Babbling About: I Thought I Had ADHD… But It Might Just Be Dopamine Addiction

#214: What if the real dopamine hit lands before anything good even happens? We pressed pause on social media for Lent and followed the trail into how anticipation drives our reward system, why constant pings can flatten motivation, and how a slower life can quietly rewire focus. Along the way, we talk candidly about ADHD questions, a short Adderall trial, and the confusing overlap between true attention disorders and a brain saturated with novelty.

We dig into the science in plain language: dopamine as the fuel for pursuit, not just pleasure; how slot machines, inboxes, and infinite feeds hook us with maybe; and why tolerance builds until the same habits feel empty. Then we get practical. From turning off nonessential notifications to batching messages, logging out of apps to add friction, and swapping fast hits for slower rewards like reading and walking, we share the tools that actually lowered our urge to scroll. We also connect the dots between gut health, key nutrients like iron, B6, and magnesium, and a steadier neurochemical base for mood and attention.

If you’ve been feeling scattered, irritable, or oddly bored while constantly stimulated, you’re not broken—you’re adapting to an environment engineered for attention capture. Rebalancing isn’t about doing more with slick productivity hacks; it’s about wanting less, on purpose, and giving boredom the room to spark depth and creativity again. Listen for a grounded mix of personal story, approachable neuroscience, and small steps that add up to a big reset. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs a scroll break, and leave a review to tell us what slow habit you’re trying next.

Transcript

Why I Quit Social Media

Johnna 0:00

What is up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Babble's Nonsense podcast. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about my little two, possibly three, I don't even know what week we're in, um, stint off social media and kind of how that let me research our dopamine responses. Um, if you haven't heard that social media, you know, increases our dopamine or causes dopamine spikes, then you've probably been living under a rock because it is definitely a buzzword these days. So yeah, that's what we're gonna dive into a little bit is nerding out on some dopamine. So let's get into it. All right, guys, welcome back. So, like I said in the intro, we are gonna talk a little bit about dopamine. Um, so I want to expand a little bit on why I have decided to give up social media. So, you know, I mentioned on this podcast before that I'm trying to get more into my faith and just learn more about Jesus and all the things. And me and my friend Lori, um, we do discussions on our Bible studies and stuff like that that we do. And one of those things is um Lent. And I, you know, I do go to church. Sometimes I watch church from home. You don't have to be perfect. Um, but I was like, what am I gonna give up for Lent? And then I had to like try to understand what Lent truly was. And y'all don't come after me. I was not someone who grew up in a church, and it's something I'm, you know, I'm not gonna say everything perfectly, and I may get it wrong, but the biggest thing for me, like I kind of knew the the the basic principles of Lent, like giving up something that you would consider, you know, quote unquote an idol in your life, or something that may be distracting you from having a closer relationship with God and and that, and then to also understand and appreciate the sacrifice that he made for us, which is one of the cooler things that I feel like I didn't realize as much as like just giving something up, because that's one of the things that we think about the most. So I was like, what am I gonna give up? Because there's not a lot that I really do. Um, so I was like, let's give up social media. I've been wanting to do a social media break for a while, but I keep making excuses, just being like, well, there's the podcast and I have to post and yada yada yada. But then I was like, okay, there are other apps where you can post from. They have the edits app for Instagram, cat cut for um TikTok, where you don't have to be in the social media platform itself to post. I was like, so you can still post your podcast, like stop making excuses. So what I did first was I deleted all the apps off my phone. So like obviously I still have my social media profiles, but I'm just not actively on social media. And I deleted all the apps off my phone. So Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, leaving my Instagram Messenger because that's how we communicate for book club. But um I then start getting more notifications than I have ever gotten. And I'm like, that's odd. Like I've deleted this app off my phone. Why am I now getting more notifications? Um, and before well, before we get into the notifications, like I noticed that first several days, maybe like days one to four, I kept reaching for my phone every couple of minutes, and I was just like instantly