 
# A 40 Day Dopamine Fast

## By Greg Kamphuis
Text copyright © 2017 Greg Kamphuis

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Part 1

How It All Began

A Goal is Created

The Hypothesis

Dopamine and Super Stimuli

The Fast

Who is this guy

Part 2

The Journal

Tuesday, Day 0

Wednesday, Day 1

Thursday, Day 2

Friday, Day 3

Saturday, Day 4

Sunday, Day 5

Monday, Day 6

Tuesday, Day 7

Wednesday, Day 8

Thursday, Day 9

Friday, Day 10

The ¼ Way Interlude

Saturday, Day 11

Sunday, Day 12

Monday, Day 13

Tuesday, Day 14

Wednesday, Day 15

Thursday, Day 16

Friday, Day 17

Friday, Day 18

Sunday, Day 19

Monday, Day 20

The ½ Way Interlude

Tuesday, Day 21

Tuesday, Day 22

Wednesday, Day 23

Friday, Day 24

Saturday, Day 25

Sunday, Day 26

Monday, Day 27

Tuesday, Day 28

Wednesday, Day 29

Thursday, Day 30

The ¾ Way Interlude

Friday, Day 31

Day 32, Saturday

Sunday, Day 33

Monday, Day 34

Tuesday, Day 35

Wednesday, Day 36

Thursday, Day 37

Friday, Day 38

Saturday, Day 39

Sunday, Day 40

Part 3

The Meaning of it All

Epilogue

The Solution

The Imagination

The deadly cues

Your World VS The Real World

The Truth

Your Body is Where it's at

What do you worship?

Finding Your Purpose

About Me - Post 40 Day Fast

The Second Fast
Part 1

How It All Began

# A Goal is Created

Have you ever wondered where writers or songwriters get their ideas? Especially musicians, the pressure to grab more original music out of thin air after they have already put their best ideas into a hit album must seem impossible. Hasn't all the good music out there already been written? Haven't all the good ideas already been had? The only way for an idea or solution to be created is for it to pop into the brain. Somehow the neurons in your brain rewire and fire and presto a new and original tune floats across the mind.

It is day seven of my 40-day dopamine detox, and I am going to make a bold prediction: by the end of this 40 days, this creative miracle will have happened to me.

I am not a full time professional creative person, but I have felt this creative miracle before, as most people probably have. You start with a vague idea of what you want to accomplish and plant it in your mind. As you go through life, you start to notice things in conversations, books, and nature - basically everywhere, and the idea grows into something more solid. Eventually you have a question that needs to be answered, a theory that needs to be explained, a beauty that needs to be shown or a truth that needs to be expressed. Today (day 7 of my detox), I got my question.

This is where the mysterious work of creation begins. I call it a miracle because you are sitting there with an abstract concept and asking the universe how you put it on paper or into music (or room redesign, or a problem at work, or relationship growth, etc.) and there is literally no way you can know where the answer is going to come from. This mysteriousness makes me nervous to be predicting I will an 'aha' moment, especially because my vague idea of what I want to solve is a mighty problem.

I came up with the idea of doing a dopamine fast because I was tired of be pushed around by cravings. I figured I have one chance at life and I shouldn't waste it smoking and drinking wine in front of the TV. I had tried quitting (mostly smoking) several different ways, but it always came back or resulted in me finding new things to addict myself to. I was getting a bit desperate and randomly came up with the idea of trying to reset my dopamine system. It seemed like a jolly idea or at least worth a shot, so here I am seven days in. The thing I realized almost immediately was that this is going to be a much deeper dive into my own psyche than I initially planned.

As soon as I dug all the mind-numbing pleasures out of my life, it became immediately apparent that there was something hiding underneath them. However, whatever it is, clearly wants to remain hidden. On the surface, it looks like simple laziness. I smoke instead of write. I drink instead of having heart to heart conversations, and I watch TV instead of getting organized, because it is easier. But, there is a hole in this idea. The laziness crutches just make me want more. They don't rejuvenate me in any way. I think they make me more tired.

So, why do I gravitate to the nearest sugary snack or to Facebook every time I want to get something done? That is the gist of the question whose answer I want to fall miraculously into my lap. But, that is not how the question came to me. The question came to me when I was thinking about how miserable life is without any sweet things, and I wondered,

Why are some people so good at life? How do they go about merrily getting out of bed in the morning, remaining efficient, focused and wholly uncomplainingly satisfied with every task that affronts them?

