcast, I was like, this is awesome.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And then it reminded me that I always wanted to do this kind of thing, but the signals had been so drowned out by, you can't make money doing that, that's not a real job, that's something one in a million people get the chance to do that, yada, yada. I forgot about it. Not I put it aside. I literally forgot about it, forgot it even existed.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
The pressure is real. I'll never forget, I wrote a letter of recommendation to Michigan Law for this Korean kid who I knew who said his mom literally told him, I'm going to kill myself if you don't get into this school. Imagine the pressure. Insanely unreasonable pressure. And then he didn't get in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I'm pretty sure she didn't actually kill herself as a result, but like, I too would live in my parents' basement if I thought I was an abject failure because I didn't get into like Harvard Medical School and that was their dream for me since I was a little kid, even though that is patently unfair.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
By the way, I'm sorry I'm hung up on this. Six feet, six figures, six inches. Or six feet, six inches, six figures. Sorry, I don't know why I'm hooked on that. I'm short by two inches and I'll let everybody guess what I mean by that. Height, in case anyone was wondering.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I was trying to make a joke that didn't work out so well, but hey, the science is important.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
is hosted by my friend Scott Johnson, who's naturally curious and gives his guests the opportunity to share how they've really felt during some of their most surreal experiences. What they did in the morning before an earthquake, what song was playing as a gunman entered, was their stomach growling as they hid? Guests share everything they remember about their crazy, crazy experiences.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I would love to see the age curve because it's like college, 10 to 15 minutes. I mean, warm up maybe. And then it's like fast forward to 44 and you're like... five to seven minutes. Is it more like five or is it more like seven? That's the average, right? So there's a lot of people under that bar. And like, I don't even want to ask what it's going to be like when I'm 60. It's going to be like sex.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, that actually, that absolutely makes some sense. That definitely could be the issue. I want to be conscious of time here. I want to talk about emotion, especially emotion among men, because we really don't allow men to have that many emotions in society. I'm tempted to say we don't allow men to suffer, but is that something I've heard from you? Because I feel like that's...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, I mean, look, I exercise all the time. But if I'm putting myself in the shoes of a guy who wasn't exercising, which is like three years ago, I was just eating Chinese takeout. And I was like, I'm too busy. I have kids. It's a pandemic. I was just like, huh, I don't really want to. I don't want to do it. My friend started a personal training company that was actually kind of my idea.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, I was going to say anger is one of the most common emotions that like my dad basically has two emotions, happy and angry. It's like he gets frustrated or sad. It just turns into anger like he doesn't even have the other channels. Right. They're just all blended into the anger channel.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Largest chain of gyms in Canada. And he's like, oh my God, pandemic. We got to close. I'm going to go out of business. I'm going to go bankrupt. Worse off, even if I survive this, my staff's all going to leave because they've got to work and I can't pay them. And so we came up with the idea that he should have them all work online training people
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
You must see some pretty heartbreaking things as a therapist. Applying to 300 jobs and getting one interview is bad, but I can imagine that's just like the tip of the iceberg. Do you talk with a lot of incel type guys or like the toxically masculine guys who front all the time? Yeah, absolutely.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
over the internet and it turned out to be like a massive success. So he gave me free personal training for like for life kind of. And I was like, no, thanks. He's like, what are you talking about? People pay thousands of dollars a month for this. You're taking it. I'm making you do it. You're obviously you need this. You're like, you gotta lose like 60 pounds. And I was like, I'm fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Man, porn addiction is really just insidious and pervasive. I recommend switching to consumerism. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. Those are the ones who make this show possible.
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All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are all searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. You can also always search for any sponsor using the AI chatbot on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash AI. And if you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, you can always email me jordan at jordanharbinger.com.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I am more than happy to surface that code for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. All right, now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Alok Kanoja. The incel thing for a while was sort of an obsession of mine, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Because I remember the genesis of this community online and seeing the most hateful stuff that I'd ever seen in my life being posted on the incel message boards. This is maybe like 10, 15 years ago now. And there was a guy on one of the boards named Elliot Roger who ended up killing a bunch of people and murdering men and women with, I think, like a machete. It was really horrifying.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And I remember just the very beginning of that because I was doing this dating coach thing back in the day. And these guys would all sort of gravitate towards that. Like, these guys can help us meet women. And then they realized a lot of the people in the dating coach industry are just like shameless grifters or information marketers that were like not able to do anything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
So the only thing that actually got me off my butt was him literally like my good friend forcing me to do personal training with a really good trainer and not pay. And I'm like, not everybody has this level of privilege where like some trainers actually going to whip them into shape.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
The pickup artist community. Yes. You get a normal guy and you can teach him how to talk to women. But then you get a guy who's like... Really, really far behind. And you go, oh, gosh, I can't really do anything for this person. They need therapy, not like practice at bars because they're shy and they grew up a certain way. Right. It's like a whole different animal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
There's a lot of anger that came out of this and it started to get aimed at women. And that was really disturbing to see. It still is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah. It is almost like, oh, my God, this person's going to not only are they weird, they're going to murder me. And it's like, no, they're that's not likely to happen. You're more likely to get hit by a car walking in the mailbox.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I agree with you. I've seen this with my own eyes. And what was kind of a surprise for me was finding out that some of the most vitriolic incels, they don't actually hate women. They actually just hate themselves or parts of themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Because one of the questions is, how come guys who have bad breakups don't all turn into incels? And the reasons are legion. However, one of the main ones, in my opinion, is... Let's say I have a really bad breakup and I'm 20. Well, what if I had three other relationships with really great girls before that that were super nice, were still friends, it wasn't a big deal. One, I just moved away.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