obviously put it down because I was like, why am I reaching for my phone? I know I don't have any of my apps, but it just made me realize like how truly addicted we are to our phones. Um, even if I was at work, like just picking it up, like why? So, anyways, that got it it did slowly get better. Um, but I made it like one full week not signing into my accounts and things like that. But then I did. I signed into my account, I'm not gonna lie about it. I signed into my account and it was mostly to clear these notifications because I'm not kidding, like I was getting more notifications than I had ever gotten when I had them on my phone. And so I logged in, cleared my notifications, and then logged back out. Because I was like, I'm not gonna scroll. I'm still gonna keep my promise of not scrolling. So then I actually physically logged out of my um apps and then this time kept them on my phone. And so for this during the second week, I would re-grab my phone, but far less than I was the first few days. And I would then go to the app, and then it was like obviously log in, and I was like, nope, not doing that. It's too much trouble. We're not doing that. So we are doing good, but the biggest thing with me for this is that um that's when it hit me like, okay, this is about more like how hard it is to give up something that you want to do in human form, where you know, when Jesus died on the cross, he did it, you know, willingly and without hesitation. Where here I am hesitating, like, can I make it through Lent? Can I do this? Which which is the bigger message for me, but anyways, I digress. Um going into how this all fits with dopamine in today's world. So we're gonna nerd out just a little bit. Um, bear with me again. This is just from the research, the research that I have done, and doesn't necessarily mean I did the best research. I don't know. It's just from kind of like what I've learned and kind of already knew a little bit. So we all know that dopamine and serotonin, like those are the what they call our happy hormones, and that's where like sometimes like if they're low, you might have depression, anxiety, and things like that. But we hear more about serotonin because you hear a lot about SSRIs, which those are serotonin reuptake inhibitors, medications like Zolov, Selexa. You might have heard of those where people take them because someone's like, oh, you probably just have low serotonin. But we don't often hear about like low dopamine per se. And I've learned a little bit more about it, you know, just being on social media, but also if y'all can remember a few weeks back, I had a whole conversation with my doctor that I talked to y'all a little bit about, where my therapist had mentioned like you may have a little ADHD. I've noticed some patterns in our conversations, and she was like, talk to your physician about it, which I did. And he was like, Well, you know, I could see that. Um and he, but he was he was very honest with me, and he was like, It's really hard in an adult, especially a high functioning, meaning like you've learned to live with it or control it. Um, because when you go to take the the test, which is a questionnaire with a bunch of questions on it, you can kind of answer in your um compensatory response way that you would answer versus how you would have answered it before you learned compensation mechanisms. And I was like, oh, that that makes total sense. And he was like, So the only way I've I personally feel that we're gonna know is if you just try the medication, which I had mentioned to all y'all, like he put me on Adderall. Um I took it for like a week and was like, I just it this is just not for me. Um, I will say it did make my brain, I guess, slow down. I was able to so in my normal day-to-day life, unmedicated, I'm able to um like multitask. I'm able to be working on something at work, like researching charts. And then if I also do mentorship in my job, like if the mentees that I'm mentoring message me, I'm able to like do that while still doing articles and waiting for them to respond. And I and it and it's just worked very well for me. Like I feel normal if I have multiple tasks going, which is probably not quote unquote normal, but what what really is normal? We don't know. Um, but this medication when I tried it, it really slowed me down. Like I was not able to focus on multiple things at once, which I found to be weird because I had always heard from people who took out a wrong college, which I never did, um, that it just made them focus better. And I and so I was talking to my doctor about this when I followed up and I was like, I don't know, like it just makes me feel slower, if you will. Like I feel like I can only, you know, focus on one thing at a time, or but I did notice I was less irritable, I had more patience, and I was just like, I did like those things, but I didn't like how slow I felt. And then it does like at the end of the day, because if it's not the extended release, it's in and out of your system shortly. Um, which I suffer with insomnia, so we didn't try the extended