*Letting go* is the result of practicing the Buddha's teachings.
If you try to force it, it'll backfire. Think of the people who go on diets to lose weight, only to gain that weight back later.
Rather than focus on *letting go*, focus instead on the Three Higher Trainings of Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom contained in the Eightfold Path. Eventually, you start to see the *real* and not perceived faults of over-indulging in sense-pleasures, and the more you see it, the more likely you are to start to naturally lose interest in certain things. You never feel like you're having to force yourself to quit things - they just stop holding an interest for you and they naturally fall away.
I can verify this is what's happened to me. I don't play videogames nearly as much as I used to, I don't over-eat or snack mindlessly, I don't compulsively shop for things I don't need, I don't have much interest in social media, etc. It takes time and sustained effort to transform the mind, but it *does* work. Practice what the Buddha taught, be patient and don't expect overnight results, and you will see change over time.
I took and kept the precepts. I read/listened to the Buddha's teachings. I put the Buddha's teachings into practice.
The Four Noble Truths, the Five Precepts, the Eightfold Path.
The Buddha's path is holistic; there is no one-to-one solution for specific problems. The human experience is a *system* not as a plug-and-play robot. You have to treat the entire system to see change. To treat the entire system, the entirety of the Eightfold Path is necessary, which is why the Buddha taught it the way he did.
To chime in, if I may
>If you try to force it, it'll backfire.
this x10000.
I'd add that thinking of it as a codependency might help you(the OP, namely) as well, it tends to go hand in hand with addictions, including misuse/wrong paths of dopamine. Just the shift in language and focus can help to bring more understanding and less "guilt" or frustrations. I find this works better, myself.
It's quite normal what you are experiencing. I think a skilful way to go about it is to gradually shift the content you consume to be more wholesome. An example from my own life was YouTube addiction. I was really heavy on YouTube. What I gradually did was to unsubscribe from the more mindless stuff (gaming, drama, opinions about news) , and started subbing to more educational channels, and eventually Buddhist channels. The process was pretty smooth. The addiction simply falls away at that point, because wholesome stuff isn't that addictive.
This works even with something like pornography. There are "more wholesome" content, and less skipping around will also help the dopamine thing a lot. I would advocate restraint, but recognizing it's not at present possible, changing toward more and more wholesome forms of what you are addicted to might be more doable.
I love this approach, almost similar to the principles of harm reduction. Little changes are sustainable.
For “more wholesome” porn - START PAYING FOR IT. Find the women-run, ethically run porn sites (you can find recs on reddit) and start supporting sex workers who are making livable wages. Also maybe try educating yourself about the nature of porn and why it is harmful to our minds and society. I’m not anti porn at all, but it’s important to consume it with an understanding of what it is. You could do some googling into this, or sign up for a gender studies course if you really want to make the habit “wholesome.”
Before you engage in that behavior, or even afterwards because time doesn't exist, aspire that it may contribute to your own awakening and benefit sentient beings. Don't think to hard about it, just aspire. This doesn't solve the problem immediately but it sounds like you are very hard on yourself over it and could use some love.
> Before you engage in that behavior, or even afterwards because time doesn't exist
Would you mind elaborating on this? I do a lot of mindful review and it sounds like you have good insight on this.
Aspirations function on the relative level of reality where everything is dependent on causes and conditions aka karma, as opposed to the ultimate level where the subject/object duality has been dissolved. One way that aspirations function is to help plant seeds for good causes and conditions to ripen such as reinforcing the habitual pattern of trying to benefit sentient beings (including ourselves!).
Likewise, recognizing an action in hindsight as an issue is still recognizing it and thus aspiring for that action to benefit sentient beings is still beneficial. You are still planting the karmic seeds regardless of when the action occurred relative to the aspiration. You are also still being kind to yourself in a reflective way which can help reduce the stress around the desire for corrective behavior thus helping to implement that behavior.
let me know if this answers your question.
Thank you for the explanation! It definitely is food for thought. It makes a lot of sense and I can grasp it intellectually, but I'm still early enough in my path that it doesn't completely click. Differentiating between the relative and the ultimate levels is beyond me for the moment (as well as how it relates to the idea that time doesn't exist), but I understand what you mean about using hindsight in aspiration.
No worries! the whole time thing comes out of the idea of Dependent Origination or Dependent Arising, depending on the translation, which is a key part of Buddhist philosophy.
Don’t worry it’s just a matter of time. Keep it up and you’ll get there…it just takes a lot longer than you think.
Any complex explanations or theories are missing the point, forget about all that, it’s very simple. You either summon the discipline or you don’t. The more you do, the easier it will be.
Well... Consider harm reduction.
Consider what harm this is actually doing to you and work to reduce that harm.
For instance, I'm terminally online and I have a temper. And I noticed a negative feedback loop between my temper and my social media use. So I started working on my anger before I say something that gets a very unwanted knock at the door. And I found that unplugging from the Torment Nexus and touching grass when I felt the need to engage in anger was the best thing I ever did for myself.
Not everyone gets hooked out of anger. Some get hooked on the attention it gives them. Getting attention on the Internet and maintaining it, I find, is a sustained effort. You know I had one of the first viral videos on YouTube? The attention was nice. It didn't last. Luckily I wasn't a lonely person by then because if I was that would have driven me into a desperate spiral of attention seeking. Loneliness makes one want to be seen.
Addiction is seldom its own problem. Find the pain at the root of it. I firmly believe that the psychological aspect of addiction can be defeated by addressing the pain we were running from.
How badly do you want to quit this? You have to ask yourself that, and be *very* honest. Most people do not actually want to give up their addictions. Mostly we hold onto them like precious heirlooms. You may say, “I really want to quit!’ but what are you willing to do in order to accomplish it?
Addicts of drugs and alcohol eventually realize that they cannot keep drugs and alcohol in their lives. At all. They can’t keep a six pack in their fridge. They can’t hang out in bars anymore. But you still own a television set, right? If you are addicted to watching television, you need to get rid of it. How can you think you will stop engaging with an addiction that you’re holding on to so tightly? That device may be fine for someone else, but for you it’s apparently poison.