The other one was college and we ended up getting jobs, you know, and then date some crazy, horrible person in my early 20s. It's like, wow, well, that I might have a little trauma associated with it, but I'm not immediately going to throw everybody into one bucket. But if you've only had trauma or only had being bullied or negative experiences with women and then rejection, you're right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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You just don't have anything on the other end of the scale.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I've got a good friend who's a dating coach, a really good one for men. And I thought, oh, that's still going on? And he's like, are you kidding me? Because I got out of that business, you know, when I met my wife and I really sort of exited. There's way more demand for that stuff now. Not the pickup stuff, but actual like dating help from mature people who are functional. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Not like dudes in bars picking up chicks. Yeah. It is quite shocking. Those skills used to kind of naturally for many of us just follow, right? You go to high school, maybe you're not great, but then you go to college and you got a buddy who's like, dude, just talk to her. Like, what do I say? And they just tell you to do something stupid and it kind of works.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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And you're like, there's alcohol involved. You're like, yeah, this isn't so bad.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Tell me that before we run out of time, we got to talk about the AI girlfriends that are trying to fill the void a little bit. And I've seen a lot of criticism like, oh, the AI girlfriends, they're going to destroy men's ability to have relationships. And I remember thinking to myself, men's ability to create relationships. What are you talking about? That doesn't exist anymore. This isn't filling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
This is not creating a void. This is filling a void that's been there for literally like 15 plus years and it's getting worse by the day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I was going to say, imagine your AI girlfriend gives you the silent treatment, throws a huge tantrum, breaks some of your virtual stuff, and then has like furious online virtual sex with you. And guys are like, oh, I'm into that. And it's like, you could have like a normal relationship. Human beings are into that, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Can you even imagine... Like guys are getting into this now, right? Because they're like, oh, women, I can't talk to them. They're too complicated. There's too much drama. And then it's like in five, 10 years, it's going to be like, I just can't with AI women, man. They're too annoyed. There's too much drama. They're deleting my loot crates. I'm all for flesh and bones women from now on, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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I'm swearing off the AI chick.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Because it's not fun being a chubbo who eats Chinese takeout five days a week, knows he's not that good looking and could be better and used to be and has a kid like maybe this is a better way to phrase it. I had a two-year-old boy at the time. I mean, now he's five, Jaden. I would play with him on the floor and I would try to get up and I'd be like, oh, hang on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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By these people, you mean like the Andrew Tate Bugatti man influencers are who are resonating so hard? Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, well, they're resonating super hard with a certain demographic and it's really easy to trash these guys. There's plenty to trash these guys for. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. But we need to be listening and paying attention to why these guys are so insanely popular, because that's where the information is. And frankly, they're the only guys out there validating men's concerns, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Some men's concerns right now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
It's tough. You almost have to go through that phase, which hopefully it's a phase, to get through the other side. Look, I would love also if it didn't involve being super gross and aggro for no reason. But if you think about it, it's almost like just dudes hitting the emotional part of puberty really late in the game. Like a 13-year-old's like, yeah. Bitches, this and that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
You just like roll your eyes and you're like, oh, hormones. You check your watch. You're like, it's another two years. But when someone's 25 and is doing that, you're like, I don't want to be around this person. But it's not necessarily. Yeah, it's almost like they're just going through that phase late and it's cringy and it's horrible, but it's horrible for everybody, especially them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And I'm like, I'm 40 and I'm 44, but I was like, I'm 42. It's a little early for the groaning. And it's not just me being dramatic. My wife was like, oh, dramatic much? And I was like, no, everything hurts. I don't even know if I can, like my hips hurt. How do I roll over and get up off this hardwood floor? Like now I'm on my knees on hardwood. And I really needed this competing motivation if,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
100% agree I remember when I played football in middle school there was this like thuggish kid who was from a poor area and he had transferred into our school and his brother showed up and he was also like this kind of gangstery dude and I remember a lot of us were trying to impress him by being like yeah dumb girls they don't know anything and I remember he was like guys guys guys
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Don't even start that talk. I know you don't really mean it. I know you're just trying to front. You think you're hard? Hard guys don't talk like that. Hard guys respect their ladies. And I remember being like, what am I seeing right now? I've never heard this before from anyone, especially a cool, tough guy. And we immediately cut that shit out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Like nobody had another word of that crap for the rest of our middle school career. It was over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
The problem that I found from, again, from like doing the dating coach thing back in the day is you also screen out the high confidence, high quality women that are going, would otherwise have been in your life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Because if you start going, I'm going to devalue people, okay, you just lost the top 20% of confident, well-adjusted, healthy women because they're not going to sit around and deal with that. So now you've got this other pool of sort of equally damaged people that might pair with you based on your antics. And that's not good for either of you. And it's this reinforcing cycle, this negative cycle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I don't know what the original motivation was, right, to be a schlub. But the competing motivation was, man, this sucks and I'm probably going to die early because I'm in this condition. That's pathetic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
confirm your preconceived notions and then this becomes evidence or data and then the cycle continues you see this at the incels right they'll go women will always leave you for a guy with more money or better muscles or whatever and when no amount of convincing that you have is going to work because the guy who says that his wife left him for a dude with more money and because he was like running himself into the ground not taking care of himself or whatever the reason so he's going
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
I have two women that left me for those reasons, and you're telling me, no, it's not true. Like, what do you know, Jordan, you schmo?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
So if you want to hear some disturbing slash inspiring firsthand stories about the thoughts that go through your head while surviving a kidnapping or winning the price is right, What Was That Like? is the podcast you've been looking for. Every story is thoroughly researched and fact-checked so you know even the most unreal stories are actually someone's reality. Listen to What Was That Like?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, but the problem is if you don't know you're doing that, you are stuck.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Dr. K, there's so much more we could discuss. I think I got through like half my notes. I am absolutely, I want to have you back sometime. I mean, we got, thankfully, we covered AI girlfriends in part, but we didn't talk about screen time. And as a parent of young kids, I'm like, oh my God, they're going to all be, they're going to be brain rot from cocoa melon or whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Talk therapy, there's a backlash against that. I'd love to get your thoughts on that. So that's all for next time. But man, thank you so much for doing the show. We'll link to your book, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer in the show notes as well. We didn't even touch on a lot of the notes I had on that. But that's a good sign, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
You know, when we could have talked for four hours instead of 90 minutes. Yeah, that's always chef's kiss as far as podcasting is concerned.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Here's a trailer featuring Tom Harden, once entangled in insider trading, who transformed into Tipper X, a pivotal informant, instrumental in exposing major securities fraud cases for the FBI.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Don't miss this compelling story of a transformation and redemption on Episode 918. Huh, I have a massive craving for Cheetos all of a sudden. Dr. K will be back. In fact, it's already on the calendar. Lots more from him in the near future. All things Dr. K will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. The idea here is to give you something specific, something practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes every Wednesday.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well. It's over at sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.