release. Um, but anyways, um, there was a little bit of a crash at the end of the day, which made me feel more tired. And I was like, I don't like this. But after like talking to friends who have ADHD and have taken medicine for a long time, they're like, No, that's a normal body's response. But again, when I say normal, guys, this is a whole spectrum of normal. We don't know what normal is. I'm just using this word because I don't know any other word to use. But my friend was like, no, that's a pretty normal response. That means you do need it. She was like, Because it's not normal for someone to be able to focus on 20 things at one time. Like our brains aren't designed for that. And we think we're focusing on it, but we're not giving everything 100%. And that's sometimes where burnout comes in or just having a low dopamine response in general. Um, but yeah, all that to say how our dopamine gets slow. So we talked a little bit about serotonin and dopamine, but dopamine is our more rewarding neurochemical. So what I've always thought was that when you do something rewarding, and that could be anything, like um scrolling social media, I know that doesn't sound like quote unquote rewarding, but like that's rewarding your brain with something, or like you eat something really flavorful or good or something that you were craving. Um, it could be pretty much anything. Um, but when you trigger that reward response, I used to think that it happened when you got the reward. But per the research that I did, the dopamine spike actually comes before the reward. So it doesn't matter what the reward outcome is, whether it be good or bad reward system, it's what you're doing. So for example, things like playing a slot machine or gambling, um, those types of things, if you think about it in that visualization, like when you pull the slot down for the slot machine, when you pull the slot, that's when your dopamine spikes because you don't know what rewards you're gonna get. You don't know if you're gonna win and you don't know if you're gonna lose. And that's where the actual spike happens, which I was like, oh, okay, well, that's good to know. That's where that logically makes sense with addiction because you don't know the outcome, and that's the whole anticipation of it all, is that that intrigues your nervous system because it's like when you're watching a scary movie or you go to a haunted house. We a lot of us do those things because even though the reward is being scared, nobody likes being scared. You then like it if it's a fake scaredness. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. Um, but in my brain, that's how it works and it makes sense. Um, so doing things like scrolling social media and answering messages or having notifications constantly on your phone, like maybe you have a job where you're constantly getting emails. So that constantness of it all is going to continue spiking our dopamine. So if you think about the slot machine example and how that relates to like getting an email, when you open your email, you have no idea what's gonna be on the other side of it, if it's gonna be a work disaster or it's gonna be, you know, someone quitting or whatever it may be. So your brain is still anticipating like, is this gonna be good? Is this gonna be bad? So that anticipation is the dopamine spike. And then the more we have those, the more, you know, fast-paced society that we live in, the more dopamine spikes we're gonna have. And then over time, if this is constant, which it is constant in our today's society, then we end up lowering our dopamine because think about it like this like weight loss. We all know, like, which I've done a podcast on this before, like the whole calories in, calories out method, and how people undereat, and then you just have to eat less to lose more, eat less to lose more. That's the kind of same response with the dopamine. The more of it you have, the less response you're gonna get from it. So you need more stimulus and more stimulus and more stimulus to get that same response. Another good example that like helps me get a visual a visualization would be like drinking alcohol, I guess you will. Like maybe when you first started drinking, if you waited till you were 21, um, maybe one or two drinks, beers, whatever you drank got you buzzed because you really never had it before. But then let's say you're in college, you're drinking, you know, every weekend and your tolerance goes up, then that one to two drinks that made you buzz before now becomes, you know, four or five drinks that to get the same buzz. So you're chasing that same feeling, and that's the same thing with dopamine as well. You're chasing that feeling, that reward, good or bad, and the more you chase it, the more you need. And so it creates this vicious cycle. And then one may ask, well, how do we fix that? And it's it it can be very hard in today's society. Like I know that I have a job where I can't turn my phone off. Um, you know, they have to be able to get to me because I take care of patients. And that in itself can sometimes, I