My 30-Day Dopamine Detox: No Caffeine, Alcohol, Sex, Or ‘Sweetness’

I took a month off of caffeine anything caffeinated which was the first turkey cold turkey which was the first time I've done that probably I would have to imagine since I was what 16 I mean it's been forever let me ask you a question here why would you do that cold turkey why not just do like oh a half a cup of coffee today and then maybe a quarter cup a few days later like why go this is like the extreme Tim did you get headaches yeah I got headaches but but it was during a

period where I could no I didn't use vikin I I knew that I could accept the headaches and I had a period of time where there really was a low cost where like professionally I was taking 3 to four weeks off the grid and I knew that I had a grace period where I could sustain it so I did effectively no caffeine no alcohol and I suppose the most important other item no sex no sex no ejaculation which is we can talk about that that's pretty easy uh the the harder one is I did nothing

sweet so not just containing sugar but nothing sweet so anything that has an artificial sweetener was out would you consider this tequila sweet I would not consider this tequila sweet and there is a there is a bit of subjectivity for a lot of it it's got sweet notes to it like it's not yeah it's it's got some floral notes to it but by the kind of letter of the law I wouldn't consider this subjectively to be sweet but for instance any kind of juice out any type of sweetness of course out let's just say different

types of plantains if they are sweet to The Taste they're out sweet potatoes out and is that hard for you that that that's not hard for me it doesn't seem hard but let's just extend this almost every toothpaste has sorbital or some kind of crap in it that is a sweetener so no brushing your teeth for two weeks I brush my teeth with sodium bicarb just baking soda straight up I I brushed my teeth with that for for a handful of of weeks and what you also realize is in the US or in this case

when I went to Korea if you ask people if if a b or c has any added sugar there is sugar or some type of sweetener in almost everything yeah that you come across that was interesting it was challenging cuz it's severely limited what I could eat but the caffeine was an amazing experience now I alluded to this a little bit earlier I'm back on the sauce over the last week week and a half which I regret number one and I'm paying a lot for like there are costs I can expl sleep I so let

me let me back up and I'll just give you the the punch tell us why you did this to begin with cuz you didn't mention that like it wasn't a New Year's resolution why yeah I so the reason I did it started because I was in South America doing a bunch of weird stuff and there were restrictions and I justed but weird stuff's psychedelics yeah psychedelics which which will tie into part of My Strange story later but I hadn't done the type of training I was doing in South America in probably five or six years

and so I took restrictions very seriously I think that is important in my opinion and then I extended them all and I wanted to see in part because I met someone who said they had stopped drinking anything caffeinated cold turkey because they felt like a loser because they they'd become dependent on it and they missed a really important ski day like one of the first days of the season and they're a really good skier and they were with a group of people and they were the only I believe they were the only person who skipped

and that day there were just like no more and to this day you know like two years later caffeine free and wa wait I lost something there MH when I wake up in the morning and I have a cup of coffee I can go skiing why did they missed ski cuz they couldn't have coffee they were because they didn't have coffee that morning and they were so tired oh that they felt like they couldn't do it so they stayed on the ski lift instead of getting off they just went around went straight back down that's

amazing and called it a day and and to their credit be under the weather or something they but to their credit they were just like this is [ __ ] loser Behavior enough and they went to zero that caught my attention because when you talk to someone no no offense to anyone who fits in this category but let's just say say if someone is a Mormon and they've never had caffeine MH that's not my life right they've never had a hit of the sauce I mean although technically their workarounds like Diet Coke instead of coffee

but well we're not going to get into the weeds theer but like if somebody hasn't had a taste of the like delicious poison there's so many things right there's so many things like this where it's like okay if you've had one significant other and you've never been out and about and like sampled the buffet of the world like we can't really have it's very hard to have an Apples to Apples talk about relationships like it's just it's a different situation right same with caffeine but this person had been hitting the sauce for decades and then

they got off and that was inspiring to me then I had this restriction and I just extended it and just to give the punchline my sleeping issues that I've had for decades every single one just vanished best sleep of the last 20 years woke up Wide Awake every morning after the first like let's just call like a week and a half had tons of energy and got a super high volume of of stuff done and what I realized and the part of the reason to answer your meta question why did I do all of these

things I was curious what my real Baseline was like what does real Baseline look like what is Tim untouched unaffected by all all these various supplements that's another thing I took a month off of all supplements I only I only took my prescription meds like the uloric and so on yeah I got rid of all supplements and no Deca or testosterone or anything no Deca no nothing okay and I was very curious to reacquaint myself with what like the sort of pure Baseline Tim is and turns out Baseline Tim does really well and why go

