On instant Gratification ǀ The Global Addiction

Too many people are addicted to instant gratification such as videos games, social media and fast food - this is a problem.

Your body wants drugs like Dopamine and Serotonin to be released into the body, therefore it pulls you towards activities that can provide it. However you should try to not give in to your body - having to  much instant gratification is a bad cycle to get stuck in.

"Drugs such as cocaine can cause a big, fast increase of dopamine in your brain. That satisfies your natural reward system in a big way. But repeated drug use also raises the threshold for this kind of pleasure. This means you need to take more to get the same high. Meanwhile, drugs make your body less able to produce dopamine naturally. This leads to emotional lows when you’re sober." WebMD

Now replace cocaine with any activity that is going to give your instant pleasure and you get an idea of what I am trying to say.

Practically dopamine is an instant gratification mechanism, however giving into the desire for said instant gratification regularly can lead you to become addicted.

This is a serious problem because, if you give in to your desire for instant gratification, your brain - at any point you are not doing something that will deliver the same levels of dopamine as another task you know you could be doing - will attempt to persuade you to go and get that dopamine hit.

This is where it is important you don't give in. It is important to go after delayed gratification. Or, as Jason Fox says, "type two fun" - which is far more productive. Instead of scrolling through TikTok, playing a video game or eating your bodyweight in sweets; read something, do some work or Workout. In the short term this is admittingly not very "fun". 

That is the hurdle most people cannot overcome. But if you face this pain, almost the opposite of a dopamine hit, you will reap the rewards later on.

Consider it over the long term, look at your life how it is, a relatively long period of time. When you come to the end you will you be more happy if you are fit and well read instead of fat and mind numbed by all those TikToks. 

It's not the end of the world doing it occasionally you might think, and you're probably right. The problem arises when you give in and seek this instant gratification, this dopamine, too regularly. Step over the line and you can be sucked in. 

It can become a full fledged addiction, I know because it happened to me. I realised a few years ago that I was being sucked in. I would arrive back from school and sit on Youtube, the evening would be gone in an instant, time I didn't even notice - wasted watching mindless content.

It is extremely difficult to get out of that cycle once you are in it. Go to do some work and your mind instantly tugs you back to that comfort. Fighting it is difficult, you almost go into withdrawal initially, your brain screaming for its next hit of this natural drug. 

But fight it once. Then the next time it will be easier. Eventually by pursuing tasks that were type 2 fun, stuff that would make me happy in the long term, I became far happier and a far better person.

Eventually I forced myself into this situation, I would say to myself, for this hour you can either work or sit and do nothing, Youtube is just not an option. Sometimes you might be tired and just sit there- but this is rare. Out of the two choices your brain might end up picking work. Eventually this will become your new baseline. You will become less reliant on dopamine and realise you don't actually need it at all.

This is a massive net positive for your life. Doing these activities that starve yourself of easy hits of dopamine means you are more happy doing boring, less instantly gratifying tasks. In summary, making you enjoy you life in general more.

This is why ideas like dopamine detox are becoming ever more popular nowadays. People are realising they are addicted and restructuring their lives by avoiding sugar, video games and social media.

You might be thinking, that must be awful, how can anyone live like that- if that is what you think then that is when you know you might have a problem. Whenever anyone suggests exercise to a group of kids, especially teenagers, the vast majority of them respond with complaints, they don't want to face the "pain" they feel like it will make them unhappy. 

It might. But by facing the pain of exercise they will become far more happy. By experiencing the negative you appreciate the positive so much more.

In my opinion this message might be one of the most important for our generation, that is addicted to video games TikTok and fast food, to hear. By not accepting the desire for instant gratification we change our bodies, our minds. We allow ourselves to enjoy our lives so much more without craving a hit of something that has no long term positive benefit to our lives. 

You may think this is to difficult, how can people survive without it, you won't understand until you truly try. Live without it. Force yourself, make your mind the master of your bodies urges. Eventually, by tapering off your dopamine addiction, you will be able to appreciate things that make you happy in the long term and realise in fact you, the one that was so "happy" wasting your time on meaningless things, was the one that was not living.

People always say, "Enjoy yourself," when people are busy or not eating cake, what they don't realise is that there isn't any difference in their level of happiness, they are not suffering, in fact they are as happy, or happier, than you. The only difference is that they don't need cake to make them so.

This removal on reliance on things that, on the whole, are not good for our lives is a good thing. The great thing is now you can truly appreciate your life, be happy with it, and work to improve it further.