nature's adderall
the connoisseur’s guide to sourcing dopamine pt.2
it sounds sadistic, but i loved finals season.
a full-on sprint—titrating between adderall, juul, and a tiny bit of caffeine (mind the heart palpitations!)
editor’s note: if my future mother-in-law ever reads this—please note that i’m now a certified good boy who goes to bed at 8:30. the shenanigans have exited the system.
for those who have never taken a study drug—they’re pretty wild.
about as close to that movie limitless as you can get (at least that’s the impression the user gets—to everyone else you still look like a bozo).
but adderall is not without its cost.
aside from the going (collegiate) rate of $5 per 10mg, there are the sneakier, longer term costs.
after a few seasons of finals sprints, i noticed my attention span was pretty fucked. hard to say whether this was due to the adderall, pot, or alcohol—but adderall was the prime suspect.
neural damage aside, there’s something else the seasonal adderall user ought to be wary of…
the dreaded wikipedia rabbit hole.
as anyone who has ever popped a 20mg IR without a clear to do list in front of them can attest—taking adderall does not guarantee you study.
it only guarantees that whatever you aim your tractor beam of focus at is engaging.
it does this by flooding your brain with dopamine, then blocking it’s reuptake.
sorry accounting 201 final, i just discovered the 5th beatle1 and now it’s all aboard the wikipedia rollercoaster for the next 6 hours.
trigger warning for anyone who hates mornings
🌶️ take: mornings are nature’s adderall.
and almost all of us waste our highs.
i’ll explain.
dopamine—we’ve talked about this little misunderstood molecule before.
to refresh your memory: dopamine is like a tiny cheerleader inside each of us that makes us feel good as we work towards achieving our goals. it’s the motivation molecule.
no dopamine? you’ve got problems. you’re not getting out of bed.
speaking of beds—each morning when you wake, your dopamine reserves are at their peak.
an avalanche of dopamine ready to be released.
this is great. but it can go sideways with one false move.
see, your morning supply of dopamine is like a horny 14-year-old. the slightest gust of wind, and well… there goes all your dopamine.
high versus low
that gust of wind is what’s called a high dopaminergic activity2.
think: checking IG notifs, strolling tiktok, video games, porn, etc.
engage in any of these activities and you’ll break the dam holding back your reserves of dopamine—flooding the system.
which is fun.. for a moment. but then you’re left without your cheerleader for the rest of the day.
bad news.
but there’s another category: low dopaminergic activities.
these do not trigger dopamine floods. rather, they release a steady drip drop.
they’re boring by comparison. and that’s the point. if they weren’t boring they’d blow your reserves in one big dopamine bonanza.
the bigger your dopamine reserves, the easier it is for dopamine to be released during non-pleasurable experiences (read: boring/hard stuff).
though the mechanism is different from adderall—the result is similar—more dopamine in your system—transforming otherwise boring or challenging tasks into engaging activities.
hence, mornings are nature’s adderall (provided you don’t waste it with a high dopaminergic activity).
okay tadz, is this where you tell me to adopt a 15-step morning routine so i can unlock turbo productivity?
no.
elaborate morning routines are overrated. keep that shit simple.
wake up. make your coffee, journal, whatever—then get after what’s important to you.
ideally, something that gives you (sustained) energy.
the R word
clearly i have a thing for mornings.
but it’s not just me. every major religion regards mornings as sacred.
woah, woah, woah, he just dropped the R word.
don’t close the window just yet—consider this:
once you remove the toxicity of religion, you’re left with a stack of time-tested lifehacks, wrapped in a compelling story format (which itself is a hack for improving retention).
meditation = praying
intermittent fasting = fasting (ramadan, lent, yom kippur)
gratitude journals = praying and blessings
burn out prevention = sabbath
communal movement = ceremonies with singing and dancing
community building = attending service
accept the initial agitation
mornings are great. but i don’t want to overpromise here.
some things will still require activation energy.
anytime i sit down to do something difficult i remind myself to:
accept the initial agitation.
..when you try to lean into boredom or a bout of focused work, at first, the brain naturally tries to resist. it might have you reflexively reach for your phone, tempt you to pull up your email, or remind you about that text you still need to reply to. the agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning is just a recognized gate…there is a gate of entry. you have to wade through some sewage before you can swim in clear water. that’s the way I always think about it.”
(via billy oppenheimer)3
it’s like a run. the first 15-20 minutes are gunna suck, but once you do it enough times you know to expect that and can push through knowing that it’ll get better.
sorry night owls
damn, i really didn’t mean to write another “just be a morning person” essay. but here we are.
for the night owls amongst us, thanks for making it this far. i can’t speak to your experience, but morning person or not, we’re all slaves to dopamine so hopefully you got a nugget or two out of this.
closing nuggets to chew on:
there’s no right way to spend the morning, but there is most definitely a wrong way to spend it.
avoid dopamine floods at all costs for the first 90 minutes of the morning.
starting your day with a high dopaminergic activity is the equivalent of flushing your supply of (natural) adderall down the toilet like a trap house about to get raided.
i’ve found leaving my phone on airplane mode through the night and into the first few hours of the day to be a good strategy.
elaborate morning routines are overrated — night routines are underrated.
if you dial in your night routine, your morning will handle itself. so long as you don’t fuck it all up by triggering a dopamine flood.
the 3, 2, 1 night routine:
3: finish eating 3 hours before bed.
2: stop drinking 2 hours before bed.
1: avoid screens 1 hour before bed.
figure out what’s important to you, and spend your natural high on that.
for a lot of us, it’s something you’re not getting paid for, at least not yet. which is exactly why you need to prioritize it and give your best hours to it, otherwise it’ll get overshadowed by everything else. prioritize it and let everything else get the scraps. they’ll survive.
that’s it for the week.
talk soon.
-t
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the secret behind resisting dopamine (great in-depth video that explains dopamine in an accessible way from a harvard trained doctor)
I think about this Billie Oppenheimer quote all of the time!
"Accept the initial agitation.
..when you try to lean into boredom or a bout of focused work, at first, the brain naturally tries to resist. it might have you reflexively reach for your phone, tempt you to pull up your email, or remind you about that text you still need to reply to. the agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning is just a recognized gate…there is a gate of entry. "
I've understood that smartphones are unique in the sense of creating subtle distraction.
It seems that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone in their pocket or room reduces cognitive capacity. Our subconscious is always aware that we have a infinite entertainment source just a few meters from us, and this seems to create infinite distraction in the back of my mind. (This is how I perceive it).
I would say that aggressive constraints are the only response to it, since the internet is heavily aggressive with our minds too.