81. How to Take a Dopamine Detox

In Episode 81: How to Take a Dopamine Detox, Dr. Stacy Heimburger dives into the powerful concept of resetting your brain's reward system with a dopamine detox. Overstimulated by constant sources of quick pleasure like food, social media, and TV, many of us find ourselves craving more and more dopamine hits. Dr. Heimburger explains how stepping back from these triggers can help restore mental clarity, emotional balance, and a healthier relationship with dopamine. Tune in for actionable steps, tips, and advice on how to begin your own dopamine detox journey today!

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Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast, everybody! I’m Dr. Stacy Heimburger, SugarFree MD, and today I want to talk to you about something I’ve just been hearing a lot about lately, so I wanted to chat about it, and that is this idea of taking a dopamine detox. Now, if you’re like, "What? What are you talking about? What is that?" you’re not alone! OK, dopamine is one of our feel-good chemicals in our brain, and it is in the pleasure, reward, and motivation arena. It drives us to seek out things that feel good, so we get a lot of dopamine from food, social media, shopping, all of this.

There’s actually an amazing theory that I love, which suggests that people who have a really hard time with overeating, or just eating too much because it tastes too good, actually have a dopamine regulation problem, or dopamine dysregulation. I happen to personally think this is brought on by all of the processing in our foods. Like, the food companies do that on purpose—they overstimulate our dopamine so that their food becomes really almost addictive. We get such a dopamine spike from all that processed sugar and processed food that our brain really seeks that out next time. Some of the GLP-1 medications actually re-regulate our dopamine, so you’ll hear people say, "Oh, I just don’t crave that anymore," or, "That didn’t taste as good to me after I was on those medicines." I think this is why.

Dopamine is a chemical in our brain responsible for pleasure, reward, and motivation, and it drives us to seek out those things that feel good. If we get a dopamine hit once, we’re going to seek it out again. So, if we’re constantly hitting that button—dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine—it’s like any other drug, right? We’re gonna keep needing more to feel as good. We start to overstimulate the dopamine centers, and then we need more and more and more and more.

So, this idea of a dopamine detox is that if we very mindfully and purposefully restrict the amount of dopamine we get for a week or so, we can reset our baseline. It’s the same idea as if you stop taking a medicine or a drug, like a drug holiday, and then the medicine will work better when you start taking it again. This is the same principle.

Every day, we are bombarded with quick dopamine fixes. It’s everywhere. So, it’s not always easy to do this. It goes the whole gambit—like sugary snacks on people’s desks, all the food in your fridge, that vending machine, that Instagram scroll, that little Facebook message, whatever it is. The new show that just dropped, the whole series on Netflix that you can binge-watch. It’s all there, and it’s fun at first, but it can really build up. When we don’t get those quick fixes, we can feel bored, anxious, or kind of down. We can start turning to other sources of dopamine, like compulsive eating, compulsive behaviors, or overdrinking.

By doing this detox, it’s like a little reset for our brain with the idea that we can recalibrate and rediscover some more sustainable sources of pleasure.

How to Know If You Need a Dopamine Detox

So, how do we know if we need one of these? If you’re really restless without constant stimulation—like if you’re just trying to sit still and you’re like, "How long does it take for me to reach for my phone or turn the TV on?"—does that sound like death to you? That might be one sign if you really need that constant input.

Another sign would be frequent cravings—are you finding yourself reaching for junk food or something else all day long? I remember this was one of my first signs that something was wrong with my hunger. I was hungry every two hours. I was craving food every two hours like, "That can’t possibly be right." I think it was a dopamine problem.

Difficulty focusing is number three. Do you start something, but your mind keeps wandering to your phone or other distractions? And number four would be a lack of enjoyment in simple activities. Things that used to make you feel good—like taking that walk—just aren’t doing it for you right now.

So, if any of those sound familiar, then maybe our reward system does need a little reset.

How to Do a Dopamine Detox

This might sound awful, so if you don’t want one of these, it’s OK, and you don’t have to do a whole week or anything like that. We could just start with like a day. If this sounds just like, "I’m not trying to hurt you, but I am just giving you some food for thought that maybe this might be a good idea," the worse this sounds to you, the more you might need it. So maybe just think about it.

The first thing we want to do is identify our dopamine triggers. So, is it social media for you? Is it junk food? Is it TV? Is it caffeine? Is it alcohol? Like, is it that glass of wine at the end of the day? Just identify what might be your trigger here.

Next, we need to set our detox timeframe. How long do we want to do this? Do we want to do a day, three days, a week, or maybe more? I’ll tell you, I think buying was one of mine, and so I’m on a very aggressive "no buy" for 2025—a year-long shopping detox. I’ve been relatively successful. There have been a couple of very small purchases, but I’ll do a whole wrap-up at the end to see where I found a loophole and used it.

Now, I don’t know that I could give up my phone for 24 hours, but I certainly couldn’t do it for a year. Set your timeframe, figure out what will work for you.

Then, number three, we’re gonna eliminate or reduce the triggers. We’ve got to cut back. For me in 2024, I started reducing my sugars. I took Amazon off my phone. I 100% reduced my Amazon purchases by doing that—not nearly as much as I had before, but that was a good step. So start reducing those triggers. You don’t have to go cold turkey unless you want to, but this might be something where we take the one night off Netflix or we take one hour after dinner before we go to sleep where we stop social media. We can start weaning down.

Number four, we’re going to fill the void with a natural dopamine booster. So maybe instead of scrolling on Instagram tonight, I’m going to go for a walk instead. Or, instead of buying anything tonight, I’m going to journal or write or listen to music.

Number five, once our detox is over, let’s not go hog wild if we can help it. If we’ve been gone a week with no social media, let’s not spend all day on social media. Maybe we still do like, "I’ll only do an hour a day," or something.

Why Do a Dopamine Detox?

With fewer distractions, you’ll have some increased mental clarity. This will help for those of you like me who feel easily overwhelmed. It’s going to increase simple joys and pleasures—which, I know it sounds hokey when I say it out loud, but it’s really lovely. And then, it’s going to give us a little bit more self-control and act as an emotional reset. So, if we’re seeking out all of these dopamine hits for some emotional comfort, maybe it will show us where we need to give ourselves emotional comfort instead of masking it with dopamine.

Recap

To recap, a dopamine detox helps clear our mind, improve our focus, reconnect with simple things, build a little bit better self-control, reduce our cravings, and see where our emotional eating or emotional buffering is happening.

If you’re ready, I want you to try 24 hours and let me know how it goes. I’d really love to hear how this works for you if you’re open to it. And I love doing this with a friend for some accountability, so why don’t you take a friend along on this, and you can do it together?

Let me know how it goes! Until then, I’ll talk to you next time. Bye, guys!