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1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
If you know somebody who might be able to use what we discussed here today, might have some value for them, definitely share this episode with that person. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Right. No, it's awesome because I'm diving into orange chicken, which is probably not even real Chinese food. It tastes amazing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
wherever you get your podcasts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
That makes sense. It's also probably why we evolve stuff like endorphins. You know, like how people run and they're like, this is amazing. And I'm like, you are on mile 49 and you're in the desert. Your whole body hurts. Or like these marathoners and they're just like, this is great. It's like, no, this is horrific. Their brain is just bathing in endorphins, right? Or something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
There's something else going on where their brain is actually focused on this channel and not all the other channels that say you're killing yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, this is interesting. I've heard you mention games and apps are like an invasive species, right? They're kind of they're in the ecosystem, but we don't really know how to handle them. They're running unchecked. And I mean, we as in like government doesn't know how to regulate them. Our brains are not evolved to deal with them. Our habits are not. We don't have healthy habits around this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Like I know not to start smoking. My friends, if I told them I downloaded some dating app, well, I'm married, but let's say I wasn't and I downloaded a dating app, they'd be like, oh, cool, good luck out there. But if I start smoking, my friends are going to be like, what are you doing? Absolutely. What are you doing right now? And nobody says that about DoorDash.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Yeah, yeah, it's hard to clear weeds or whatever sort of frog you've dropped into Montana. If you've let it run unchecked for 15 years. Absolutely. I went on, I can't remember exactly where I was, but it was probably the Caribbean or something. This is years ago. We were like on a tour of this swampy marshy area. I saw a pig and I was like, what the hell is a pig doing here? It's a boar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And I said, I can't believe you have wild pigs here. And they were like, actually, yeah, we do. They're a huge problem. How are they a huge problem? There's alligators everywhere. You can shoot pigs if they're wild. It's not that hard. They're not super fast or anything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And he's like, no, a hundred years ago, the Dutch brought them over and then like a couple of them probably got out or a boat sank with some pigs on it and they ran onto an island. And now they destroy everything because they dig. And that's like erosions like the enemy in this swampy, marshy area. And there's nothing we can do. It's like we've killed tens of thousands of these things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
And they're just they're hiding in like the jungle. And no one's going to go in there and get them because it's dangerous. Right. There's other things in there that'll kill humans. But it's been going for so long that they've just given up on eradicating the pigs. It's not possible. And these are giant animals. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1080: Dr. Alok Kanojia | How to Raise a Healthy Gamer
These are not like minute parts of our human psyche in the capitalist system that are working really well for other reasons. They're just a pest.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show. A lot of people think that by avoiding things, okay, I'm feeling anxious. Let me do something to make myself less anxious. When you feel that negative fear and anxiety and you engage in an avoidance strategy, you're actually strengthening the anxiety's control over you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
A lot of people think that by avoiding things, they don't really think about it that way. They're like, okay, I'm feeling anxious. Let me do something to make myself less anxious. And that will be an avoidance strategy, which will just re-trigger the anxiety when you're in that situation again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And then you'll become dependent on the avoidance strategy, which is why a lot of people who go to parties and feel socially anxious end up on their phones the whole time. I feel anxious. Let me pull out my phone. This makes me feel a little bit better. And then you're like, why am I even here? And no one's ever talking to you because you're on your phone the whole time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And like, it becomes like a vicious cycle. It's interesting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So, okay. So great question, but we got to like go back a couple of layers to understand this. Okay. So the first is that if you look at change, most human beings are conflicted about change. So I want to go to the gym and work out, but I also want to binge watch my favorite show. And so it's really interesting because what we really try to do is conquer ourselves and
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But you can't conquer yourself. Who's doing the conquering and who's being conquered? So if I conquer my desire, I get really good at overcoming my desires. That's also strengthening my ability to overcome my desire to go to the gym. So it's kind of weird, right? It's weird. It sort of doesn't work. Conquering yourself basically doesn't work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Sometimes it works and sometimes people are pretty lucky with it and things like that. But a lot of people really struggle and they do want to change, but they also don't want to change. And then a lot of times what happens is it's not that we actually want to change. It's that we know we should change.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Now, this is really important to understand because should in the brain does not lead to motivation. So generally speaking, if we look at the concept of should, where does it come from in the brain? It comes from our social emotional circuitry. So if we look at should, when I do things that I should do, what I avoid is a feeling of shame. What I avoid is a feeling of guilt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
What I gain is a feeling of pride, potentially, right? When I do what I should do. The driver for shoulds is our relationship to like other human beings, which is why if there's something you should do in life and no one is watching, you'll never do it. Because literally should comes from where does should come from?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Should is a societal expectation, which even if you believe you should do things, where did you learn that you should do things from other people? So should is fundamentally a social construct and involves the social circuits of the brain. Which is why like when someone's watching us, oh, where do you want to eat? Now I'm going to order a salad when I go out with my friends.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But like when I'm going by myself, it's going to be fried chicken and French fries. I feel seen. Yes. So should is never going to work. I feel attacked, actually. Unfortunately, right? If only we could be seen all the time. Exactly. Man, I'm glad I'm not alone. So want comes from the nucleus accumbens. Want or desire comes from craving and behavioral reinforcement and the seeking of pleasure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So these two things are fighting. And if you are fighting in shoulds versus wants, the only way the shoulds will win is if someone is watching, which is why as people become more isolated, their lives have gotten worse because so few people are watching now that we get away with it. You used to not get away with it because someone was paying attention.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
That's the first thing to understand. Wants and shoulds are like fundamentally different. They can compete, but we need social environment to make them really work. So then the second question is like, OK, if you don't really want to do it, you should do it, but you don't want to do it. That doesn't activate our behavior in the right way because there's a should moving in one direction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yes. It's a great point. We restrict our definition of anxiety quite a bit. Yeah. So we think that I'm not allowed to feel anxious unless I'm afraid of something. Yes. But what I'm hearing is that certain parts of your brain, like especially your frontal lobes, recognize that there is a lot of work that needs to be done and is starting to think through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
There's a want moving in the other direction. So if we want to motivate behavior, right, motivation comes from the nucleus accumbens. We have to have a motivation to do something. But oftentimes it's really interesting. So if you move one level back, do you wish you were someone else? Now, that's something you're motivated towards.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And this is something that we've learned in psychiatry is that if you can't solve this problem, oftentimes moving one level back is where the money is. So now if I ask you, OK, so you don't really want to work out. Fair enough. Do you wish you were someone who wanted to work out? And that's absolutely yes. I wish I was like these other people that enjoyed working out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I wish I was a different person. Now that opens the door to all kinds of things. It opens the door to self-judgment, which is like good in a way, right? Because now we're exploring this stuff. And that's the stuff that gets in the way of you actually engaging, like all these negative emotions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And the other cool thing is that then we can ask the question, OK, if you want to be a different person, how do we go about that? How do you actually change? And then something cool happens once you run down that sequence of exploration. You figure out, OK, this is how I become a different person. Then you become a different person and then working out becomes easy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