back then why why well you got hung over no I didn't get hung over I didn't get hung over this good after after hangover a little bit of L juice so I also before I went to South America I listened to an audio book which was called or is called the easy way to quit caffeine and that that is an extension of a brand that started with smoking I think it's the easy way to quit smoking and I know people who have literally multiple people who've listened to this they have their last cigarette and they're

done and they stop so it's a little hokey but that made an impact on me as well I'll do that for January I'm write that down on my list January no caffine and now that I know I can do it I'm definitely going to do it again the reason that I got back on it and this is this is I'll actually add just a little bit of color the first is that there were days without caffeine where I would say to myself I'm tired I really want a cappuccino but I realized because I interrogated I

was like well I'm not allowed to have a cappuccino am I really tired and I came to the conclusion that no I was wasn't actually tired I just wasn't [ __ ] wired you see what I mean like my my normal had become multiple coffees in the morning and God knows what else so I had taken as my Baseline a default I mean wired sounds too negative but like stimulated State and when that was removed the story that I conjured was I'm tired but when I was unable to have the cappuccino know and I went

on to record a podcast podcast turns out great I'm like okay let me revisit this I wasn't tired I was just calm interesting crazy interesting and why did I get back on coffee coffee for me I've realized is probably like alcohol for a lot of folks and there's sometimes I'm not going to lie look let's be honest here like there are times I was like I want to take the edge off sure have a drink right but more often I don't drink that much I use coffee as like a security blanket when my life gets

hit with something unpredictable or unpredicted and things seem a little out of control or I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through something like walking to the coffee shop in the morning and having that coffee it's it's a life raft of consistency yeah we saw this during Co right where people would line up at Starbucks for 3 hours to get a coffee because it was like the one semblance of you know and there's also a high to it so it's like also a high so even though I realize intellectually that it's counterproductive like

when I am feeling as I have been for a host of reasons that I won't bore people with but just gone through a a pretty challenging week or two my response to feeling a little anxious is to want coffee even though it increases anxiety now are you a physiologically i i this is one thing actually we've known each other for a long time I I don't know the answer this I don't know that I've seen you do this are you an afternoon coffee guy at all I don't know that I've seen you do um mate

maybe a little bit later but like I I typically do not have coffee in the afternoons and I really try not to have caffine in the afternoons which I violated this week so in the last like two two days or I should say in the last let's just say in the past seven days I have violated that and what I've realized because I've run the end of one now and there are a bunch of different variables so I realize this is imprecise it's not a perfect science is that I can drink coffee and fall asleep

that's not the problem but it disrupts my sleep architecture quity of sleep I wake up after 3 days very little time 3 days of drinking caffeine I wake up and I have circles under my eyes like dark circles are you are you quantifying this in in the sense of like are you wearing an aura ring do you have any other data where you're looking at it I'm not currently capturing the data with an aura ring but I have in the past yeah I've seen what it looks like so I know that's the case I'm falling

asleep my time in bed if we're just looking at a clock is fine but I'm waking up tired I hate that and then what do you want you want another hit of course you want more of the sauce thing the juice and there's a lot to be said for it um this is not to completely knock coffee like I don't think for the rest of my life I'm going to be caffeine-free but now I have a better awareness of what my Baseline looks like so I can return to that so let me tell you something

crazy uh this was before I met Daria so I'm I'm trying to go back in in in years now so probably let's just call it 15 years ago I gave up coffee for about 6 months 6 months yeah that's legit well but I wasn't really that addicted to it I was having like a cup every other day or whatever and I I went back I remember I was living in San Francisco at the time and I went to rual Coffee which is fantastic coffee place great place and I I ordered a tall like single origin

coffee and I drank the whole thing when you go 6 months without coffee and you have a full cup of coffee you feel high as a kite I was like 10x what I feel today with a cup of coffee yeah cuz your body just like I mean it is a powerful drug when you you've gone without it for a while super powerful do you have any sense of how long it takes to like get that back like how long do do have you done any research to get what back that initial like like Childhood High

of like that first cup of coffee how long do you go without before you get back tell you like I don't know I don't know I will say on the opposite end which is what I thought you were asking how long does it take to develop tolerance and experience with withdrawal symptoms it is so fast oh so fast and one day if you go without coffee Serious Coffee drinkers will be headaches yeah well I would say furthermore if you stop drinking coffee and I'm using coffee as a bit of a scape cope here like I

love coffee but if you if you go without caffeine and then you get back on caffeine and you're on it for 2 or 3 days and then you stop again my personal experience is you are going to feel withdrawal symptoms and that is unlike most other drugs it is a powerful powerful powerful drug right like I'm not recommending this but hypothetically if you were to like smoke cigarettes for a few days and then stop you're fine yeah no problem you're not going to have a headache the next day but with caffeine it is an incredibly

powerful drug and I think that's in part because it is often disrupting sleep architecture