I think everyone knows at least one of these people. The universe probably puts them here to be examples, but they mostly feel like cruel displays of things we will never have. To get at what I mean it is best to try and imagine yourself as one of these people or imagine being a president or prime minister. How do you make thousands of crucial decisions every week and have confidence in every one? I can hardly write a sentence without overthinking it. It helps I have one of these people as a close friend, so I can tell you that it is not just a good education and some money behind you that makes you the CEO of a billion-dollar company. They always know what they want and how to get it. They are perpetually satisfied. They are certainly not controlled by anything. They do the controlling. That is not to say they won't go out and for a drink and have a good time, but even if they are hung over, they will be up early, not feeling sorry for themselves, and back to getting things done. Their minds are always focused on something. What we consider work and need to relax from, they do for all their waking moments. Am I drawing the picture clearly? Right now, as you will see when you read all about day seven, I am not exactly at my most mentally acute. I am not even sure what I mean... It is not just rich and successful, I think my grandpa may be close to being one of these people. They are pleased with every moment and not asking too many questions. They are sharp and present while realizing that you can't hold onto it. They always have something on the go, but getting things done is not the reason for staying busy because they realize there is always more to do, and yet they are already satisfied... Anyway, I could go on and on, but maybe it would be more helpful to describe something most of us understand a little bit better...

We are the masses. We depend on sugar and hype for happiness. If we complete an hour-long task we feel like we deserve a break. Our minds wander as we think of ways to look like we have it all together. The only thing that we can satisfactorily engage our minds in is a good TV show and even then, a bowl of buttery popcorn makes the engagement so much smoother. Our bodies beg us not to turn on our brains and demand rewards for any allowance. If I file my tax return I will let myself go buy a new pair of shoes,... and that chocolate bar,... and a McFlury. Forget having any sort of control over our lives. Screaming bosses, kids, chores, to do lists, bills, and cravings run the show. Sure, we make it by, but every so often when the screaming stops a much worse feeling swings around. The feeling that our one chance at life seems to be flying by in this hectic merry-go-round nightmare that only stops to give us a peak at what real life looks like when it decides it might be a good place to stop and occasionally when we are feeling sick...

Well, this is it. Seven days ago, I threw myself recklessly off the merry-go-round and puked on some guy's shoes. I had the vague idea that I wanted to be in control and that life shouldn't be going by in a blur. Today, seven days later, I had my first taste of clarity. I think the spins may be subsiding and I am wobbling out for the masses, looking for the aha moment that could set us free. I have been here before and tried an almighty amount of random theories but kept getting knocked down and dragged back into the whirl wind of life kicking and screaming. But, this time I have a new tool, I come prepared.

# The Hypothesis

Try telling someone that you are going to quit TV, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, sugary foods, shopping, all forms of sexual release and only check email/social media twice a day, and watch their response. It is hard to keep a straight face even imagining it. The weirdest mixture of disgust, compassion, and confusion scrunches their face. They try and figure out if you are crazy before outright calling you crazy. Then, after thinking about it, they respond,

"I would rather be dead."

Yeah, they're joking, but they pose a serious question. What is the point of living beyond getting the next cheap fix? Most people wouldn't actually rather be dead, but if you try this, even for a day, you will find yourself wondering how you are supposed to enjoy life without your morning coffee or your evening dose of reality TV. What is the point of life without these pleasures?

In the next section I will give you some of the science behind this seemingly insane idea, and explain exactly what I did for 40 days. Then, the rest of the book is a journal of my experience. First, however, I need to explain the reasoning behind the idea and hopefully convince you that I am not crazy.

At the outset, I want to be clear that I in no way advocate doing this for the rest of your life. There is clearly nothing wrong with sugar, sex, and TV. We need to eat, procreate, and relax our minds. The problem I am tackling is the never ending spiral of needing more. I want to find the bottom of the hole and finally have a place to stand. I picked 40 days because per my research, that is how much time it takes to rewire new habits into your brain. I also like the number 40 from its reoccurrence in important biblical stories.

The hypotheses I set out with on this journey is that unnatural stimulants (or super stimulants) have wrecked the natural reward system that gives us pleasure in life. We have gotten used to cheap fixes and have become numb to real life. The best example of this that I can think of was the disappointment I felt when I first tried real Vietnamese food in Vietnam. I had been reliably informed by Anthony Bourdain that Vietnamese culinary skills would rock my world, and they did not. At least not at first, apparently when you are used to everything being loaded with sugar, salt and cheese, someone can spend all the time they want brewing fresh stock and dicing up wild herbs, it is just not going to blow your socks off. We have been numbed to natural, life-giving goodness by saturating ourselves in a 'processed' reality.