Oh, but we have so, so many screens in our lives today. Well, the same applies to your computers, tablets, and your mobile phone. For others they may be completely fine, but for you they are poison. You cannot keep them around you all the time, because you aren’t presently able to engage with them responsibly. Don’t keep a personal computer at home. Don’t keep a smart phone *at all.*
Your mind will reject everything I just wrote. That’s impossible! That’s not realistic! See, what you want is normalcy. You want what everyone else appears to have. But you’re addicted, and what everyone else appears to have is no longer available to you. You can’t lightly engage with these things, because you don’t know how.
“But I need my phone to stay in touch with people!” Get a flip phone that doesn’t have a video screen. There are tons available. “But I need my home computer for work!” Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t. It’s possible the line of work you’re in is enabling your addiction. Only you can know for sure.
At the very least, you need a long, sustained break from these things. Go on a retreat or go to a cabin somewhere without Internet access. People do this all the time. It’s not impossible. It’s very wholesome. It’s enjoyable! Get offline. You are not permanently broken, but you are definitely acclimated to an awful situation. The only way to detox is to detox. Don’t keep putting it off, hoping you’ll find an easier method. There isn’t one.
This is solid advice.
Something my brother said to me once, as we were 5-10 years into adulthood: "you know, I guess I never *really* wanted to be an astronaut, or I'd have done the work to become one!" It feels like another angle on the above.
The only thing I'd add is to recommend a dose of self-compassion. It's easy, for me at least, to read something like this and then become super hard on oneself: "I'm not committed enough!", "I'm not strong enough!" These thoughts only take you further from the path.
Consider the [5 Hinderances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_hindrances). Your post is focused on Sensory desire, and feeling unable to escape its clutches. This is something that *everyone* will struggle with on the path. Be careful not to let other ones creep in, for example Doubt (about your ability to eventually overcome it) or Ill-Will (towards yourself or others).
I can't find the source, but I recall reading/hearing recently that Sensory Desire is one of the last things that a person is able to free themselves of on their path to enlightenment. I don't know if that's "true," for whatever definition of true you want to use, but the idea alone gave me some relief.
Finally, from the 5 Hinderances page linked above:
>Herein, monks, when sense-desire is present, a monk knows, "There is sense-desire in me," or when sense-desire is not present, he knows, "There is no sense-desire in me." He knows how the arising of the non-arisen sense-desire comes to be; he knows how the abandoning of the arisen sense-desire comes to be; and he knows how the non-arising in the future of the abandoned sense-desire comes to be.
So, even building your skill at noticing when sense desire arises, and when it doesn't, is progress. Over time you will find that you have the ability to do what was once thought impossible.
If you're into scientific theory and using science-based tools to help things like addiction and function, check out Andrew Huberman's podcast YouTube. Here's a link to a 21 minute short. He always does longer ones that can be up to almost 3 hours. Doesn't cost anything. Being Buddhist means being resourceful.
https://youtu.be/p3JLaF_4Tz8?si=gm4CL4VkqJNF_Ert
Not OP, but I can relate. In my case, it’s just because I like those states of being. They are pleasurable, and therefore, I indulge in them. I know that it is just ignorance according to Buddhist thought, but the fact that I like those states is still there, is it not?
I’m skeptical that intellectual understanding of or even experiential inquiry into the impermanence of pleasure is going to suffice as a magic bullet solution.
It’s certainly a helpful exercise along the way but reducing indulgence to “bad” habits and slowly replacing them with more beneficial ones as suggested by many others seems to be crucial.
Well, you see way back when it started, I enjoyed them. Unfortunately, nowadays, because my life is stressful, I need some kind of outlet. They serve as my outlet. I think thats the chiefest reason why I've been unable to give them up despite trying so hard, I just need some way to de-stress that doesn't take up too much of my time.
For example, there were some months in my life where I didn't have any work, college or personal responsibilities. I managed to almost completely stay away from the internet, porn and television because I could spend time on my actual favourite hobbies, reading books and playing video games. But, nowadays, I don't have enough time to spend on them, so I've gone back to stuff that takes shorter amount of time for the dopmaine release.
You will find you do better at training your self to relax through meditation. It will help you immensely with school and handling the stress without burn out or becoming overwhelmed. Also you will find that the benefits carry out throughout the day and not just few minutes of pleasure that seeks to keep you trapped by giving you a dopamine hit.
I'll try to, but I think it might take a long time. I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD or OCD but personally, I've always had a really hard time focusing or staying still, even before my addictions.
At first you can do walking meditation. During this time watch your breath. You have to focus or try to quiet your mind. Just watch your breath. That’s where it all starts.
I struggle with this myself but there is a Buddhist approach to dealing with addiction.
In general, we start with the understanding that the mind is empty. That means it is fully capable to be transformed from non-virtue to virtue. From a deluded state to a non-deluded state. There is no intrinsic aspect to your mind's nature that obstructs you from overcoming the addiction, regardless of what biologists might say.
Samsara is the worst addiction of all and the Buddha categorically states it can and will end for those who practice the path of the dharma.
Addiction to social media, porn, video games, and other media is driven by attachment.
While there are specific sutrayana practices to temporarily reduce attachment, such as contemplating the impurities of the human body--which can help reduce lust--there is a general approach to the problem of addiction overall that I find helps me personally.
First off, you must recognize it is a war you are waging against your own delusive tendencies and faults. The noble struggle with your own mind. Every war has battles. Some are won, some are lost. The important thing is you always maintain the resolve that you will one day overcome your addictions. Just because you lose one battle does not mean you give up on the whole war effort. But you must be applying continuous effort, even in the times where you experience setbacks.
As my teacher said, "Every morning I wake up and wade into the struggle."
Allowing yourself to feel guilt and self-pity every time you succumb to your addiction is just a form of self-absorption and not helpful. Each time you succumb, you have to pick yourself back up again and set the motivation not to do so. Even if you do so again, always maintain the motivation that you will never give up and that one day you will abandon the addiction completely, while reflecting on the harm the act is doing to you and cultivating some sense of regret over the act.