didn't realize, feel so overwhelming. Um, because I've never been one, like, I can leave my phone in my car and be fine if I'm with friends and stuff. But now, like where I used to do that, like I would leave my phone in the car and I would go in and visit with a friend so that I'm fully paying attention to our conversation. Um, I can't do that anymore with this job. So sometimes it's not as easy, but there are other things we can do, whether that be, you know, going on a social media break or trying to do slower activities that don't spike your dopamine as fast and as much, like going back to the simple things like reading, going for a walk. Like it takes longer for that dopamine spike to happen because the reward system takes longer. So, like, for example, if you're going for a walk and let's say you walk for an hour, that dopamine release may not happen until two or three hours after your walk. Whereas something as fast as scroll every seven to 15 seconds on social media. So going to do a lower dopamine activity or just cutting out things where you can is probably the best advice I could give you since I'm not a psychologist and I'm not, this is just something I was interested in when I was coming off my social media break, which kind of is ironic because me and Minu, I think a few months back had talked about burnout, and the more I was like hearing the symptoms of low dopamine, which are like feeling tired, feeling exhausted, feeling unmotivated, um, difficulty focusing, mental fatigue, feeling restless, or maybe constantly seeking that stimulation, even feeling bored even while you're doing something. Like I know that I've been on social media and been like, I'm bored, even though I'm stimulating my brain. Um, maybe you have difficulty completing tasks. So those are really a lot of signs of low dopamine, but they're also signs and symptoms which can be diagnosed as ADHD. Like a lot of people those symptoms really overlap, which we know that ADHD also has a strong genetic component. But when you think about ADHD, it is a low dopamine um activity in the brain. Now, some of that comes from like your as soon as your brain makes dopamine, it can also be absorbed really quickly, or maybe your body doesn't absorb it all the way. That's where the genetic component comes into it, which interestingly enough, I actually took a genetic test for um like ADHD and depression that looked at the way your body processes serotonin and dopamine, which I was hoping would be back before I recorded this podcast, but I don't think it's going to be back for just a couple more days. So I will update you guys. But it was really cool. Um, I saw this other girl who had ADHD take it so that she wouldn't have to keep trying a bunch of different medications. And what it does is it kind of takes your genetic component and tells you how your brain works with serotonin and dopamine. Um, and then it takes all the psychiatric medications and ADHD and ADD medications and then compares them to your genetics based on the chemical profile of the drug and how it's going to respond in your brain with your genetics so that you're not it it's more of a thing so that you can like number one understand why your brain works the way it does sometimes. And then number two, you're not trying 500 different medications, just trying to get the right one and experiencing all the side effects, you know, which is one downside of, you know, our healthcare system, which not to get off on a tangent on that. But you would think insurance companies would pay for these genetic testings so that you're not, you know, trial and erroring a bunch of drugs. It would make more sense to do it this way, but they don't, and I digress. Um, what were we talking about? Oh, okay. The symptoms of low dopamine and ADHD symptoms overlapping. So going back to the conversation that I had with my doctor, like, you know, he that makes sense what he said now. Like it would be very hard to tell if you just are a low dopamine response person or you just have a low dopamine or sorry, or you have ADHD. So like the low dopamine response could be you're strongly burned out in life, in relationships, in work, because you know, you just have all this high chronic stress in your life, um, versus do you truly have ADHD? So I'm interesting, I'm interested to get this genetic study back and kind of see what it says. Um, anyways, um, and then the last thing that in my research I found, which I kind of felt was cool, was how much like things kind of start in the gut. I don't know if if you're new to this podcast, but I used to love, I mean, I still love it, but like I used to really love um nutrition and things like that, mostly because with my you know, thyroid Hashimoto's, that's what I did in my 20s, is I researched everything I could about it, which I remember now thinking back like the good, so there's this thing called the gut brain barrier and then the gut brain axis. And so a lot of our hormones and um serotonin and um not dopamine, but serotonin are made in the gut and it travels to the brain via um the