in order to reset the dopamine system essentially in order to break an addictive pattern to become unaddicted 30 days of zero interaction with that substance that person Etc right is that correct yeah and and 30 days is in my clinical experience the average amount of time it takes for the brain to reset reward Pathways for dopamine transmission to regenerate itself there's also a little bit of science that suggests that that's true some Imaging studies showing that our brains are still in a dopamine deficit state two weeks after we've been using our drug and then a study by shuck it and brown which took a group of depressed men who also were addicted to alcohol put them in a hospital where the they had received no treatment for depression but they had no no access to alcohol in that time and after four weeks eighty percent of them no longer met criteria for major depression so again this idea that by depriving ourselves of this High dopamine High reward substance or behavior we allow our brains to regenerate its own dopamine to for the balance to really quote right and then we're in a place where we can sort of enjoy other things so that Progressive narrowing of what happens when pleasure eventually expands so I'd like to um dissect out that 30 days a little more finally um and I also want to address how does one stop doing something for 30 days if the thing is a thought so we'll kind of put that on the shelf for a moment so days one through ten I would imagine will be very uncomfortable yes they're gonna suck right basically to be quite honest because wait if the way you describe this pleasure pain balance to my mind says that if you remove what little pleasure one is getting or a lot of pleasure from engaging in some Behavior that's gone the pain system is really ramped up and nothing is making me feel good I'll just use myself as an example I'm not in recovery but you know that 10 days is going to be miserable right anxiety trouble sleeping um physical agitation and to the point where you know um maybe impulsive angry should should one expect all of that should the family members of people expect all of that yeah so what I say to patients and it's a really important piece of this intervention is that you will feel worse before you feel better for how long yeah this is probably the first question you asked right and I say usually in my clinical experience you'll feel worse for two weeks but if you can make it through those first two weeks the sun will start to come out in week three and by week four most people are feeling a whole lot better than they were before they stopped using their substance so um yeah you have to it's it's a hard thing like you have to sign up for it and I will say Obviously there are people with addictions that are so severe that as long as they have access to their drug or behavior they're not able to stop themselves and that's why we have you know higher levels of care or residential treatment so this is not going to be for everybody this intervention but it's amazing how many people with really severe addictions to things like heroin cocaine you know very severe pornography addictions I posit this and I do it as an experiment I said you know what let's try this experiment I'm always amazed number one how many of them are willing and number two how many of them are actually able to do it they are able to do it and and so that little nudge is sort of just what they need and the carrot is you know there's a better life out there for you and you'll be able to taste it in a month you really will be able to begin to see that you can feel better and that there's another way so the way you describe it um seems like it's hard but it's doable for most people not everybody right and we'll return to the that category of people who can't do that on their own um well then days 21 through 30 uh people are feeling better the sun is starting to come out as you mentioned they it which translates in the narrative we've created here and support by biology that dopamine is starting to be released in response to the taste of a really good cup of coffee yes exactly whereas before it was only to insert you know addictive behavior right that's what it whichever it is coffee can be addictive too but but we'll leave that aside yeah I feel like coffee has a kind of um consumption limiting mechanism built in where at some point you just can't ingest anymore yeah um but maybe that's wrong sorry to give lift to the caffeine addicts out there I was like as I watch my my mug um so days 21 through 30. um I've seen a lot of people go through addiction and addiction treatment I've spent a lot of time in those places actually um looking at it researching I've Got Friends in that Community I'm close with that community