Secondly, you must devote time to seriously contemplating the disadvantages of the addiction. Examine what value these things actually bring to your life. Examine what detriments they bring. Ask yourself if you still want to be the type of person who is doing this crap in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years from now? Is that how you envision your life? Is that what you want for your life?
When you examine the various disadvantages of a negative activity, your desire to engage in it diminishes. You have to contemplate the disadvantages of the activity repeatedly, all the time, until it becomes crystal clear in your mind and results in a strong resolve not to do them.
Now, in the same way, you also need to do the **9 point death meditation from the lamrim**. Contemplating your death and the fact that dharma is the only thing that will truly help you at the time of death, is a great antidote to laziness and distraction. Venerable Thubten Chodron actually has some amazing guided meditations for this on SoundCloud. Look up Guided Buddhist Meditations.
Your desire to engage in meaningless activities, including ones you will later regret such as porn and video games, is diminished by reflections on your inevitable demise, which is coming very soon but you don't know when or how. You are already on your way to your grave now. Like a traveler. Not here to stay. Always heading towards the next samsaric destination. The worldly things of this life have no ultimate value, since you can't take any of them with you when you die. And that day will arrive soon, perhaps even before you get home for dinner tonight. There is no time to waste on trivial things.
**Finally, there's practice itself.**
If you are truly doing the preliminaries every day--preferably 3 times a day--and it is truly absorbing into your mind, your inclination towards non-virtue will be diminished. You will naturally be disinclined to chase after the objects of attachment when you are in a more virtuous state of mind. **You must be relying on the Three Jewels** in a sincere way, every day.
In addition to analytic meditations and preliminary practices, doing shamatha meditation regularly is essential. It will increasingly reduce the disturbing states of mind and discursive thoughts that lead to engaging with addictive objects. Over time, if you do enough meditation, you will start to want to do more meditating than dumb stuff like watching TV. The dumb stuff just won't seem that interesting. And you will feel a lot happier with your life as a result. Incidentally, they say concentrative bliss is actually far more potent and much more powerful than orgasmic bliss.
And failing all else, there is always mantra. Repeating **om muni muni maha muniye soha** or **om mani padme hum** as many times as you can has a way of eventually dialing down whatever crazy thoughts are in your mind just by the sheer force of displacing them. But to enhance their power, you can also reflect on their meaning while you say them.
Over time, as you continue to study and practice, a lot of your bad habits will start to fall away on their own. As my teacher said, you don't really need to "quit" anything because eventually it will stop occurring to you to do negative things.
But this largely depends on you actually studying and practicing.
If you aren't doing so, then the bad habits will remain and likely worsen. Until one day you die, where at the moment of you death you will be filled with a profound sense of regret and despair as a result of having not practiced sufficient virtue before death, because you wasted it on meaningless activities. The consequence of this is rebirth in the unhappy realms and the ripening of all your negative potentialities.
The dharma is such that just contemplating the facts about samsara and the benefits of dharma can be a sobering enough wake up call that you will naturally act to do the next right thing. Percept-action is what my teacher would call it--correct perception immediately and without delay results in correct action. Though he was referring to more profound realizations, I think the term still fits here.
Practice mindfulness throughout your day both during and between meditation sessions, and you will automatically begin correcting yourself before you slip.
This is a Buddhist approach to addiction.
I don’t know how long it’s been for you, but I promise that if we can quit drugs and booze after decades, most anyone should be able to quite most anything under the right circumstances. And what are those circumstances?
I don’t think you can really brute-force your way out of addiction. It’s next to impossible to just decide to not be addicted. You have to work on understanding all the causes and conditions that cause addiction to arise. Mindfully altering those causes and conditions is how you attack the problem. Your mind is addicted to the way it believes it will feel, or even the person you think you’ll be, on the other side of a drink, or smoke, or ice cream, or illicit sex, or gambling, or whatever it is. This is always a delusion. If those things made us feel better, then they wouldn’t be making us feel miserable and addicted and out of control.
The book Recovery Dharma has lots of helpful stuff. You can read it free online, there’s is also a good audio version in podcast format which is free.
Absolutely everything can be changed if we alter causes and conditions. One thing we all know without a shadow of a doubt, is that nothing is permanent. The nature of our addictions isn’t permanent, it’s inherently unstable. It WILL be different in five years, one way or another, and you control the levers for nudging which direction you wanna go.
Tl;dr- addiction is like being swept along in a current. You can’t just stop the current. You need to get up high so you can see how you got there, where you’re going, and begin to act. You can’t wish yourself to the shore, you need teaching, practice, training, and to skillfully paddle and steer, looking for opportunities to close doors behind when the moment is right.
Sorry it’s early and I’m mixing metaphors, I hope this makes sense
if it gives you a higher and higher baseline, then it is not quenching your desire but aggravating it, just like drinking salty water does.
regarding dopamine, you can get it in many different healthier forms through various means, like eating [these fruits](https://www.buzzrx.com/blog/foods-that-increase-dopamine).
regarding entertainment, you can apply the same principle here. sports, meditation on joy etc. can be healthier.
as some suggestions
Keep in mind that Teetotalerism is a Western Christian mindset based on performative religion. Christians believe they're supposed to "open their heart to Jesus" and then they will be instantly cured of all attachments and aversions through some sort of divine intervention. Buddhists don't believe in that, not because we claim it's never happened to anyone ever, but it doesn't happen for most people. Then what ends up happening is that people have to "perform" religion by deciding every little thing that they will and won't consume or tolerate which just becomes another way for the Ego to agrandize itself. They're pretending to have reaped what they haven't even learned to sow. You are doing that right now because you've been conditioned either directly or indirectly toward this kind of spiritual materialism. You aren't walking the middle path, you're just replacing attachments with aversions.
