We Tried A 36 Hour Dopamine Detox, It Fixed Our Brains!

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]We're about to try and do a 36-hour dopamine detox from 9:00 p.m. Friday night to 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning, where we can't look at any screens. No phones, no TVs, no social media, no coffee, and no sugar to see if it re-sensitizes our dopamine receptors. Basically meaning, will life feel more exciting? Will it feel more vibrant? And will our motivation come back? We're going to see [music] if that's true.

[00:00:46]>> First thing I'm going to do is attempt to meditate. And by meditate, I mean think excessively.

[00:00:55]>> [laughter] >> No, but all I do is I don't worry about if I'm thinking. My whole goal guys is just try and calm my nervous system.

[00:01:02]Breathe deep into the base of my body, and then slowly breathe out. I count in for five and out for five. I do it very simply. And it's really just to give your nervous system reassurance that it's safe and it's okay. So, what's crazy about the modern world is we now look for reassurance for our nervous system in the phone. So, we like go into our phone, "Oh, is everything okay? And what's up? My messages, my email, [music] social media." When you don't go into the screens like we haven't been in now for I don't know, what is it? 11 hours since we turned them off.

[00:01:29]Your body feels a bit like unsure. So, if you do this slow breathing for as long as you can, and given we've got nothing to do today, I may as well do it for a while.

[00:01:38]It's funny cuz it seems really boring.

[00:01:40]It's like, "I can't be bothered." And I'm thinking lots, but then by the end of it, you end up feeling super good.

[00:01:45]You're like, "Oh, now I feel all chill for my day."

[00:01:48]>> [sighs] >> We'll see.

[00:01:50]>> Okay, here is our low-dopamine breakfast. We've got no honey in there whatsoever. No added sugars, just [music] pure plain oats and chia seeds.

[00:02:00]>> You know what would be nice with this meal?

[00:02:02]>> What?

[00:02:02]>> Some TV.

[00:02:07]We always would have honey on this every day, so this is going to be good though.

[00:02:11]Isn't it funny like hunter-gatherers probably barely ever had any honey. I mean they may have maybe occasionally came across a beehive. Now we got to go one day without honey and it feels like a big deal.

[00:02:22]>> Sadly, last week our car broke down.

[00:02:24][music] So, we would be doing some really cool things like driving to some great lookouts and doing some great walks, but we don't have that luxury.

[00:02:33]So, TJ came up with a great idea and he said, "Let's walk to Brunswick Heads."

[00:02:37]which is quite a distance from our house.

[00:02:41]So, off we went. We got packed and ready >> and our big adventure begins. The town that we're close to is a town called Brunswick. It's near Byron Bay in Australia.

[00:02:51]And we've never attempted to walk there, but it might >> [laughter] >> about 75 minutes to get there.

[00:02:58]>> If I'm being completely honest with you guys, [music] I'm finding this challenge quite hard and I'm quite surprised.

[00:03:05]Usually I would have had my coffee by now and checked my phone, but we're just going to continue to walk in the silence.

[00:03:12]What did people do in the olden days without phones? Did they explore [music] cute bookshops, roam art galleries, write poetry, fall in love with the people around them?

[00:03:23]Did they go to comedy shows?

[00:03:25]What are the screens stopping [music] us from doing? Are the screens stopping us from living our most fulfilled life?

[00:03:31][music] >> We're home.

[00:03:36]>> Oh.

[00:03:38]>> [snorts] >> Oh, I'm just so tired.

[00:03:44]>> George has got a headache from caffeine withdrawal.

[00:03:47]>> Yes, I know. I'm not as much caffeine.

[00:03:50]>> The reality of the digital detox.

[00:03:53]>> Today's not about being a fun day, it's about being a recovery day.

[00:03:57]I need to go and uh to that fridge and cook some lunch.

[00:04:02]>> All motivation is draining out of us.

[00:04:04]>> What's happened to us?

[00:04:06]>> Our dopamine is resetting. Your uh low dopamine lunch.

[00:04:10]>> Wow, this uh this looks exciting.

[00:04:13]Wow.

[00:04:15]Is it good?

[00:04:17]It's good.

[00:04:20]Yogurt [clears throat] as sauce is genius.

[00:04:25]Terrible claws and terrible teeth in this terrible [music] jaws.

[00:04:30]>> It's time to go to sleep.

[00:04:38]Right.

[00:04:39]Turn off. Hours later, after laying in bed naked and reading, then lying there just being bored, then falling asleep, we're back in the game. It literally feels like we're kind of sleeping off our addiction to overstimulation. [laughter] Honestly, I think the tech is masking a deeper tiredness that humans don't realize we have. But it's so easy for all your rest to be like, "I'm going to rest and watch a movie. I'm going to rest on the sofa and play on my phone."