It's sort of like mentally loading responsibility. Yes. which is not exactly anxiety, but I think a lot of the circuits are the same or the experience of it is the same.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, it's a beautiful story, by the way. So I think you're right that a lot of people don't think you can change. And I think it's very possible to change. And I also think it's way easier than a lot of people think it is. But the hardest work is to not be yourself. So we think we are this particular thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Like we think that I'm like a piece of crap and I'm like fat and I'm overweight and all this kind of stuff. That's who we think we are, but that's not really who we are. It's our current existence, fine. But I think that oftentimes my experience is that changing happens way faster than people expect it to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And the reason that people think it's really hard to change is because no one has taught us how. We learn like algebra, but we don't learn the science of changing who you are. And once you understand that, then like things actually become pretty easy. So I'll give you like just a simple example. You said that sometimes people say, OK, do you want to work out? Yes or no.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Do you wish you were a person who wanted to work out? That question is like 10 percent of the change. Huh. I know it sounds crazy, but like literally in that moment, you are learning to look at yourself in a different way. You are changing the questions that you ask yourself. And the reason that people don't change is because they ask the same question. I should work out. I should work out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And they bludgeon themselves with that. And it never works. So like it's crazy like how asking the right question can elicit such a large change and changing your relationship with yourself and asking yourself, who am I? Instead of forcing yourself into trying to be something like that change in and of itself is gigantic. Like, who am I? What do I really want?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And like, you don't really answer that question honestly. You don't say to yourself, I actually don't want to work. I don't want a career. I'm living my life ping-ponging, not towards what I want. I'm ping-ponging between two negative things. I feel ashamed for not having a career. So you're like, that's why I should have a career. But I really don't enjoy this job. I don't want a career.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And so it's very hard to change if you're lying to yourself. That's 50% of it. So I think the flip side of it is also it becomes way easier to change than a lot of people realize once you stop lying to yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Oh, yeah. This is really important to understand. So first thing is, we'll get to OnlyFans in a second. But I think pornography is, I really suspect it's the worst addiction on the planet right now. And I know that sounds like a really extreme take, because we have people dying of opiates and things like that. So if you look at the statistics, okay?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Back in about 2005 to 2010, the rate of pornography addiction was like somewhere around 3% to 11%. Can you guess what estimates of pornography addiction are now?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Wow. Wow. OK, like it's insane. How do they measure that? Great question. These are surveys. One of the citations I'm talking about surveyed 13000 people, random people, and just ask them, do you feel like you're addicted to pornography? Holy smokes. And 49 to 75 percent. Some studies suggest it's around 66 percent. Let's assume that all those studies are wrong.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
OK, let's assume that they grossly overestimate it. Let's assume that they're like double it. Even then, we're talking about 30 percent or something like that. It's insane. That's crazy, crazy high. The numbers are literally unbelievable. And I wonder if I'm just like misinterpreting the research or things like that. But it's crazy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, it's wild. And I was trying to figure out, like, why? What's changed? And then I tried to understand, OK, what is the neuroscience of pornography? I did a deep dive. There's a beautiful paper that I found that talks about sexuality in the brain. So where does sex exist in the brain? And so it turns out that we don't have a circuit for sex in the brain. Sex affects every aspect of the brain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So it involves so many different regions, involves a ton of different neurotransmitters. And if you kind of think about it, like what is the purpose of human evolution? It is to procreate, right? So our whole brain, our whole physiology is going to be wired towards this goal. And so now what you have is pornography, which hijacks all of these circuits.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And what we're seeing about the addictiveness of pornography is that the more that pornography approximates real sexual behavior, the more parts of your brain that it's going to activate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So I think there's two kinds of worry. There's worry that you're afraid that things will go bad. And then there is the anticipation of future effort. So you kind of know that you'll be OK, but your mind already knows that tomorrow is going to be heavy lip for me. It's going to be challenging for me. There's going to be some amount of suffering that goes into it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So I think that's the biggest change is that pornography used to be passive consumption. There's no interaction. And if you think about how does your brain know you're in a relationship? I know it sounds so weird, but a lot of times it's just people respond to you. People say good morning. People interact with you. So now what OnlyFans has created is the capacity to form a relationship.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And it's such an interesting relationship. People think it's a very unhealthy relationship. In some ways it is, but in some ways it's the best relationship. Because in this relationship, as long as you pay money, this person does what you want. And if you look at what do people want in relationships, It doesn't sound healthy, but what do you want in a relationship?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
You want someone who does what you want them to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
It could be a deal maker for a lot of them too, Jordan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
The feeling of power over another human being. Yeah. Sure, it's like false in a sense, but it kind of isn't.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
If you don't even add the unless. I've worked with these people, right? When you like get behind closed doors and you like talk to them about how they really feel about it, there's an immense sense of power and influence and connection.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
We're anticipating our future subjective experience of difficulty as we solve our problems. And a lot of people think that I won't be anxious unless I'm worried about the outcome. No, you can absolutely be anxious about how much it's going to suck for you to have to deal with that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
This is where, like, when I feel a connection with a chatbot in Indonesia, I don't want to believe it's a chatbot. I want to believe it's a real person. When you see a name in a text message, Like you could be an AI generated image. This could all be false, but that's not what we believe. It's not what we want to believe. Our senses are telling us this is a real conversation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
If you think about it, like we have a vested interest in believing this is real, even if we know there's a possibility it isn't. And then we're getting enough literally sensory input to make it feel real. So let's just start by tossing that out. or like acknowledging that. Now, in terms of how to stop, it doesn't work to just stop.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So for some people, cold turkey can be effective, especially if someone finds out about it and then they're like regulating you. I've been a doctor for 10 years now and a psychiatrist for six. What I have learned is that the first thing to overcome an addiction is you have to want to overcome it. So the willingness, like how do I stop? This is where we go back to the first question, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Do you really want to stop? Tell me why. Help me understand. Why is it important for you to stop? And then we have to ask another question, which is, what would you give up by stopping? And this is the question that a lot of people don't ask. And this is the really important question, because what's driving the behavior is that question. What do you gain? Addictions are not problems.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