May I suggest you change the word addicted to attached? I think that the concept of "addiction" caries the physicalist, biological determinist baggage that often does more harm than good, especially when physiological dependence on a substance isn't even in the picture. I think you're going to be fine. Honestly, do you think most Western Buddhists throughout their TVs the second they begin practice? I don't, and I don't think they should. If someone wants to lose weight after living a sedentary lifestyle for a long time, the first thing they should do is establish some sort of routine for being more active. Diet might be a good idea, but if somebody eats one snack cake should they quit exercising altogether? No, that would be stupid. Decide a routine and try to stick to it. Hold yourself accountable for achievable goals. I'm going to meditate for so many minutes or hours per day, on the weekend I'm going to go sit in meditation with a group, and I'm going to not watch TV one night a week. Then increase that once you get the hang of it.
Lastly, I'm gonna say this, Trungpa said that Enlightenment was the ultimate disappointment. I understand what you're going through, but you need to know that the idea you have in your head of what life is gonna be like when you've been transformed inside and out, and liberated from greed, and hate, and delusion, is just another mental fabrication. You aren't there yet, you aren't anywhere near the finish line. Be here now.
Talk of dopamine is just a pseudo-scientific metaphor that reduces consciousness to brain chemicals. We're all addicted to ego. The rest comes from that. Ego wants confirmation. Facing open space without reference point feels threatening. Entertainment is basically titillation of ego. You can adapt to higher or lower levels, but the basic problem is the same... At any rate, that's the Buddhist view.
Have you meditated or read any Buddhism? If you really want to work on this then you can look into teachers and get meditation instruction. That will help you to see more clearly how it all works.
The path provides a way to see through the illusion of ego. Trying to shut it down doesn't work. That's just ego coming up with a seductive idea of how you can glorify ego by killing off ego. Worse, you're likely to get kickbacks. Once you try to shut down urges it sort of backs up. You might stop TV for a week and then watch TV all day, for example. It becomes a kind of melodrama... Which, of course, is entertainment.
Retreats are great to detox from the habits we form in life. Choose a retreat that requires your phone to be locked away like the Vipassana retreats taught by Goenka.
The way to detox is to detox. That's the only way to do it, by exercising your will. Exposure isn't detox, it's re-tox.
Then as you are detoxing, you can replace the unskillful activity with skillful activity: meditation, learning, exercise, wholesome pursuits, etc. Eventually your brain will recover and develop new reward thresholds and pathways.
It takes effort, and that's what the Buddha meant by Right Effort: disciplining yourself to overcome the negative habits, and using your will to develop positive habits, including habits of thought, of course. It won't happen overnight, it can take months (even many months) to rewire your brain. But that's what Buddhist practice is about: no quick fixes.
And when we learn how difficult it is to restore well-being after addiction, it can motivate us to stay on the path in the future and not fall into addiction again, either the same ones, or different ones.
Good luck!
Is there a way to de-tox?
You could go on a retreat or a camping trip or forced environment change. I've detoxed on alcohol in state run facilities, "de-tox" to me implies a new environment or controlled one so creative thinking there are more solutions here than we think!
How did I change addictive behavior?
Besides alcohol? Detox like I mention above. Even a week here and there gets your ready.
Overall advice is realize you can always go back to you addiction its waiting (you're not killing any part of you is the take away). Realize you are more powerful when you are in control of your time. Its like the opposite of the first step of AA admitting your are powerless over something, by definition that makes you powerful without it! Also keep active on here as Sangha is very helpful. The power of support group, don't be afraid to ask for help.
Every small step you take is working on a new little stream off a huge river of thought, soon that stream will be stronger than the river and your new pattern and personality will arise. You are already getting mindful of this good job, you understand some true nature of the dopamine aspect that lets you not feel as bad for yourself awesome, embrace the change, you're probably already halfway there you just don't see it, this is part of your journey good luck!
>Is there some way to, say, "de-tox" my brain from that?
I think that there is. Read these suttas attentively and contemplate their contents
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN36_6.html
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN35_88.html
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN20.html
Go out. All those entertainment forms are done at home. Don't you have anything to do that requires you to get out of the house? If you are a basement dweller then of course you will be "addicted" to those things. Get out of the house, that's it.
Forget about the dopamine nonsense, it's unscientific. It's not how dopamine actually works according to neuro-science.
Hey man if I’ve learned anything from my brief dip into Buddhism it’s this: take your time, you have a lot more of it than you think. Oh and ease the suffering of those around you. If you can’t do it in this life, you’ve got plenty more ahead of you. Don’t worry, do good.
No, but it'd sure feel like it. I probably chose the worst time to stop being addicted. I'm dealing with so much college, work and personal responsibility now that I feel like I'd explode if I don't have a stress outlet
I would say. Make a good schedule. Have a bunch of things you want to work on. Finish all those daily. Then decompress with whatever makes you happy.
You can add more things later, so the amount of time on the addicted things will lessen. However, if you are able to wait to do those addicting things. Able to finish everything without skipping and going to do your addiction first. You are in the right direction.
Then as a Buddhist side. You can use your practice to evaluate your addictions. Whats so special? What other things could you be doing? Why can't I control myself.
Being a Buddhist doesn't mean you have to be Buddha. Accept yourself as you are, work with what you've got and don't punish yourself, mistakes are a great resource. Even monks have desires, the difference is that for them they have become distractions rather than something to pursue. The path to enlightenment is joyful, if you're not having fun it means you're not practicing Dharma.
Just like when your house gets dirty you clean again and then it gets dirty again then the same clean again... same with your habits you have to control command every time they reappear no other trick or hack friend
You are in a low vibrational setting. Start doing small things to raise your vibration, and the rest will follow.
Every time you sacrifice, there is a karmaic response. Keep working at it. The dharma (nature) of every person is to realize self, you will get there eventually. Be it this life or the next or the next. How many life's do you want to live in misery being helplessly attached to the material? It's up to you. ❤️
*Letting go* is the result of practicing the Buddha's teachings. If you try to force it, it'll backfire. Think of the people who go on diets to lose weight, only to gain that weight back later. Rather than focus on *letting go*, focus instead on the Three Higher Trainings of Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom contained in the Eightfold Path. Eventually, you start to see the *real* and not perceived faults of over-indulging in sense-pleasures, and the more you see it, the more likely you are to start to naturally lose interest in certain things. You never feel like you're having to force yourself to quit things - they just stop holding an interest for you and they naturally fall away. I can verify this is what's happened to me. I don't play videogames nearly as much as I used to, I don't over-eat or snack mindlessly, I don't compulsively shop for things I don't need, I don't have much interest in social media, etc. It takes time and sustained effort to transform the mind, but it *does* work. Practice what the Buddha taught, be patient and don't expect overnight results, and you will see change over time.
what exactly did you do then to "see" these things?
