I need a dopamine reset.

Old school emails, phone addiction, and is it fall yet?

Hey, hello, how are you?

Here we are again! Our weekly email. Aiming here for a casual catch up, reminiscent of the emails we sent circa 2012. Remember those? Truly the golden age of the internet!

I loved an email back then.

I used to feverishly send my friends and weirdo boyfriend links to culture articles I’d only half read. I was also (apparently, as I just dug into the gmail archives) very partial to sending poetry with the subject line “beautiful poem.”

This one was sent at 10:41 on Nov 12, 2012 to the boyfriend aforementioned. I stand by “beautiful poem” being an appropriate subject line.

A Year Acceptable to the Lord by Christopher Lirette

It started in summer and we drank

ashmilk the pillows were filled

with wisteria a hollow bark rang

from each dog’s mouth the water

was hungry so we threw fish back

to appease it when the daylight

blotted back the dim we read

books to pretend we were not

who we were by autumn we roasted

paper clippings obituaries and ground

them to mix with flour and duckfat

rendered fresh we made meal

to cook and eat this is how we became

our ancestors and we would not worship

false idols we would not lacquer

boxes impermeable to exodecay diffuse

a little each day a little to the worm a little

to the marigold until we were clean

and unbroken a part of kraken and horse

of male and female Each day thereafter

we wrung the ink from our rocks

we ate only flesh found deep

in cumulonimbus clouds which thundered

at our apprehension our tense

secret laughter hungry as I was then

I could have eaten the world you by you

—

His response: “damn, that was amazing.”

Red flag?

—

This morning at the gas station I was cut off by a cartoonishly large red pickup truck. Very shiny, like shimmer lip gloss. The truck swooped right in front of me, occupying the last available gas pump. Not yet caffeinated and therefore indifferent, I parked on the perimeter and waited. Promptly, I grabbed my phone and clicked that maniacal little Instagram icon. Scroll, scroll, scroll. In my periphery, I saw the truck (big as a carnival float, I swear) drive away. I set my phone in a cup holder, pulled into the spot, gear shifted back into park, and then - once again - clicked the icon.

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

AHH, sudden self-awareness! An audible “ugh!” A subtle head shake to snap out of it. What is wrong with me?

I looked up at the clock. It was later than I’d expected. I was meant to be writing.

Starting the day in a dopamine spiral at a gas station was not in my plan.

This is a daily effort for me, an effort I’ve engaged with for years! I quit Instagram in 2022. I wrote about that here and here.

Since getting back on the app I’ve upheld a strict 1 hour per day time limit — enforced by asking my husband to child lock my account so I can’t override the time limit without a password he created and swore to never tell me. I was only pathetic enough to ask him once (I wanted to share my writing and watch a reel shared in my mom friend group chat). He upheld his end of the deal, and then confessed he didn’t remember the password anyway.

All that to say, it’s been an ongoing (three year!) process of recalibrating my relationship with social media and my phone. I’ve come a long way, but I’m a fallible, phone addicted human being like the rest of us. These devices are no joke.

—

In this process of recalibration I’m learning to seek gentler sources of dopamine. Sources that appropriately activate my dopamine system instead of hijacking it.

Yesterday I watched my baby slowly peel stickers off a sticker sheet, satisfied when they eventually came unstuck — turning them around on the tip of his finger. He was intrinsically rewarded by the result of his focus and fine motor movements: a sticker, slowly peeled back until - voila! - it came apart from its sheet. I didn’t say “good job!” just “hm!” with a curious intonation. We studied the sticker together and then unstuck another. And another. Obviously he’s 18 months and his brain is not an adult brain. We’re not meant to marvel at a sticker, but we can marvel at a baby marveling at a sticker!

I’m not a science writer…uhm, I think that’s probably obvious if you read my writing here, but what anyone with a phone and a teeny bit of self awareness knows is that these devices are providing a continuous deluge of dopamine that changes our natural set point and therefore our threshold for pleasure. As explained by Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, “the brain responds to this increase by decreasing dopamine transmission — not just back down to its natural baseline rate, but below that baseline. Repeated exposure to the same or similar stimuli ultimately creates a chronic dopamine-deficit state, wherein we're less able to experience pleasure.”

I’ve found it useful to think of pleasure in two categories: naturally or artificially derived. These are terms I am entirely making up, just fyi. Naturally sourced dopamine hits much gentler than artificial. A spontaneous chat with a stranger at a coffee shop. Turning the last page of a book. Writing a sentence you love. Taking in the moment as you hug your child goodnight. Connection. Completion. Flow. Presence. Beauty that goes beyond the aesthetic: how your grandmother’s eyes crease when she smiles. This sunrise.

Artificially derived dopamine is often numbing, unconscious, and inactive. It requires no effort or action on our end, just our passive attention. Alternatively, naturally derived dopamine asks us to act with intention — to pick up the phone and call a friend, to start a creative project, to climb a hill and feel the satisfaction of getting to the top. Or, in my case, to organize a cabinet.

Artificially derived dopamine doesn’t actually scratch the itch that drives us to seek it out. The tech associated with artificially derived dopamine benefits from that insatiable feeling, always serving us more more more without any effort required on our part. It’s the next button on Netflix and an eternally refreshed instagram feed. It rewards stasis.

A few years ago, when hustle culture was coming undone, when everyone was talking about burnout, when rest as resistance was trending, I led a workshop at a teacher conference (this is a thing I used to do in my old career.). Afterward I dipped into a talk about rest. The woman leading was a local writer and a person I admired. She was talking about whittling wood, her preferred way of resting. She’d brought a number of little trinkets she’d made — a little wooden fork that she passed around the room.

Ultimately, what I remember is feeling sort of called out when she said scrolling on instagram while watching a show is not restful. Rest can be active, she said. Rest might require our full participation. Rest should actually be energizing. I’d say the same of pleasure. It’s not free, it’s not passive.

I want to remind myself of that when my phone calls out to me from my purse instead of after emerging from a dopamine spiral at the gas station when I’m meant to be writing. I can swap the easy dopamine hit for the more meaningful one.

It’s probably not as binary as natural v. artificially derived dopamine, and I don’t mean to feed the growing narrative the natural is always better — but, for me, its a helpful framework, a reminder that I can engage, participate, and take precise action to earn more subtle and sustainable sources of pleasure in any given moment. Lambke called it “enjoying more modest rewards.” I’ll take that please.

I write about this because I’m addicted like everyone else but I endeavor to get off my phone and into the moment more and more, and maybe we can do it more easily together.

—

I also want to tell you: today, the weather dropped below 90. The morning air was breezy! 74 degrees! You may be bored by talk of the weather. I used to be, but summers in Texas require talk, commiseration, for survival.

So many consecutive days of 100+ degree heat. So many moments of heat-induced overwhelm, clipping three kids into their carseats with the sun beating down and emanating up from a concrete parking lot.

The image of a lunchbox, inside a backpack, locked inside a hot car comes to mind. Layers of heat.

—

That’s all.

Love ya! See you next week.

Stephanie