They're solutions. This is why we keep doing them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, that's interesting. So do you have a sense of what changed for you over the course of those three years? Why don't you dread it anymore?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What impact does that have on your psychology? It is not good. No, that's terrible. It's awful. So this is where we see body dysmorphia. We see eating disorders. We see rises in depression. We also see rises in social anxiety and everyone is looking at the blemishes on my skin because I myself am not used to seeing them right now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I'm going to take pictures and send them to my friends because I'm using Snapchat or whatever or for dating profiles, but I'm walking into the date. knowing that the person that I am is not as beautiful as the person that they're attracted to. Oh, brutal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And that's just one slice of identity. Then there's all of the other, okay, what kind of stuff pops up on my feed? The kind of stuff that pops up on my feed is the stuff that I am interested in produced by people who are better than me. If I'm interested in entrepreneurship, I'm going to go on the Jordan Harbinger podcast.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And I'm going to listen to some amazing entrepreneur who has done way more than I've ever done. And those are our exposures. And I'm not saying that your podcast is bad. I think it's great. Right. But like we have to understand that these are tools that can help us in a lot of ways and hurt us in a lot of ways.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So that's actually brilliant. Right. So I think that's where like we found the same thing is that people really resonate in a positive way and that these tools can be used for good or evil. They can use to help or hurt. And humanizing successful people is one of the best things you can do on social media. to recognize that even though this person is very successful, they struggle, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Because there's this fundamental idea that these people who are successful are fundamentally different from me. And reducing that gap can be very healthy for people. It's a strong work, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I think a lot of it is the way that we experience progress. And a lot of times our society focuses on outcomes. Right. So the value of studying for a test is getting an A. But that creates a very serious problem. Because if you work hard and you get a B, now your brain is making a calculation that says all of this effort wasn't worth it. And it actually decreases your motivation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, so sure. There's a really fascinating study that looked at comorbid populations of ADHD and depression. So these are people who have both diagnoses. And then they went back and they asked which diagnosis came first. So 3% of people who were diagnosed with a mood disorder, like major depressive disorder,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
When they were diagnosed, let's say, as a teenager with a mood disorder, 3% of them when they're 25 will grow up to have ADHD. Wow. 70% of people who get diagnosed with ADHD will grow up to have depression. But this is out of a comorbid population. So it's not that 70% of people with ADHD are depressed, but this is a study that looks at what comes first.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And for the vast majority of people, ADHD comes first. Once you work with ADHD people or if you have ADHD, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Because our current society is not designed to support people with ADHD. So what these people grow up with is all kinds of challenges that we don't really think of as consequences of ADHD.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
The first of which is by the second grade, a large percentage of kids with ADHD get invited to zero birthday parties. Really? That's terrible. It's awful. So when you're a first grader, what happens? Like you don't wait for your turn in line. You cut. Oh, man, the dopamine rush of going down the slide was so fun. You can't think about anything else. You're running back in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
You push another kid out of the way and then you go. You don't wait your turn. You don't play with other kids in a nice way. You're not attuned to them in a good way. Right. So there's like a lot of social isolation that comes with ADHD.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
That's just one example. The second thing is that kids are really good at judging IQ. Like, it's amazing. So we're really good at recognizing, like, stupid people and smart people. Okay. So this is paradoxically really damaging for an ADHD kid because an ADHD kid knows that they're not stupid. Like, I know that I'm just about as smart as all of my friends. But I cannot achieve what they achieve.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So there's an achievement gap. So even though I'm just as smart and I learn things just as quickly, my grades are way worse. So if you know your IQ is the same, your performance is way worse. How does a child make sense of that? The child says, OK, I'm busted in some way. There's something wrong with me. And they have evidence of this. Right. Because other kids are able to make friends.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But I just know that everyone went to a birthday party and I wasn't invited. Right. So they grow up with this idea that there's something wrong with me. And they're right. It's that people don't understand that this is a neurodiverse individual.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So that core of something is wrong with me, coupled with the lack of academic performance, coupled with the lack of social performance, when all that stuff piles on, they wind up depressed later in life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So if you fall short of your target, you'll actually decrease your motivation. So what you need to do in that moment is study harder. But instead, neurologically, what will happen is your brain will be like, this wasn't worth it. We put in all of this effort and we did not achieve what we wanted.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So let me ask you, Jordan, when you were 33 and you had like 40 percent body fat or whatever, what was your mental state like?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I think there's a couple of other like interesting connections there. One is that people with ADHD do way better in entrepreneurship.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
There's a lot of different reasons for that. So one is that So people with ADHD are very good reactively. The problem is that you need a stimulus from the outside to act, right? This example that you get this text message an hour, text message 30 minutes, text message five minutes away. Getting three text messages over the course for an hour for a neurotypical person will drive them insane. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But for someone with ADHD, they're stimulus bound. So they're like externally motivated. So when you're playing dodgeball... And there's like five people throwing balls at you. If you've got ADHD, you're going to handle that really well. So oftentimes entrepreneurship is less structured. There's a lot of inbound stimulus, which actually activates your ability to focus.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
That pressure is what it takes for you to activate your optimal ability.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So I think that's a very dynamic mindset. So I think the challenge with ADHD is I've worked with plenty of people clinically for whom it's crippling and it's just very impairing. But I think there is a spectrum of severity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And for many of us, and I'm the same way, for many of us, like finding the right environment where we actually thrive in chaos when other people don't can actually be a competitive advantage. There's even a really fascinating study that shows that hypomania in bipolar disorder, 4% of the population is hypomanic and don't even qualify for bipolar disorder.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Instead, what we really need to do is calibrate towards feeling good about what we do, not what our outcomes are. And so with the working out, it's interesting because you mentioned these other advantages, like you notice all these changes to your weight and stuff, but I would bet money that somewhere in there, you started focusing on being glad you worked out that day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
1% of people have bipolar disorder, but 4% of people are hypomanic and are not mentally ill. So they have features of hypomania. It's really weird. But these people's income is lower than average if they have a job and is way higher than average if they're entrepreneurs. So there are all kinds of weird intersections about understanding who you are, understanding how you're wired. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And this kind of goes back to do you wish you were someone else? It starts with accepting who you are and then really thinking about, OK, what are the parts that I really do want to change? And also, how can I craft my environment? to be optimal for the person that I am.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So I would say one of the most important things that has basically helped 99% of people I've worked with is paying attention to how you've been conditioned versus who you are. So one of the biggest sources of frustration is that we strive for things that were implanted within us. They're not really what we want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And so then when we try to go for them, our motivation is lacking, our productivity is lacking, our focus is lacking. And then what happens is we try to biohack, brain hack, life hack ourselves, optimize our nutrition, start taking supplements to fulfill that goal and increase our motivation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Whereas I oftentimes find that like the best way to gain motivation is to really understand truly who you are and what was implanted within you. And if you can separate those two things and start to craft a life based on who you really are and what you want, and that can even mean changing certain aspects of yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But even when we talk about changing the self, are we changing the self to make myself happy? Are we changing the self to make society happy? My parents happy? My spouse happy? So really starting with that, I think, is like the most important thing that leads to lifelong changes. And the best example that I can give you is I had a patient come into my office who was anxious about getting fired.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Because they were like, it's so stressful and I know I'm smart. Sometimes I do a good job, but sometimes like people take credit for my work and like I'm terrified that I'm going to get fired. Right. So they're like, help me fix the anxiety. And so we did this kind of work. And like 18 months later, they quit. I really got worried about this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And I even talked to some of my mentors and like supervisors because 30 percent of my patients will make a career change within about 18 months of like coming into my office. And I started to wonder, am I biasing them? Am I somehow influencing them, pushing them in some way? Am I like encouraging them to do this? Am I screwing them up, basically? Am I like adding my own values?