This new reality is so powerful that it overrides our ability to take care of ourselves. This is obvious with alcohol and drugs. Somehow our brain's 'don't poison yourself' alarm is subdued by the bonus flow of dopamine we receive when these substances are tapped. It is also obvious in the reclusive, anti-social porn addict and in the obese person who can't stop eating. But, these are only the most extreme cases. Every day we make poor decisions while under the influence of cravings. We watch TV when we could be creating. We share and like pictures instead of appreciating. We talk when we should listen and touch when we should feel. Our submersion in the world of getting the next fix is so complete that most of the time we don't even know what is driving us. It is a constant and exhausting pursuit of that elusive moment of satisfaction, and it is so focused on that satisfaction that stopping for a moment to look at nature, enjoy a personal interaction, or just do nothing can seem hollow and meaningless.

The problem gets even deeper. Our myopic focus on the easy dopamine fix has driven us to ignore reality. While the rest of the world is worshiping Vietnamese food, the Vietnamese are busy not really caring at all. The Vietnamese don't sit down every day in expectation of a fine treat, they eat that food because they need to eat food and that is what is available. This is a reoccurring theme across the developing world. Everyone eats the same basic thing all the time and not only is it no big deal, they seem to like it (think rice for breakfast, lunch and supper). They enjoy their food because it makes them full. We on the other hand have glorified food and look forward to each meal as a moment of pleasure. We manufacture the goodness or badness of a thing and then strive for that instead of striving for fullness.

I want fullness. That sounds good to me. I want to stop moving from moment to moment only looking forward to the next little pleasure hit. So, I asked, what would happen if I took them all away? Is there any sense in getting up without a coffee, in finishing the dishes with no TV, or hanging out with friends with no beer? What will happen to me? My guess is that instead of using these things to control myself, I will need to start looking for other things to create joy. All those little projects I've always wanted to do but didn't because I was too lazy. I was never actually lazy, my brain just did the energy to pleasure calculation and TV always won, and slowly I became numb to the pleasure of just being full.

To me this theory makes intuitive sense. I have always had a plethora of little fake go to pleasures, and used them generously. I also have recently started my own business so my lack of self-control has been put into 3-d clarity. Since I am both boss and worker I am privy to the strongman competition that is my mind vs my will power. Most of the time I can't watch because it is too gruesome. I sit in front of the computer forcing my mind to expend energy on something it doesn't want to do until there is a crack somewhere inside. To protect the structural integrity of the whole thing I call off the battle and go to the fridge to grab a snack, give me ten more minutes of work and I'll go for a cigarette, another 30min and I'll watch some porn, another hour and I'll watch some TV... I feel like if I could just chop the knees out from these silly things I don't even want to do I would be free to fully settle into the things I want to do and even get some enjoyment out of them. Fighting all these things needlessly saps my strength and steals the joy of life.

I think I just need a peak out of a 40-day window. I know it will be hard but what is 40 days in a lifetime? Plus, I am certain that the artificial pleasures of modern society are not necessary for happiness, so it can't hurt to live without them for a while. The apparent ridiculousness and impossibility of the idea at first, combined with the fact that none of these things are remotely required for life, makes me suspicious of what my brain is trying to hide. So, seven days ago, I jumped.

# Dopamine and Super Stimuli

Okay, wait, wait. I did sound brave with an icy cold logic that showed reckless care for my poor physical body when I wrote that introduction. "The fearless Greg absolutely smashing his petty mind and body in the name of a hunch that 40 days of torture may change his life..." It sounds good. The whole theory sounds good. But, 40 days without coffee? On a hunch? That is a bit of a stretch.

The truth is, I had a little more to go on than just a hunch.

It all began one day when I was listening to a how things work type podcast and it introduced me to the idea of super stimuli. It was a basic podcast that avoided too much science but the general idea stuck in my head. We evolved to highly desire certain things. Specifically, we evolved to want food, sex, security, and social acceptance (notice that these things overlap and form a drive to survive). Modern day producers and advertisers are highly aware of this drive. They go to university and study how to manipulate it, and they have learned well. Our motivation to obtain the necessities of life has been co-opted and now, if we are not careful, it can lead to our demise. Think about a piece of chocolate cheese cake. The amount of easy to digest sugar and fat in that one tiny slice is unheard of in nature. The most sugar you can find in nature is in a piece of fruit, and even that is mixed with pesky, hard to digest, fiber. I don't even know where you would get that kind of fat in nature.