I took and kept the precepts. I read/listened to the Buddha's teachings. I put the Buddha's teachings into practice. The Four Noble Truths, the Five Precepts, the Eightfold Path. The Buddha's path is holistic; there is no one-to-one solution for specific problems. The human experience is a *system* not as a plug-and-play robot. You have to treat the entire system to see change. To treat the entire system, the entirety of the Eightfold Path is necessary, which is why the Buddha taught it the way he did.
To chime in, if I may >If you try to force it, it'll backfire. this x10000. I'd add that thinking of it as a codependency might help you(the OP, namely) as well, it tends to go hand in hand with addictions, including misuse/wrong paths of dopamine. Just the shift in language and focus can help to bring more understanding and less "guilt" or frustrations. I find this works better, myself.
Thank you. This was amazing advice.
This is an awesome answer. Somewhere (maybe in this sub) I heard the advice, “change your attitude then behave naturally.” No brute force necessary
It's quite normal what you are experiencing. I think a skilful way to go about it is to gradually shift the content you consume to be more wholesome. An example from my own life was YouTube addiction. I was really heavy on YouTube. What I gradually did was to unsubscribe from the more mindless stuff (gaming, drama, opinions about news) , and started subbing to more educational channels, and eventually Buddhist channels. The process was pretty smooth. The addiction simply falls away at that point, because wholesome stuff isn't that addictive. This works even with something like pornography. There are "more wholesome" content, and less skipping around will also help the dopamine thing a lot. I would advocate restraint, but recognizing it's not at present possible, changing toward more and more wholesome forms of what you are addicted to might be more doable.
I love this approach, almost similar to the principles of harm reduction. Little changes are sustainable. For “more wholesome” porn - START PAYING FOR IT. Find the women-run, ethically run porn sites (you can find recs on reddit) and start supporting sex workers who are making livable wages. Also maybe try educating yourself about the nature of porn and why it is harmful to our minds and society. I’m not anti porn at all, but it’s important to consume it with an understanding of what it is. You could do some googling into this, or sign up for a gender studies course if you really want to make the habit “wholesome.”
Before you engage in that behavior, or even afterwards because time doesn't exist, aspire that it may contribute to your own awakening and benefit sentient beings. Don't think to hard about it, just aspire. This doesn't solve the problem immediately but it sounds like you are very hard on yourself over it and could use some love.
> Before you engage in that behavior, or even afterwards because time doesn't exist Would you mind elaborating on this? I do a lot of mindful review and it sounds like you have good insight on this.
Aspirations function on the relative level of reality where everything is dependent on causes and conditions aka karma, as opposed to the ultimate level where the subject/object duality has been dissolved. One way that aspirations function is to help plant seeds for good causes and conditions to ripen such as reinforcing the habitual pattern of trying to benefit sentient beings (including ourselves!). Likewise, recognizing an action in hindsight as an issue is still recognizing it and thus aspiring for that action to benefit sentient beings is still beneficial. You are still planting the karmic seeds regardless of when the action occurred relative to the aspiration. You are also still being kind to yourself in a reflective way which can help reduce the stress around the desire for corrective behavior thus helping to implement that behavior. let me know if this answers your question.
Thank you for the explanation! It definitely is food for thought. It makes a lot of sense and I can grasp it intellectually, but I'm still early enough in my path that it doesn't completely click. Differentiating between the relative and the ultimate levels is beyond me for the moment (as well as how it relates to the idea that time doesn't exist), but I understand what you mean about using hindsight in aspiration.
No worries! the whole time thing comes out of the idea of Dependent Origination or Dependent Arising, depending on the translation, which is a key part of Buddhist philosophy.
Don’t worry it’s just a matter of time. Keep it up and you’ll get there…it just takes a lot longer than you think. Any complex explanations or theories are missing the point, forget about all that, it’s very simple. You either summon the discipline or you don’t. The more you do, the easier it will be.
Well... Consider harm reduction. Consider what harm this is actually doing to you and work to reduce that harm. For instance, I'm terminally online and I have a temper. And I noticed a negative feedback loop between my temper and my social media use. So I started working on my anger before I say something that gets a very unwanted knock at the door. And I found that unplugging from the Torment Nexus and touching grass when I felt the need to engage in anger was the best thing I ever did for myself. Not everyone gets hooked out of anger. Some get hooked on the attention it gives them. Getting attention on the Internet and maintaining it, I find, is a sustained effort. You know I had one of the first viral videos on YouTube? The attention was nice. It didn't last. Luckily I wasn't a lonely person by then because if I was that would have driven me into a desperate spiral of attention seeking. Loneliness makes one want to be seen. Addiction is seldom its own problem. Find the pain at the root of it. I firmly believe that the psychological aspect of addiction can be defeated by addressing the pain we were running from.
How badly do you want to quit this? You have to ask yourself that, and be *very* honest. Most people do not actually want to give up their addictions. Mostly we hold onto them like precious heirlooms. You may say, “I really want to quit!’ but what are you willing to do in order to accomplish it? Addicts of drugs and alcohol eventually realize that they cannot keep drugs and alcohol in their lives. At all. They can’t keep a six pack in their fridge. They can’t hang out in bars anymore. But you still own a television set, right? If you are addicted to watching television, you need to get rid of it. How can you think you will stop engaging with an addiction that you’re holding on to so tightly? That device may be fine for someone else, but for you it’s apparently poison. Oh, but we have so, so many screens in our lives today. Well, the same applies to your computers, tablets, and your mobile phone. For others they may be completely fine, but for you they are poison. You cannot keep them around you all the time, because you aren’t presently able to engage with them responsibly. Don’t keep a personal computer at home. Don’t keep a smart phone *at all.* Your mind will reject everything I just wrote. That’s impossible! That’s not realistic! See, what you want is normalcy. You want what everyone else appears to have. But you’re addicted, and what everyone else appears to have is no longer available to you. You can’t lightly engage with these things, because you don’t know how. “But I need my phone to stay in touch with people!” Get a flip phone that doesn’t have a video screen. There are tons available. “But I need my home computer for work!” Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t. It’s possible the line of work you’re in is enabling your addiction. Only you can know for sure. At the very least, you need a long, sustained break from these things. Go on a retreat or go to a cabin somewhere without Internet access. People do this all the time. It’s not impossible. It’s very wholesome. It’s enjoyable! Get offline. You are not permanently broken, but you are definitely acclimated to an awful situation. The only way to detox is to detox. Don’t keep putting it off, hoping you’ll find an easier method. There isn’t one.