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And there's a lot of data to support that, right? Because when you choose a career at the age of 18, if you go to university, like you don't really know what you want. You have no idea. And then you start building up this life out of what other people tell you you should be. No wonder you're not motivated towards it because you don't really want it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, I see that with tons of high performing people. I've seen it in medical students, too. So like, you know, when I'm mentoring people who are applying to med school or applying to residency, they'll have all this like, oh, I want to help people. You don't need to train for eight years to help people. You can go work in a soup kitchen today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Absolutely. So we ask those hard questions like, what do you really want? Right. It's fine if you just want money and prestige. Like, let's just be honest with ourselves. We're not going to put that in the personal statement.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Like if I was reading a personal statement where someone said, I want to go to medical school because I like science and I want money and I want job security, I would be totally fine with that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I think it's a great question. So let's understand a little bit about what psychedelics do and what they don't do. So as a psychiatrist, I've worked with basically equal numbers of people who have been transformed for the positive by psychedelics and people who have been destroyed by psychedelics. Wow. OK. So let's understand that psychedelics can result in PTSD.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Strangely enough, I see a lot of weird like OCD or generalized anxiety or like sustained mood problems after psychedelics, which I think there's not a whole lot of literature about. It's just clinically someone will come in with an anxiety disorder. I'll be like, when did this start? And they're like, it started when I tripped really bad on LSD. And now I'm anxious all the time. So.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, so I think probably part of it is that there is that noticeable difference. The challenge is that with the emails, you can feel accomplished after 150, but there's no sense of like progress tomorrow because the emails are just back. So it's way harder to get progress. So oftentimes what we'll try to do is help people link the emails to something that is noticeable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
That confuses some people, right? Because we also have all these studies. There's still early stages, but we have a lot of data that shows that psilocybin, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can be very helpful for trauma. We have studies that show it can be helpful. And so then people make a huge mistake. They say, here's all this research that shows that psychedelics can be healing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Therefore, if I am sick or if I'm mentally ill or I'm suicidal, let me take psychedelics and I will be healed. Huge mistake. So we have to understand the mechanism of psychedelics and we have to understand the circumstances that make them transformative in a positive way. If you want to simplify it, psychedelics induce neuroplasticity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So your brain is normally in read-only mode, but we are allowed to edit it. So that's really the biggest thing that they do from a scientific perspective. That's how I'm simplifying it. So then what happens is when you enter into edit mode, what is the circumstance that you're in? So if you're alone and suicidal, the circumstance that you're in is not good. So it can be traumatizing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Whereas if we look at the historical evidence, as well as modern studies of the healing of psychedelics, what we find is that there's a shepherding in both cases. So in these spiritual traditions, you have a shaman who, when you're in that neuroplastic state, rewires you in the right direction. Right. The studies on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy find the same thing too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So over the course of 14 weeks of psychotherapy, we'll have three doses of psychedelics. And when you're doing psychedelics, some of these protocols are very specific. For eight hours, you will have a male therapist and a female therapist who will sit with you and shepherd you through that experience. But it doesn't end there because you had this neuroplasticity, you have this experience.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Then what they do in the next couple of weeks is they integrate that experience into your life. What does this mean about you as a person? What does this mean about your trauma? What does this mean about your relationships? What does this mean about boundary setting? So it puts your brain into edit mode. And then if you shape it the right way, then it can be quite healing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
There is definitely potential to them. I think we should really study them more robustly for mental health. And I think that becomes really important for a couple of reasons, because we're starting to realize now like more about how mental illness forms. And I really love the yogic traditions for this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So there's also some really interesting studies where you can ask someone what their psychedelic experience is like, and you can predict whether they will have a clinical improvement or not based on the subjective content of their experience. So what happens when you trip is predictive for whether you get healed or not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Now, the problem is we can't control what a healthy trip is versus an unhealthy trip. But basically what we found is that if you have an ego death experience, the likelihood of a clinical improvement is super high. So if you're just like out and you're flying around in space or whatever, like that doesn't necessarily correlate with any kind of clinical improvement.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
If I go through these 150 emails, what has come out of that? And that's the value.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But when we break down our sense of self, right? And this is what we're talking about. Like when we're talking about technology, what is technology doing? It's polluting our sense of self. It's giving us this false sense of identity. So when we use psychedelics and we have these ego death experiences, which are very hard to handle, by the way, they can traumatize us too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
It breaks down our sense of our patterns about who we are, the way that we connect to other people. One of the reasons that I love meditation is because meditation can basically induce psychedelic states. The difference is that in the meditative path, it's not clear that they induce them in the same way. So there's probably some variability there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But we know that ego death is a part of meditative experience, too. And then the other thing is that in meditation, we train ourselves way more before we enter the psychedelic experience. Right. So it's like dropping someone in like class five rapids and be like swim, bro, or training yourself up to level one, level two, level three, level four rapids before you go down class five rapids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So there are like some meditation techniques like holotropic breath work, which I'm not a huge fan of, actually, because I think it can be dangerous. There are some techniques that I've done, two examples. One is one where your respiratory rate is 240 per minute. The normal respiratory rate is like 12 to 14. It's very, very difficult to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, sure. And that's valuable, too, because as we look at ourselves and we realize, OK, I just never get enjoyment of this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But when you have a super high respiratory rate, it like does weird things. So definitely don't recommend that you just do that without the guidance of a guru.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I think the main thing to remember is that psychedelics don't create anything in our brain. They activate things in a very unusual way. So they go and bind to existing receptors and activate those, sometimes hyperactivate them in ways that are very hard to do normally. But if we also look at what happens in the brain during meditation, it's very similar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
The flip side of it is like one breath per hour. So there are some practices that can get you there, which sounded crazy, but now we know about free diving and stuff. And we know that human beings can do that, but... The technique that will result in brain death for one person, one breath an hour will be lethal for most human beings. 20 minutes underwater will be lethal for most human beings.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But if you train your physiology in the right way, you can do it safely. So it's really interesting. But in the brain, what starts to happen is we start to build compensatory mechanisms so we don't get damaged by it. And also the changes to carbon dioxide and oxygen levels will induce alterations in how the brain activates. and result in like a psychedelic experience.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Once again, something that you definitely have to do under the guidance of a guru. Otherwise, you will end up with brain damage or die.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So I think the backlash against therapy is somewhat justified. So let's understand a couple of things. So the first is that I think there are a lot of things that we can do to heal mentally and support our mental health that are not talk therapy. So somewhere along the way, we started focusing on talk therapy as the only option.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And I think especially when I work with men, one of the biggest assumptions that we have is that talk therapy is the way. But there's a huge bias in therapy because therapy is primarily about talking. But we also know that 70% of therapists are women. And historically in the field of psychiatry, 70% of patients are women.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So when we're looking at what works, there's a huge bias towards people who benefit from verbal usage. And we know that women are actually better at verbalizing their emotions. And some of that is even due to things like estrogen. So estrogen literally increases your sensitivity to your internal emotional state. So this is why they get judged harshly for things like PMS and stuff like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