Obviously, when our highly sensitive brains are presented with the idea of cheesecake, the bells and whistles and party lights are all going to erupt. The question is, do we have another system from evolution that will tell us when we have had enough?

After hearing the podcast I was intrigued by supernormal stimuli and considered it a bit further. It turns out super stimuli have been a topic in biology since the 1930's. Dutch Nobel prize winner Nikolaas Tinbergen introduced us to birds that would rather sit on giant bright blue plaster eggs than their own, small, lightly colored, but real eggs1. The pictures are heartbreakingly pathetic. Tiny birds sitting on eggs that are so big they fall off as they neglect their own children. Tinbergen then reproduced the idea of the experiment, luring different animals and insects with fake models of mates, and progressively making the residents of the animal kingdom look more and more foolish. My favorite is an experiment where he outfitted puny male chickadees with what were effectively dunce caps made to look like plumage that drove the females crazy. Meanwhile, the strong healthy male chickadees stood idly by.

We are not nearly as foolish as chickadees. If we are told that the egg is not real or the donut is not good for you, we can make the best choice for us. It's true. That is why I am not calling for a ban on the cruel advertisers setting out traps to make us pathetic. No matter what our lives feel like, we are in control. We have the amazing distinction among the animals of being the only ones who have the responsibility of choice. However, there is another piece of information that makes the idea of super stimulants a little scarier. It is time to talk a about dopamine.

Dopamine is the chemical in our brains that creates motivation. In lab experiments with rats, when the dopamine function is fully blocked, they become so lethargic that even getting up to get a drink of water is not worth the effort. However, if water is placed right in front of them they will still drink. This demonstrates the necessity of dopamine. We may think that hunger or thirst is what is driving us at lunch time, but our bodies are much more complicated than that. We don't just need to feel thirsty, we also need something that signals our bodies to get up and go. Dopamine is what spurs you into action, and the more dopamine you have, the more action you will be willing to take.

My favorite description of what dopamine does is from Sheri Johnson, Professor of Phycology at UC Berkley2. She takes her analogy from an actual experiment in which the level of dopamine in a rat's brain was measure against the steepness of the ramp it was willing to run up to get a reward. She says that dopamine does not determine how much you like a thing, but how steep the ramp needs to be before it is not worth the work. In other words, dopamine determines how hard you are willing to work for what you want.

This motivational chemical is responsible for literally all movement and energy expended by you. You get a shot every time you successfully put one foot in front of the other, literally and figuratively. Dopamine is involved in the ability to focus and lack of dopamine results in the dreaded brain fog. Your motor skills are related to dopamine. This explains why Parkinson's Disease, a disease that slowly breaks down the ability to physically control your body, has been associated so closely with dopamine. Another thing that dopamine is responsible for is social function. It takes a stunning amount of energy to have a conversation. You need to read social cues, recall memories, listen, and respond. If the brain is not getting sufficient motivation to stay engaged, the person will not be able to have confident social interactions.

So, we can see that dopamine has a lot to do with the question of what our life-loving, charismatic friends have going for them. Dopamine could transform you from a spaced out, uncoordinated, awkward individual to an unstoppable machine. That sounds excellent! It is not lack of smarts, bad genes, or laziness holding us back. It is something that we can change. Even if you aren't smart or are lazy, with a little motivation, you can put some work into changing that. The problem is that once we sit down on the couch to watch TV with a glass of wine, a vicious cycle begins.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter. That means that its job is to deliver messages around the brain. It is found everywhere, but there are three areas that neuroscientists focus on when it comes to motivation: the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens (NAC), and a specific area of the prefrontal cortex called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Each of these areas are interesting when it comes to understanding motivation. The VTA is the main producer of dopamine, and the OFC is responsible for making conscious decisions. But, at the end of the day, when it comes to motivation, it all comes down to if the NAC has the amount of dopamine it needs or not.

