Fact or Fad? What You Need to Know

First thing’s first: There is no evidence that doing a “dopamine detox” will decrease the amount of dopamine in your brain. Even the creator of the concept said as much. The idea that you can improve your sense of focus and motivation by “detoxing” your brain from an overload of dopamine is a made-up internet fantasy.

“You don’t actually deplete dopamine in any way or fashion,” Johnson says. “If you did, you would have a medical condition like Parkinson’s.” Parkinson’s, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, is associated with a loss of dopamine-producing cells in the brain.

But the mythology of dopamine that led to the popular understanding of dopamine fasting has been building for years, says John Salamone, director of the behavioral neuroscience program at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. In some early studies of brain chemistry and drug use, researchers noted that dopamine seemed to be linked to addiction in some way. These studies led to the idea that dopamine was the “pleasure chemical” in the brain that was responsible for making us feel good. Dopamine maintains this reputation today.

And yet if this were true, Salamone says, giving test subjects a drug that inhibits dopamine should reduce euphoric feelings during drug use. But more recent research suggests this isn’t the case.

Today’s thinking is that dopamine is more closely linked to processes like motivation and learning, but it also shows up when people feel stressed, so its role in the brain appears to be complicated, Salamone says.

That said, there could be some utility to the CBT-based practice described by Sepah, Johnson says. Although research on the subject is limited, studies of restrictive fasting periods have shown promise in treating a number of behavioral addictions, says Johnson. One study found a restrictive CBT technique was effective for managing Internet gaming disorders in 78 percent of study participants. Another study found that restricting access to money improved patient compliance with treatment for gambling disorder.

Results for food and substance issues are more mixed. One study found a fast-like mindfulness and CBT intervention helped reduce binge eating episodes and disordered eating attitudes in people with comorbid binge eating disorders and substance use disorders. But other research found only 31.3 percent of participants with food-related addiction saw any sustainable weight loss, which the study authors argued was a sign that the intervention did not result in lasting behavioral change.

Johnson says it may well be true that cutting yourself off from video games or TV for a period of time will help you gain control over related, unwanted habits. But there’s still no reason to believe this will directly improve your sense of motivation or your overall mood the way some dopamine fast proponents claim it will, Johnson says.

If a preoccupation with internet shopping or social media is eating into your time, eliminating that habit may improve your performance at work or school simply because you have more time to study. That could explain why practitioners of dopamine fasting report feeling more productive after implementing the fasts.

It’s also conceivable, Johnson says, that practicing delayed gratification in the form of a dopamine fast could strengthen the parts of the brain associated with self-control. It is possible that in today’s society, the ease of access to food and entertainment means there are fewer barriers to rewards than there used to be, which has reduced our ability to curtail impulsive behaviors. In that broader sense, dopamine fasting could, at least in theory, improve an individual’s overall ability to set and achieve goals.

This could be especially true for teens and young people, says Peter Grinspoon, MD, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a certified health and wellness coach in Boston, who is in recovery from opioid addiction. Teens are still learning how to manage feelings such as loneliness, boredom, and anger. And they tend to be more prone to addictions because they might discover something like drug use before they encounter healthier coping mechanisms.

“I was reading an article someone wrote about how when we were kids, we would stare out the window and think about life and that wouldn’t be boring to us,” Dr. Grinspoon says. “Now kids have phones and TVs in their cars. … They’re constantly bombarded and there’s no need to learn to manage your own internal states.”

This does all beg the question: “Why not just say these are healthy habits instead of creating a phony concept?” says Grinspoon, who is critical of the use of the term “dopamine detox” because he believes it has led to potentially harmful misinterpretations even though he supports the general notion of reducing phone and internet use.

“I’m not a believer in selling intellectual snake oil. There’s enough scientific information out there,” he says. “I don’t think it’s ethical to come up with a nonsensical construct even if you get people to adopt healthy habits.”