It's just literally estrogen increases our biological awareness of what we're feeling. And people who become fathers will have some of these changes too. So I started becoming so much more emotionally sensitive after I had kids. Totally, man. Like I start like crying during Disney movies now. And it used to be like.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, it's weird. Like if you're a dude, it's so confusing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Mufasa dying is the most heartbreaking. Like it affects me every time. Like it's wild.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
There's literally a biological component to our ability to express our emotions. And so somewhere along the way, we started with therapy. And I think therapy is great. I love being a therapist. I think it's really good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's that latter part that makes a difference. I was talking to someone a week ago who's an entrepreneur and we were asking them a little bit about how they find clients. He was saying that he'll spend 40 to 50 hours a week for like three or four weeks of the year sending cold emails, just cold emails. And so it feels awful to do that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And also, especially with a lot of the men that I work with, there are other kinds of work we'll do more body focused, emotion focused, physical focused, because emotions absolutely don't just exist in the mind. In our words, they exist in our physiology.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
We even have some really interesting meta-analyses that show that things like the emotional freedom technique, which I thought was pure BS, in some meta-analyses has been shown effective for trauma. So this is like where they tap on certain parts of your body and they release stored emotions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But in clinical trials, like even though we have no idea how biologically it works, in clinical trials, people improve. I don't think it's all about talk therapy. I think talk therapy is great. I think there are a lot of other methodologies that work for people that are not talk therapy. So there are even studies that show that, you know, exercise.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
There's a recent big study that came out that showed that exercise is just as effective as talk therapy for improving some aspects of mental health. So I think a big part of it is that talk therapy doesn't work for everyone. And then an even bigger part is that we have a very poor system for improvement as therapists.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So if you kind of look at it, like, how do you know that the food you're making is good? How do you improve? You can taste it. You can see how many customers are coming in to eat your pizza. If you look at something like Amazon, we have product reviews. We have metrics that show us that we're performing. psychotherapy has very, very few metrics to show a therapist that they're doing bad.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And the crazy thing is as our field, like we actually discourage this stuff. The number of times I've been in supervision and like my business mind is confused by some of the stuff that I hear from my fellow therapists. If a patient comes in for one appointment and never shows up again, And then you're a therapist and you go ask your therapist, hey, I had this patient who didn't show up again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
We're going to construct all these like psychoanalytic, oh, they weren't ready for therapy. You didn't do anything wrong. It's like some kind of weird, like emotionally supportive kind of group. No one is ever saying, and it's even like sometimes an ethical violation to track that patient down and say, hey, what did I do wrong?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So we have no basic system of like customer feedback in the field of therapy. And so what that results in is a lot of therapists who like don't realize when they're making a mistake. I think what we have is a field of people. Some of them are not very good and some of them are very good. And we don't have a good system for the people to be able to tell the difference.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yes. And I think there's another like really challenging part, which is that sometimes I think that people who judge therapists as bad are doing a bad job as patients. And this is something we never talk about. We never say that the patient is doing something wrong, whereas like absolutely the patient can do wrong things. So I'll give you just one quick case.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So someone was saying, I didn't make any progress in therapy for two years. And then I switched therapists. And this therapist gives me no agency. They don't talk about what I want to talk about. They're very insistent that I just do this thing. But like, I feel like they don't care about what I want. And then you'll post this on the internet, right? Which is where the backlash is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And you'll get a bunch of other people who will say like, yeah, screw that therapist, find a different therapist. Whereas as a therapist, I'm looking at this and I'm saying, hold on a second. You had two years of unproductive therapy and you probably did what you wanted instead of what you needed to do. And now the second therapist is like, hey, what you wanted to do didn't help you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But he actually doesn't mind because that is worth like hundreds of thousands of dollars of business, right? Which is why we get so much email, by the way, because someone on the other end is spamming us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Let's do something else. And so there's a lot of nuance there where like, you know, it's really challenging. But sometimes as a therapist, the way to help someone is to like face the difficult stuff. And some people do not like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Hold on a second. Whose responsibility is it for you to keep coming back? I see. See, now what you're doing is really subtle. You're making this very interesting tightrope that you want the therapist to walk. Right. Where they need to like push you, but push you the right amount because otherwise you're going to leave.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah. So I think it's super challenging. I know it sounds wild, but a big part of this, I mean, I've had plenty of patients who don't take responsibility and don't do their part. And we don't say that often enough.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things, and I think people don't do this enough, so one of the biggest things is talk about how the experience of therapy is going for you. So if you feel like you're not making progress, tell someone. Tell your therapist, hey, I've been coming here for six weeks. I feel like I'm not making progress. Or I've been coming here for six months.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I feel like I'm not making progress. So there's a really subtle thing where patients want to make their therapists proud. And oftentimes making them proud means pretending we're getting better. And I think that doesn't help anyone. And saying, hey, I'm not making progress. So this is what's working for me. This is what isn't working for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And then I think this is where there's like almost a really important test for a therapist, which is how much responsibility does the therapist take for that? And sometimes if they say, well, if you're not making any progress, that's your problem. This is where I think we get to your point about hold my feet to the fire, but also encourage me and teach me in the right way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So I think that there's a lot of shared responsibility and it's kind of like if something isn't working, you got to talk about it. That's the most important thing to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yeah, so the first thing to understand is that screen time is not homogenous, right? So like playing a video game, the kind of video game you play, whether you watch YouTube, whether you watch short form or long form, all that is like very different. I literally wrote a book about her. So How to Raise a Healthy Gamer is all about guiding parents and helping them understand this problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
I think the biggest thing is that screen time is not monolithic. And the second thing is that to remember that all of the addictions around screens, we get addicted because they are doing something for our brain. So the problem with screen time addiction is when you become dependent on the screen to fulfill that need.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So when pornography becomes the main way that I satisfy myself sexually, that's a problem. When social media becomes, when I stop living my life in the real world and I start existing on social media exclusively, that becomes a problem. So I'd say the biggest thing about a healthy approach to screen time for kids, if I had to summarize it super fast, It is build a fulfilling life for them as kids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So they should be doing some kind of sports. They should be socializing. They should be expressing themselves creatively, studying. And then the screen can be added on top of that. But it should never be a substitute for parenting. And there are other challenges here where like oftentimes we use it. I sometimes use a screen as a substitute for parenting because I don't have the bandwidth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