Let's do a quick run through on what happens in your brain when you see a chocolate bar at the checkout. First, obviously, you see it. This is when the OFC is first employed. All your surrounding environment is absorbed, your future goals are accounted for, and your memories are instantaneously consulted on if having this chocolate bar is a good idea. Unless you are allergic to chocolate your OFC will likely find one or two good reasons to have a chocolate bar and that will fire up the dopamine system. The VTA is signaled and it begins producing dopamine. This dopamine tells the NAC to go into business and you will begin to want the chocolate bar. This whole time the OFC is still operating, and it will now consider the wanting feeling from the NAC. You are still responsible for the decision on if you buy the chocolate or not, but the more the NAC is stimulated, the harder it will be to say no.

The question then becomes, what determines how much the NAC is stimulated? The answer brings us to the scary thing about super stimuli.

The NAC needs to maintain a relatively steady level of dopamine to help you achieve your normal functions without flying off the rails and feeling like you want to do everything. To do this, it diminishes its own sensitivity to dopamine. This effect is the most obvious with drug addicts. Cocaine gives the NAC access to about 3 times more dopamine than sex, and crystal meth provides 13 times. This is well out of the normal range the NAC is equipped to deal with, so it starts shutting down its dopamine receptivity. The user may have started because he or she wanted to relax and get high, but eventually the NAC becomes so desensitized they need the drug to function normally. The numbing of the dopamine system is so extreme that the want for food is no longer anything compared with the desire for another hit.

We all know this effect in some way. It is called tolerance in everyday talk. We grab a second coffee, put on another layer of cheese, or have another drink, because what was good before is now just normal. The major problem is that none of our other systems have made a similar accommodation. Broccoli has no natural defense mechanism against chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip cookies can't compete with cocaine. As soon as the NAC's equilibrium has been breached things start spiraling out of control. If you try just having one layer of cheese, the wanting generated by the NAC won't be satisfied. You have another sandwich but the NAC wants one big hit. Finally, you go back to the fridge and grab a big hunk of cheese and eat it. The NAC is satisfied, but now you have taught the OFC that a cheese sandwich is a cue that means you will get a hunk of cheese after. A vicious cycle has begun.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ObUIf9pcs

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD-eQ8Poc-k

3. Most of the information on dopamine came from Gabor Mate's In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts

# The Fast

We have already gone over the dopamine factory we have made from meal time. The ramp is almost downhill when deciding to watch TV, and pornography is stealing the thunder of sex, our strongest natural dopamine supplement. What about cell phones? Is it possible to resist checking your phone as soon as it beeps? Everyone has heard their phone beep just as they were falling asleep and figured they might as well have one last check. Even if I defeat the urge, that beep is seared into my brain as something I need to do. I could be white water rafting when I hear my phone beep, and two hours later when I put my feet on dry land I will have the feeling that I have something important to do. And, your phone is with you all the time... (except maybe when you are white water rafting).

It is hard for us not to have unbalanced dopamine systems. The definition of addiction is: Addiction is any repeated behaviour in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on their life and the lives of others. You may think, "aha, but my phone use doesn't impact me negatively!" The scary part though is that the part of our brain that is supposed to judge negative impact, the OFC, has likely been compromised already. This means that you probably won't notice any damage to your relationships because you are already getting enough love from the sweet ding. It means you won't realize how much energy you've lost by gaining those five pounds. You probably won't listen when someone tells you that obesity kills more people than smoking, or that smoking is just a stupid thing to do. The cost of those shiny new shoes will seem like nothing compared to paying down your ridiculous debts, and if anyone says anything bad about coffee you may just want to punch them in the face.

To make matters worse, the NAC is a floozy mistress. It doesn't really care what it gets, it just wants. So, when you finally decide that you should probably reduce your Facebook time, that desire, which will still exist, is just as easily fulfilled with ice cream. It is a well-known fact that quitting smoking leads to weight gain, and I can tell you from experience that if you quit smoking and go on a diet, you may be inclined towards a daily pot of coffee or two. The wanting feeling is the same for everything. It will eat our very soul and still not be satisfied

In his book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections Carl Jung quotes a First Nation chief of the Taos Pueblos, " _Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they are mad."_

_That was in 1962. Now, in 2016, 50 booming years of technology later, I am sure the want has weaseled its dullening glint into everyone's eyes. Real life, eating wholesome foods, sitting on the patio with friends, watching the sunset is just not enough anymore. You can go out for a beautiful evening with your partner, but it just wouldn't be the same without a glass of wine, and will it really be worth it if no one else sees? Might as well post it to Facebook. Will we ever again be able to have pure satisfaction from a deep breath of fresh air? Your OFC is probably asking why you would even want something so stupid. Just put down the book and go and grab a glass of wine._