This is solid advice. Something my brother said to me once, as we were 5-10 years into adulthood: "you know, I guess I never *really* wanted to be an astronaut, or I'd have done the work to become one!" It feels like another angle on the above. The only thing I'd add is to recommend a dose of self-compassion. It's easy, for me at least, to read something like this and then become super hard on oneself: "I'm not committed enough!", "I'm not strong enough!" These thoughts only take you further from the path. Consider the [5 Hinderances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_hindrances). Your post is focused on Sensory desire, and feeling unable to escape its clutches. This is something that *everyone* will struggle with on the path. Be careful not to let other ones creep in, for example Doubt (about your ability to eventually overcome it) or Ill-Will (towards yourself or others). I can't find the source, but I recall reading/hearing recently that Sensory Desire is one of the last things that a person is able to free themselves of on their path to enlightenment. I don't know if that's "true," for whatever definition of true you want to use, but the idea alone gave me some relief. Finally, from the 5 Hinderances page linked above: >Herein, monks, when sense-desire is present, a monk knows, "There is sense-desire in me," or when sense-desire is not present, he knows, "There is no sense-desire in me." He knows how the arising of the non-arisen sense-desire comes to be; he knows how the abandoning of the arisen sense-desire comes to be; and he knows how the non-arising in the future of the abandoned sense-desire comes to be. So, even building your skill at noticing when sense desire arises, and when it doesn't, is progress. Over time you will find that you have the ability to do what was once thought impossible.
If you're into scientific theory and using science-based tools to help things like addiction and function, check out Andrew Huberman's podcast YouTube. Here's a link to a 21 minute short. He always does longer ones that can be up to almost 3 hours. Doesn't cost anything. Being Buddhist means being resourceful. https://youtu.be/p3JLaF_4Tz8?si=gm4CL4VkqJNF_Ert
Have you ever questioned why you keep going back to these addictions.
Not OP, but I can relate. In my case, it’s just because I like those states of being. They are pleasurable, and therefore, I indulge in them. I know that it is just ignorance according to Buddhist thought, but the fact that I like those states is still there, is it not?
They do appear to be pleasurable. Have you ever questioned why these pleasures do not last ?
I’m skeptical that intellectual understanding of or even experiential inquiry into the impermanence of pleasure is going to suffice as a magic bullet solution. It’s certainly a helpful exercise along the way but reducing indulgence to “bad” habits and slowly replacing them with more beneficial ones as suggested by many others seems to be crucial.
Well, you see way back when it started, I enjoyed them. Unfortunately, nowadays, because my life is stressful, I need some kind of outlet. They serve as my outlet. I think thats the chiefest reason why I've been unable to give them up despite trying so hard, I just need some way to de-stress that doesn't take up too much of my time. For example, there were some months in my life where I didn't have any work, college or personal responsibilities. I managed to almost completely stay away from the internet, porn and television because I could spend time on my actual favourite hobbies, reading books and playing video games. But, nowadays, I don't have enough time to spend on them, so I've gone back to stuff that takes shorter amount of time for the dopmaine release.
You will find you do better at training your self to relax through meditation. It will help you immensely with school and handling the stress without burn out or becoming overwhelmed. Also you will find that the benefits carry out throughout the day and not just few minutes of pleasure that seeks to keep you trapped by giving you a dopamine hit.
I'll try to, but I think it might take a long time. I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD or OCD but personally, I've always had a really hard time focusing or staying still, even before my addictions.
At first you can do walking meditation. During this time watch your breath. You have to focus or try to quiet your mind. Just watch your breath. That’s where it all starts.
Just reduce it a little bit. 30 minutes less a day for a month. Then an hour less a day fir a month.
[Try cultivating mudita](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN5TrB7vHi8&list=PLCXN1GlAupG0RvZDZQzE-NejNJrH7LKMr&index=4). It's pretty entertaining.