It's really hard to be a parent right now. So a lot of times parents will ask how much is too much. Well, it depends on what else is going on. So I've worked with some kids who will, you know, use screens for 20 hours a week and it's totally fine because they're doing everything they're supposed to be doing. So I think it's more about building positive stuff and then screens can be after that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But generally speaking, I don't advocate for any regular use. So my kids will be screen free, generally speaking, four days out of the week. And I actually rather like a binge approach to screen usage where we'll like plan something. Right. So like this Saturday, what are we going to do as a family? We're going to go play putt putt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And the next weekend, it's like we're going to have a Smash Brothers party or a Mario Kart family party. You know, we're going to play for like three hours until bedtime and we can stay up extra late. So I think that there's a way to like model usage. And it's kind of like the porn addiction where we don't want second screen usage.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
The most damaging screen usage is the screen usage that permeates our day. But keeping it localized to a particular area and time for a particular goal, I think is totally fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So it's a great point. 40% of kids, I think, grow up in single parent households. The numbers are not in your favor. And it's a really good point that is it the screens themselves or is it also? And the answer is it's both.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
It's the screen because the screen does have a particularly damaging effect, but it's also the circumstances and risk factors of the household that contribute to that mental health decline.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yes. The purpose of answering fan emails for you, the incremental difference is pretty small. But for the 11th person who gets a response, it's huge because they're excited.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
No, I think a lot of people resonate with the idea of an endless amount of crap coming into your email.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Yes. The idea that the trauma is incorrect is actually incorrect. When you have a negative experience, our brain is wired for survival. So the first thing you have to understand is that the brain does not weight positive and negative experiences one to one. Okay. Our brain is designed to weigh negative experiences way more heavily than positive experiences.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So if you and I get into a fistfight, let's say you break a bone and I don't. That's a win in my column. But then if I get into another fistfight and I break a bone, that's not like even Steven. That's like if breaking a bone in the way that we evolved is like a lethal injury. So food poisoning is lethal. Not anymore, but in the way that we evolved, food poisoning was lethal, potentially.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
We're biased against losing things. So we have this thing called loss aversion, right? Which is if you ask someone, hey, if I give you a 50% chance to win $250 or a 100% chance to walk away with $100, which one will you pay? Yeah, I'm taking $100. You're taking $100, right? So our brain is wired that way. You're talking about the Sunday scaries or whatever. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So our brain has a unique ability to feel future pain in the present. Tell me about it. That's the story of my life. I think a lot of people listening can relate. Right. So my favorite example is the last day of a vacation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
My favorite hobby is ruining that last day of the vacation. Technically, you're on vacation. You get a whole day to enjoy yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But that's not what you're doing. No. You're thinking about going back. And the interesting thing is that we know that hypotheticals are capable of activating our amygdala, which is our fear center. Right. So a hypothetical will make us feel fear in the present. It's not a hypothetical fear. It's like we feel the pain in the moment. Yeah. And that's the way that our brain works.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
But we cannot feel a hypothetical pleasure in the moment. We can have some degree of anticipation. Yeah. You can be paranoid about a car crash, but you can't imagine going to the movies and then get a rush of dopamine. It doesn't work like that. You actually have to go to the movies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
It's wild, right? So there's a fundamental imbalance in the brain. So our nucleus accumbens, our positive emotions cannot be activated by hypotheticals, whereas our negative emotions can be. We get robbed. This is what's really important about trauma is when we have a negative experience, our brain, for survival reasons, warns us against that experience.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So now if I've had one car accident, we literally know that it creates something called hypervigilance. So you become hyper aware when you go into the car, because most of the time when we're in the car, we're not paying attention to the car, right? Even when we're driving, a lot of that stuff is done on autopilot. You're not consciously thinking about everything all the time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
And so what happens with people with trauma is that their brain hyperactivates because it's had this negative thing. It's hypersensitive to potential problems. And we feel really, really, really bad. Now, our treatment for that is usually something called exposure and response prevention. That can be pretty useful where we expose ourself to the thing and then we prevent the response.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Our body will start to acclimatize to it. The tricky thing that a lot of people trip up with is that even when you go driving, you may not be doing response prevention. You're actually panicking and you're not really able to calm down. So it's almost like it's re-traumatizing, which is why it persists for so long.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Every time you drive, you're not able to calm yourself down and have a more neutral experience. All it does is ramp you up and then you feel paranoid. You start to use avoidance strategies, which is not actually response prevention. That's the biggest mistake people make.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
Absolutely. I think that's what a lot of people discover. So the people who end up healing from it discover ways to expose themselves to the dangerous situation and then acclimatize to it so that it no longer triggers that response. Because remember that anything that we do that doesn't reward us and that reward can be negative. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
So every time I play with a dog and I don't get bit, that will slowly extinguish the response. The biggest problem that a lot of people run into is that when they experience the response, they'll use an avoidance strategy. They think that they're, oh, I'm exposing myself and so shouldn't that fix things?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1114: Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence
No, it's actually the opposite because now what you're doing is when you feel that negative fear and anxiety and you engage in an avoidance strategy, you're actually strengthening the anxiety's control over you, right? So when the anxiety acts... you act in a different way. So that actually strengthens the anxiety.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
And so I want you to take a listen to the extraordinary Dr. K. What a lot of people don't realize is that you have a certain capacity for pleasure and behavioral reinforcement when you wake up in the morning. You have only a certain number of units of pleasure and behavioral reinforcement.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
So our dopaminergic circuitry in the brain, in this part called the nucleus accumbens, basically this is what gives us a sense of pleasure and also reinforces our behavior. So the problem with dopamine is we wake up in the morning and our dopaminergic stores are full. So what happens is we have a reserve of dopamine.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
And if you want something with delayed gratification and your dopamine stores are high, you can work a lot. But then when you get the payoff, since you have a bunch of dopamine, you get a strong dopamine release and then you feel really good. So the way that this works is like, I want you all to think about this. Let's say I wake up first thing in the morning and then I work for four hours.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
And then what is the reward, the subjective reward that I feel after four hours of work? It's really positive. Yeah. Then if I use technology for four hours, it's kind of whatever. But if I use technology for the first four hours of the day, And then I try to go and do work. You're not going to. You're not going to.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
And even if you finish the same amount of work, you will not experience the same level of pleasure because your dopamine has literally been depleted. Got it. So the way that I kind of describe this is imagine that you have a lemon that is full of juice. Yep. So at the very beginning, when it's full of juice, a small squeeze gets you a lot of juice.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
But by the end, you have to squeeze a lot to get very little juice. This is how dopamine is in our brain.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
Yes. So technology is like a hard squeeze. So if we use it first thing in the morning, we squeeze the lemon really hard and we get all the juice out. And then you have nothing left to feel good about because all of your dopamine stores have been depleted.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over
We were on our BlackBerrys, like checking emails.