_There is good news. The NAC can reopen dopamine receptors that it has closed. This means that you can be re-sensitized to normal stimuli. However, just as it takes different amounts of time for chronic use of super stimulants to numb the NAC for different people, recovery times will also vary from person to person. According to my research, it can be anywhere from two weeks to two years. I chose 40 days for a NAC reset experiment because a two year recovery was for long term drug users, and most sources said six to eight weeks will give time for ample recovery of the NAC's dopamine receptors._

_It is extremely important to note that I am not a doctor or neuroscientist. All the information I found about super stimuli and dopamine came from reliable sources, but the idea for a dopamine detox was all me. I don't want to come across as saying that this is a solid scientific experiment, and I certainly don't want anyone trying this themselves and then suing me. Anyone can take a bunch of science and put it together to prove just about any point and that is exactly what I have done here. The main reason why I decided to do the dopamine fast was because this piecing together of scientific information fit with my intuition. My desire is to stop feeling perpetual desire. I want to be in control and not have something inside my head called a NAC pushing me and prodding me like a high school bully. I also want to feel a decent level of motivation and excitement towards my everyday life. In short I want life to be my reward. Everything after that, coffee for breakfast and sugar in my tea, should be bonus._

#  _Who is this guy_

_Even if you buy all the reasons for why I did this. You've still got to be a bit curious about who I am. That question is one that will be answered a little more in depth than even I would prefer by the time you are finished reading my journal. But, before you get to know me by my inner most struggles, I should probably give you a proper introduction._

_My name is Greg Kamphuis. I came up with the idea for the dopamine detox, I did it, and I wrote the book. I have always had struggles with dopamine related problems. I have been diagnosed with adhd and bipolar diseases by different therapists. I have smoked weed for two years straight, every day all the time. When I drink, I drink a lot, and just before I did the dopamine fast I drank three or four times per week. I have smoked cigarettes for 15 years and have been trying to quit for 14 years. The same thing is true about pornography._

_I have no excuses. I have a good family, and have always had enough money. My childhood was pleasant although I remember complaining that I was bored a lot (another side effect of having low dopamine). I have good friends who for the most part weren't bad influences, and I had good enough grades in high school to be accepted into a good university for engineering. However, as soon as I left home I pretty much lost control of myself. I did okay at university for not going to class, but after changing my major twice, I dropped out with nothing to show for five years except a bad marijuana habit._

_I got a good job in construction and I discovered a passion for travelling on my winters off, but I wasn't at all satisfied with where my life was headed. I eventually went to college to get a diploma in in Journalism._

_After a few more years in construction, I finally decided it was time to make my move. I quit my job, sold a lot of my stuff, and gave myself a year to make it as a blogger about sustainable business. In order to stretch my money out longer, I moved to Cambodia for that year. That is where I am now._

_My same old patterns have resurfaced. Every time I try and do something difficult I turn to my addictions. I may put in a few consecutive weeks, or maybe even a month, but I always lose focus. Whenever I start something, I know it will only be a matter of time before I start looking for an easier way. That is what I am trying to put an end to. I am tired of my life following a pattern instead of a design. It doesn't seem like too much to ask that I actually do what I want to do, but somehow up until now I always get turned back. My life has not been bad. In fact, on the surface it probably even looks pretty awesome, but I am missing peace. I believe that peace will come from being able to sink myself into the purpose in life that I was meant for. I don't expect this purpose to be easy, but I do expect to be motivated enough to not stop every time the going gets rough. It is clear to me that all my favorite super stimuli have become distractions to this purpose, and I decided that I should stop wasting my one chance at life._

_The next section is the journal I wrote while under the strict rules \--_ No casinos, No porn, no sex, no masturbation, no weed, no cigarettes, no cigars, no tobacco, no alcohol, no fast food, no greasy food, no artificial processed foods, no pop, no coffee, no chocolate, no refined sugar, no tv, no movies (only documentaries), and no video games. I also later added on no shopping, only two daily social media and email checks, and low amounts of music – no music videos.
Part 2

The Journal

# Tuesday, Day 0

I wonder if anyone else experiences the phenomenon of no matter how impossible it is to fall asleep, you always fall asleep in the last hour before your alarm goes off. It happened to me again last night, mainly due to some very aggressive, but totally ninja mosquitos. (I still have not found, much less killed, even one of them.) However, at the sound of my alarm, I dutifully pulled my still sleeping body out of bed and went out onto my balcony to meditate. The sun was 20 minutes from coming up and it looked and felt like a storm was brewing over the town. It didn't feel good, but I was determined that this Tuesday would be the ripple that would start my life out in a new and powerful direction.