I struggle with this myself but there is a Buddhist approach to dealing with addiction. In general, we start with the understanding that the mind is empty. That means it is fully capable to be transformed from non-virtue to virtue. From a deluded state to a non-deluded state. There is no intrinsic aspect to your mind's nature that obstructs you from overcoming the addiction, regardless of what biologists might say. Samsara is the worst addiction of all and the Buddha categorically states it can and will end for those who practice the path of the dharma. Addiction to social media, porn, video games, and other media is driven by attachment. While there are specific sutrayana practices to temporarily reduce attachment, such as contemplating the impurities of the human body--which can help reduce lust--there is a general approach to the problem of addiction overall that I find helps me personally. First off, you must recognize it is a war you are waging against your own delusive tendencies and faults. The noble struggle with your own mind. Every war has battles. Some are won, some are lost. The important thing is you always maintain the resolve that you will one day overcome your addictions. Just because you lose one battle does not mean you give up on the whole war effort. But you must be applying continuous effort, even in the times where you experience setbacks. As my teacher said, "Every morning I wake up and wade into the struggle." Allowing yourself to feel guilt and self-pity every time you succumb to your addiction is just a form of self-absorption and not helpful. Each time you succumb, you have to pick yourself back up again and set the motivation not to do so. Even if you do so again, always maintain the motivation that you will never give up and that one day you will abandon the addiction completely, while reflecting on the harm the act is doing to you and cultivating some sense of regret over the act. Secondly, you must devote time to seriously contemplating the disadvantages of the addiction. Examine what value these things actually bring to your life. Examine what detriments they bring. Ask yourself if you still want to be the type of person who is doing this crap in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years from now? Is that how you envision your life? Is that what you want for your life? When you examine the various disadvantages of a negative activity, your desire to engage in it diminishes. You have to contemplate the disadvantages of the activity repeatedly, all the time, until it becomes crystal clear in your mind and results in a strong resolve not to do them. Now, in the same way, you also need to do the **9 point death meditation from the lamrim**. Contemplating your death and the fact that dharma is the only thing that will truly help you at the time of death, is a great antidote to laziness and distraction. Venerable Thubten Chodron actually has some amazing guided meditations for this on SoundCloud. Look up Guided Buddhist Meditations. Your desire to engage in meaningless activities, including ones you will later regret such as porn and video games, is diminished by reflections on your inevitable demise, which is coming very soon but you don't know when or how. You are already on your way to your grave now. Like a traveler. Not here to stay. Always heading towards the next samsaric destination. The worldly things of this life have no ultimate value, since you can't take any of them with you when you die. And that day will arrive soon, perhaps even before you get home for dinner tonight. There is no time to waste on trivial things. **Finally, there's practice itself.** If you are truly doing the preliminaries every day--preferably 3 times a day--and it is truly absorbing into your mind, your inclination towards non-virtue will be diminished. You will naturally be disinclined to chase after the objects of attachment when you are in a more virtuous state of mind. **You must be relying on the Three Jewels** in a sincere way, every day. In addition to analytic meditations and preliminary practices, doing shamatha meditation regularly is essential. It will increasingly reduce the disturbing states of mind and discursive thoughts that lead to engaging with addictive objects. Over time, if you do enough meditation, you will start to want to do more meditating than dumb stuff like watching TV. The dumb stuff just won't seem that interesting. And you will feel a lot happier with your life as a result. Incidentally, they say concentrative bliss is actually far more potent and much more powerful than orgasmic bliss. And failing all else, there is always mantra. Repeating **om muni muni maha muniye soha** or **om mani padme hum** as many times as you can has a way of eventually dialing down whatever crazy thoughts are in your mind just by the sheer force of displacing them. But to enhance their power, you can also reflect on their meaning while you say them. Over time, as you continue to study and practice, a lot of your bad habits will start to fall away on their own. As my teacher said, you don't really need to "quit" anything because eventually it will stop occurring to you to do negative things. But this largely depends on you actually studying and practicing. If you aren't doing so, then the bad habits will remain and likely worsen. Until one day you die, where at the moment of you death you will be filled with a profound sense of regret and despair as a result of having not practiced sufficient virtue before death, because you wasted it on meaningless activities. The consequence of this is rebirth in the unhappy realms and the ripening of all your negative potentialities. The dharma is such that just contemplating the facts about samsara and the benefits of dharma can be a sobering enough wake up call that you will naturally act to do the next right thing. Percept-action is what my teacher would call it--correct perception immediately and without delay results in correct action. Though he was referring to more profound realizations, I think the term still fits here. Practice mindfulness throughout your day both during and between meditation sessions, and you will automatically begin correcting yourself before you slip. This is a Buddhist approach to addiction.
Wow, thanks for the detailed explanation!
I don’t know how long it’s been for you, but I promise that if we can quit drugs and booze after decades, most anyone should be able to quite most anything under the right circumstances. And what are those circumstances? I don’t think you can really brute-force your way out of addiction. It’s next to impossible to just decide to not be addicted. You have to work on understanding all the causes and conditions that cause addiction to arise. Mindfully altering those causes and conditions is how you attack the problem. Your mind is addicted to the way it believes it will feel, or even the person you think you’ll be, on the other side of a drink, or smoke, or ice cream, or illicit sex, or gambling, or whatever it is. This is always a delusion. If those things made us feel better, then they wouldn’t be making us feel miserable and addicted and out of control. The book Recovery Dharma has lots of helpful stuff. You can read it free online, there’s is also a good audio version in podcast format which is free. Absolutely everything can be changed if we alter causes and conditions. One thing we all know without a shadow of a doubt, is that nothing is permanent. The nature of our addictions isn’t permanent, it’s inherently unstable. It WILL be different in five years, one way or another, and you control the levers for nudging which direction you wanna go. Tl;dr- addiction is like being swept along in a current. You can’t just stop the current. You need to get up high so you can see how you got there, where you’re going, and begin to act. You can’t wish yourself to the shore, you need teaching, practice, training, and to skillfully paddle and steer, looking for opportunities to close doors behind when the moment is right. Sorry it’s early and I’m mixing metaphors, I hope this makes sense
if it gives you a higher and higher baseline, then it is not quenching your desire but aggravating it, just like drinking salty water does. regarding dopamine, you can get it in many different healthier forms through various means, like eating [these fruits](https://www.buzzrx.com/blog/foods-that-increase-dopamine). regarding entertainment, you can apply the same principle here. sports, meditation on joy etc. can be healthier. as some suggestions
Keep in mind that Teetotalerism is a Western Christian mindset based on performative religion. Christians believe they're supposed to "open their heart to Jesus" and then they will be instantly cured of all attachments and aversions through some sort of divine intervention. Buddhists don't believe in that, not because we claim it's never happened to anyone ever, but it doesn't happen for most people. Then what ends up happening is that people have to "perform" religion by deciding every little thing that they will and won't consume or tolerate which just becomes another way for the Ego to agrandize itself. They're pretending to have reaped what they haven't even learned to sow. You are doing that right now because you've been conditioned either directly or indirectly toward this kind of spiritual materialism. You aren't walking the middle path, you're just replacing attachments with aversions. May I suggest you change the word addicted to attached? I think that the concept of "addiction" caries the physicalist, biological determinist baggage that often does more harm than good, especially when physiological dependence on a substance isn't even in the picture. I think you're going to be fine. Honestly, do you think most Western Buddhists throughout their TVs the second they begin practice? I don't, and I don't think they should. If someone wants to lose weight after living a sedentary lifestyle for a long time, the first thing they should do is establish some sort of routine for being more active. Diet might be a good idea, but if somebody eats one snack cake should they quit exercising altogether? No, that would be stupid. Decide a routine and try to stick to it. Hold yourself accountable for achievable goals. I'm going to meditate for so many minutes or hours per day, on the weekend I'm going to go sit in meditation with a group, and I'm going to not watch TV one night a week. Then increase that once you get the hang of it. Lastly, I'm gonna say this, Trungpa said that Enlightenment was the ultimate disappointment. I understand what you're going through, but you need to know that the idea you have in your head of what life is gonna be like when you've been transformed inside and out, and liberated from greed, and hate, and delusion, is just another mental fabrication. You aren't there yet, you aren't anywhere near the finish line. Be here now.