vagus nerves, which makes sense because how else where do we get these things like when um when I was doing research like to find out that you need like healthy levels of, I believe it was iron, B6, magnesium, and then something else to even develop the dopamine. So how would you do that if the dopamine is mostly made in the brain and you need all these other nutrients and vitamins to help surplus it, then obviously it's got to come from the gut because that's how we intake our food. So it was that I was like, you would think like logically sometimes when you read something, you're like, oh, well, that that obviously makes sense. Um, but it was also an interesting fact because I know a lot of people wouldn't think that, oh, the our hormones are made in our gut. And so we have to have a strong, healthy gut, which is where, like, when I was learning about nutrition and eating very whole clean foods, which I have digressed a little bit from, and trying to get back on that track. Um, it was just interesting enough to be like, okay, wow, gut health isn't everything, like when I was learning about the thyroid, and now when I was learning about this low dopamine response, like here it is again. So maybe we'll do a whole nother like gut episode with Adrian so we can talk about like all the hormones and how important a healthy gut is, because that can be a whole nother topic in itself. But anyways, um, if you're listening to this, just know that your brain probably didn't suddenly become lazy, unfocused, or bored one day. It's probably just adapting to the environment that we live in, which is just having stimulation everywhere. Um, because one of the facts that I'll that I found was that it was researched that we have more stimulation in today's society in one hour of scrolling on social media than humans have ever experienced in like days, even weeks in generations past, which when we think about that, we're just like, well, makes sense. But maybe the solution isn't always, you know, being more productive or trying to find pr productivity hacks or more apps to help us or more stimulation here. Maybe the answer that we're truly seeking is just we've got to go back to the times of doing less, like having less noise and having less scrolling and less constant newness all the time. Um, we have to learn that boredom isn't something our brains are supposed to escape. Um, historically, boredom was the space where creativity and deep thinking emerged. But today, it's like we rarely give our brains that opportunity to experience it anymore. So if you've been feeling mentally scattered, maybe unmotivated, or constantly reaching for your phone like I was, um, it's probably not you personally failing. It could just be biology interacting with an environment designed to capture our attention at every second. Um, and just sometimes maybe the most powerful thing that we can do for our brains is just to step away from it for a little bit. Like, like I said, I know it was hard for me in those first couple of weeks with the social media, but it's actually becoming more normal. Like, even when I click the app, I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I don't even want to be on this. Um, because our attention in this world is probably one of the most valuable resources that we have because we get to control where that attention focuses. And right now in today's society, a lot of things are trying to take that attention, like, look over here, look over there. And I, you know, maybe that's the challenge in today's society. Maybe it's just trying to learn how to take back our attention. Because I think for me, when I stepped away from social media just for the short time that I've done it, I felt like the hardest part wasn't missing the content or the scrolling. I think it was just truly realizing how much of my attention I had slowly been giving away without even noticing it. So maybe that's the challenge that we we we offer up and we challenge ourselves, you know, not to learn how to use all this new technology, but learning how and when to put it down. Because, like I said, our attention is one of our most valuable things that we have. And with the world being as chaotic as it is, like everything's trying to take our attention, like look over here, look over there. And I think the more that we just give our attention to better rewarding systems or slower rewarding systems, we're probably just gonna do ourselves a favor in the long run. But yeah, thank you guys for listening to me nerd out on this topic and definitely babble. Um, I hope we all learned a little something. And if you found yourself thinking like, oh, this is definitely me, then do not beat yourself up too much because obviously this is me. This has probably been everyone at some point or currently. Um, and it's not a personal flaw. I think honestly, it is a little bit of biology interacting with our environment that we live in, and we have to do better at biohacking. Like that's why all this biohacking is out because it's just healthy for us. And yeah. Until next time, guys. Bye.