I sat down on my wooden chair and figured out immediately I would need a pad for my ankles to be able to sit comfortably. A moment after I had gotten comfortable, I started shivering, and a moment after that I decided that I was going to feel sick all day and not accomplish anything if I didn't get more sleep. My mosquito bites were still itchy so I threw on a long sleeve shirt and 20 minutes later I fell asleep for a good three hours, waking up close enough to lunch time to justify not starting anything. Not a great start to 40 days that I hope will change my life... and it got worse.

After momentarily forgetting about the fast and ordering a Coke with lunch (I was just going to let the Coke slide as an accident), I walked back to my bicycle and saw the gold shine of a can of Angkor Beer peeking out from the fanny pack that is serving as my basket for my bike. Shit! I totally forgot I bought two roadies for after the bar yesterday on my 'last' day of drinking for the next 40 days.

The familiar conversation in my head that always end up in intoxication or fast food or more cigarettes springs immediately to life. I know it well and can't handle stretching it out. The conversation begins when I am confronted with a temptation that I have promised myself I would no longer succumb to. My first action is to go down my list of options. I could put those beers in my fridge and tell myself that this is all about self-control and having a few beers in the fridge for 40 days shouldn't be a problem. I could even put them in the cupboard so I don't have to see them. It didn't even cross my mind to give them away (which is telling in itself), or I could just say screw it and drink the beers. I usually really fluff up the prettier options and convince myself that, "Yes, in fact, this is actually a good thing! How realistic is a 40 day dopamine fast with no real temptation? I will get so much more self-control by having to see those two beers in my fridge every day. I am going to be awesome by the end of this!"

But, I know what will happen. I will likely make it about 2 or 3 hours and then change my mind. I may make it a day or maybe even a week, but in the end I will drink those beers and ruin everything. I may as well not stretch out the battle longer than need be. I drop the two beers at home one in the freezer and one in the fridge (it is one o'clock and I can't wait, jeepers). I go back out on my bike and buy a pack of smokes and some things for supper. If I need to go out again I'll buy more beer, and I really don't want that to happen. I get home and the freezer beer is already cold. The sound of the beer cracking is like a starting gun for yet another day of doing nothing. I could do some work, but once I get started on the circle of TV, cigarettes, food, porn, beer, and more cigarettes, it is hard to convince my brain to do anything other than that. They are so very easy to obtain that the option of doing work doesn't stand a chance!

# Wednesday, Day 1

For anyone reading this who isn't quitting smoking, I am interested in how the first day feels. I imagine that the nicotine makes the physical withdrawal symptoms of this dopamine fast more obvious right from the get go, but as the day wears on you will start to feel worn out too. For me, today was not much different than the hundred other times I've tried to quit smoking. Mostly I spent the day hungry and tired, and because of those feelings, pretty damn irritable. The absolute worst part being that tomorrow I get this feeling times two.

From the times I have tried quitting smoking, I have a good idea of what will happened over the first week, and I pretty much have a standard procedure for this first day. First, I allow myself as much of a sleep in as I want, and although I had high hopes I would push myself to be different on this dopamine fast, the mosquitos got to me again, and I just shut off my alarm and didn't trouble myself with feeling guilty about it. In fact, I generally let myself off the hook all day. I don't expect myself to do anything too difficult and usually just drift through the day not engaging in anything. However, with no TV or porn or food to fall back on, I settle with doing mundane but slightly productive tasks all day. Reciting the procrastinators mantra, I may as well get all these little tiny easy tasks out of the way, because sooner or later I will need to do them. This way I can do more of the hard work I am supposed to be doing now, later.

I listen to some David Foster Wallace tapes, hand wash some laundry, and obsessively check it to see if it is dry, all while telling myself I should be writing or working on my website. I scour my room for possible mosquito sized entry ways and find some. I will need some masking tape, might as well do that today. I'm off on my bike to the store. I also need to find some restaurants for breakfast and lunch as the beach was expensive yesterday. (Life in Cambodia is good. It is so cheap I can afford to eat all my meals at restaurants. I started this fast after I moved into a new neighborhood, and since I don't really speak Cambodian it is quite an adventure to figure out what the local restaurants are serving.) I search around for quite a while and find a few scores. I also decided yesterday that I will allow myself to drink green tea with no sugar.