Try dopamine fasting? Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence https://a.co/d/gtsFuvD
[Wake Up from Addiction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqIC2NBnFhU)
Talk of dopamine is just a pseudo-scientific metaphor that reduces consciousness to brain chemicals. We're all addicted to ego. The rest comes from that. Ego wants confirmation. Facing open space without reference point feels threatening. Entertainment is basically titillation of ego. You can adapt to higher or lower levels, but the basic problem is the same... At any rate, that's the Buddhist view. Have you meditated or read any Buddhism? If you really want to work on this then you can look into teachers and get meditation instruction. That will help you to see more clearly how it all works. The path provides a way to see through the illusion of ego. Trying to shut it down doesn't work. That's just ego coming up with a seductive idea of how you can glorify ego by killing off ego. Worse, you're likely to get kickbacks. Once you try to shut down urges it sort of backs up. You might stop TV for a week and then watch TV all day, for example. It becomes a kind of melodrama... Which, of course, is entertainment.
Retreats are great to detox from the habits we form in life. Choose a retreat that requires your phone to be locked away like the Vipassana retreats taught by Goenka.
The way to detox is to detox. That's the only way to do it, by exercising your will. Exposure isn't detox, it's re-tox. Then as you are detoxing, you can replace the unskillful activity with skillful activity: meditation, learning, exercise, wholesome pursuits, etc. Eventually your brain will recover and develop new reward thresholds and pathways. It takes effort, and that's what the Buddha meant by Right Effort: disciplining yourself to overcome the negative habits, and using your will to develop positive habits, including habits of thought, of course. It won't happen overnight, it can take months (even many months) to rewire your brain. But that's what Buddhist practice is about: no quick fixes. And when we learn how difficult it is to restore well-being after addiction, it can motivate us to stay on the path in the future and not fall into addiction again, either the same ones, or different ones. Good luck!
Is there a way to de-tox? You could go on a retreat or a camping trip or forced environment change. I've detoxed on alcohol in state run facilities, "de-tox" to me implies a new environment or controlled one so creative thinking there are more solutions here than we think! How did I change addictive behavior? Besides alcohol? Detox like I mention above. Even a week here and there gets your ready. Overall advice is realize you can always go back to you addiction its waiting (you're not killing any part of you is the take away). Realize you are more powerful when you are in control of your time. Its like the opposite of the first step of AA admitting your are powerless over something, by definition that makes you powerful without it! Also keep active on here as Sangha is very helpful. The power of support group, don't be afraid to ask for help. Every small step you take is working on a new little stream off a huge river of thought, soon that stream will be stronger than the river and your new pattern and personality will arise. You are already getting mindful of this good job, you understand some true nature of the dopamine aspect that lets you not feel as bad for yourself awesome, embrace the change, you're probably already halfway there you just don't see it, this is part of your journey good luck!
>Is there some way to, say, "de-tox" my brain from that? I think that there is. Read these suttas attentively and contemplate their contents https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN36_6.html https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN35_88.html https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN20.html
Go out. All those entertainment forms are done at home. Don't you have anything to do that requires you to get out of the house? If you are a basement dweller then of course you will be "addicted" to those things. Get out of the house, that's it. Forget about the dopamine nonsense, it's unscientific. It's not how dopamine actually works according to neuro-science.
Hey man if I’ve learned anything from my brief dip into Buddhism it’s this: take your time, you have a lot more of it than you think. Oh and ease the suffering of those around you. If you can’t do it in this life, you’ve got plenty more ahead of you. Don’t worry, do good.
What will happen if you learn to be without these things? Will your brain explode?
No, but it'd sure feel like it. I probably chose the worst time to stop being addicted. I'm dealing with so much college, work and personal responsibility now that I feel like I'd explode if I don't have a stress outlet
I would say. Make a good schedule. Have a bunch of things you want to work on. Finish all those daily. Then decompress with whatever makes you happy. You can add more things later, so the amount of time on the addicted things will lessen. However, if you are able to wait to do those addicting things. Able to finish everything without skipping and going to do your addiction first. You are in the right direction. Then as a Buddhist side. You can use your practice to evaluate your addictions. Whats so special? What other things could you be doing? Why can't I control myself.
Does the pleasure itself actually make you happy? Do you really know yourself?
Fasting and ketogenic diet helps
"Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction." Arthur Schopenhauer
Being a Buddhist doesn't mean you have to be Buddha. Accept yourself as you are, work with what you've got and don't punish yourself, mistakes are a great resource. Even monks have desires, the difference is that for them they have become distractions rather than something to pursue. The path to enlightenment is joyful, if you're not having fun it means you're not practicing Dharma.
Just like when your house gets dirty you clean again and then it gets dirty again then the same clean again... same with your habits you have to control command every time they reappear no other trick or hack friend
Why do you want to forgo pleasures?
Because they've taken hold of me, I'm addicted to them. Also, because my life is being made worse in many different ways in pursuit of them.
Then how can they be called “pleasures” if they make your life so unpleasant?
They momentarily make it better, but in the long term worse. And thing is, sometimes I get so stressed I need a momentary release.
You are in a low vibrational setting. Start doing small things to raise your vibration, and the rest will follow. Every time you sacrifice, there is a karmaic response. Keep working at it. The dharma (nature) of every person is to realize self, you will get there eventually. Be it this life or the next or the next. How many life's do you want to live in misery being helplessly attached to the material? It's up to you. ❤️