[00:05:05]I don't you think it's rest because it's stimulating us.

[00:05:08]>> This is tonight's dinner.

[00:05:10]Organic burger, courgette, onion, parmesan cheese, and some organic zucchini.

[00:05:22]We've had our dinner.

[00:05:24]All cleaned up. This would now be prime time TV.

[00:05:30]Get Scarlett to sleep, and then we'd watch something on YouTube, maybe we'd watch a movie, and we'd always have some kind of square of dark chocolate, or we have like cacao. Not tonight. It's so funny, the addiction to these like, "Oh, I've had my dinner now, now I need screens and sugar."

[00:05:45]>> Three.

[00:05:47]Five. Shine.

[00:05:49]>> Teaching George to play poker.

[00:05:52]This is what happens when you don't have screens. You got to you got to find some entertainment.

[00:05:56][laughter] >> Do you see my cards?

[00:06:01]>> It's been 24 hours.

[00:06:21]Good morning.

[00:06:24]Nearly there. That is 60 hours almost done. We had a good sleep last night.

[00:06:28]Very good sleep. Feels like there's some sort of change in the brain. I feel a lot more energy. Feel a lot clearer in my brain.

[00:06:38]Like my brain doesn't feel so foggy. And I feel like a real excitement for the day.

[00:06:44]Skylar, I think it's healed us.

[00:06:47]It might >> [laughter] >> She's laughing.

[00:06:50]It might have healed us.

[00:06:52]You know the brain reset with the no screens?

[00:06:55]You're going to be doing this too one day.

[00:06:59]Do you know what? Something that was so interesting is last night.

[00:07:03]George and I were sitting nothing to do.

[00:07:04]Like normally we might just like watch a movie or whatever it might be.

[00:07:08]So we had a bath together.

[00:07:11]And I noticed the immensely sad reality that we've been living in this new home for 5 weeks.

[00:07:17]And never had a bath together.

[00:07:20]We've never had a bath. Isn't that crazy?

[00:07:23]It's just like why haven't we done that?

[00:07:25]And the reason we haven't done that is because she'll put Skylar to bed and I'll be upstairs looking at a screen.

[00:07:31]And it's just so often that it feels like the more I observe it, the more we choose dopamine and the screens over oxytocin with the people we love.

[00:07:40]I'm going to get a nice workout in this morning and uh I'm feeling good.

[00:07:56]>> [clears throat] >> What do you think?

[00:08:02]I like being a better You've made it.

[00:08:05]It's after 9:00.

[00:08:07]>> I haven't touched my phone yet.

[00:08:08]>> 36 hours.

[00:08:10]>> I feel good.

[00:08:11]>> Really?

[00:08:12]>> Yeah. Yesterday I felt awful.

[00:08:16]I felt like I was unwell. I woke up and my head was pounding. I had a headache.

[00:08:22]>> Maybe you actually were unwell as well.

[00:08:24]>> Yeah, I don't know, but I felt >> Or maybe that's how severe the tech withdrawal is.

[00:08:28]>> Last night we played poker, we had baths and like relaxed and just like did things instead of sitting and staring at a screen together. And it was so nice and I want more of that. I don't want to uh spend like, you know, the weekends on the lounge just like >> This experiment has been much more effective than we necessarily expected it to be.

[00:08:52]Today I'm feeling very motivated. I've been gymming and cleaning the house. I even like scrubbed down my shower, which is something I absolutely hate doing. It feels like the restoration in our dopamine because we haven't been over stimulating ourselves has been huge.

[00:09:08]So the new boundary we're going to try, just for context, it's now, first time I'm seeing a screen, 9:28. So we did 36.5 hours.

[00:09:17]What we're going to try and do as our new boundary is have this room as the only room where we look at our phones.

[00:09:23]So this is going to be the phone room.

[00:09:24]So now we can't have our phone upstairs with us in the lounge, in the kitchen, in the bedroom. We're going to try and make this like the dedicated technology room. It could be very good with raising Skyler cuz we really don't want her to constantly think that the phone is more important than her, which can easily happen when you're on your phone and your baby is there. If I was to rate this experiment like an IMDb score, if you think of IMDb movie ratings as like a 10 the best movie ever. If I was going to think of 10 as the greatest thing you can possibly do for your brain's health, I'd probably rate this an 8.2. We're going to be doing new challenges every week to try and see whether we can find different things that can improve the health of our brain and body. If you've enjoyed this video and you want to watch those, then feel free to subscribe and we'll see you in the next one.