Another staple to the first few days of quitting smoking is lots and lots of water. It is about the only thing I will allow myself to do obsessively. (That and pee and poo, but more on that later). Every time I get a craving I think to myself, I just ate, I am sitting here listening to my book on tape, it is all I plan to do for the next hour, sit back and relax. Five minutes later it'll come again, "shut up brain." The brain compiles but the result is not exactly what I want. Five minutes later my hand rises mysteriously from my side, pauses the Ted Talk I am listening to on my tablet, puts that tablet beside me, and plants itself on the armrest to help give me a boost up. I am across my apartment before I start asking questions. What did I just get up for? My brain is so used to getting what it wants, it figured it would just go ahead and get the process started. It is hard to sit back down without doing anything so a glass of water it is.

The problem is that the water in my apartment tastes like plastic, thus the green tea allowance. I don't really like green tea, so I don't think it will be much more of a crutch than water, and the alleged anti-oxidants might even help clean up my system.

I have no idea where in the market I would go to get green tea so I need to go to the semi-modern supermarket that is basically there for white people who don't know where to buy stuff in the Cambodian market. It is 4:30 and I am about due for a meal. The last time I ate was at 10 when I woke up. I am going to need to get on a schedule soon because the cravings all feel like hunger, but I am fairly certain this one is hunger! I should have thought through going into a store with a complete aisle of cigars, another of beer and whiskey, and another of sweet chocolatey snacks.

The moment I cross into the air-conditioned arena of temptation I forget why I am in the store and start wandering aimlessly around. I regain consciousness in the candy aisle catching my brain in the process of deciding which sweet thing I should allow myself to buy just this once because I deserve a break while I ease myself into this project. I may have said out loud, "I am not allowed to have any of this."

I pull my list of errands out of my pocket to remind myself why I am there. Green tea and I may as well buy some bathroom cleaner. I move quickly, trying not to smell the coffee, too late. I leave the store with only green tea and bathroom cleaner, but my willpower is spent. Note to self, do not go into grocery stores on the first day of quitting everything.

Luckily it is time for me to eat something so I grab some noodle soup on my way home which helps to sooth the feeling of wanting a little bit. I ride my bike home and no sooner have I walked in my door than the incredible craving I kindled in the grocery shop floods back. I guess the noodle soup didn't appease the monster in my brain. I let myself eat a boiled egg and a baguette. I justify eating back to back meals by telling myself that once I am on a normal schedule I will be eating supper at six o'clock and since it is now six o'clock, I might as well start training my body to get fed at this time.

Having eaten three square meals, cleaned my apartment top to bottom and drank way too much green tea all by 5:30, I now stand face to face with a 6-hour block of free time. My self-imposed bed time was to be 11 pm, but what to do until then? This is the nightmare. Normally, when I am living the dream life this fast is supposed to bring me, I want to use this time to do research and writing for my book, as well as some meditating and reading. At this point, however, I have accepted this first day of quitting is going to be like all my other first days of quitting and I am not going to push myself to do anything. I give myself a free pass, just to get through those first few days without the stress of also needing to be productive. I did do a bit of those three things, but mostly I listened to books on tape. The exhaustion that you feel from subliminally fighting addictions makes it difficult to do anything.

# Thursday, Day 2

The mosquitos were still at large last night. My main goal was to not let them bite me and starve them to death. This meant a nearly restless sleep, covered in poisonous deet mosquito spray, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and wrapped in a blanket in 30-degree heat. What this meant for day two was another sleep in. (I will get to why I talk so much about sleep in a later day, but I believe having a good healthy sleep is very important to a happy, energetic, productive life – I know that is obvious but obvious things are usually the deepest when you really think about them!)

I peeled myself out of bed at 10, stretched my calves and quads and did 20 sit-ups and 20 leg-ups, all while eating pieces of fruit and slamming chilled green tea. I went out onto my balcony and read the bible and had a great meditation session for half an hour. There is something about looking out over a sea of palm trees and tropic bush with a myriad of different color tin roofs poking out to remind you that you are surrounded by, and are part of, a massive and alive community. And there is something about the recognition that you are part of that one vital thing that helps you clearly feel that moment.

My whole wake up routine took just under 2 hours and left me feeling refreshed, organized and ready to go. I did two hours of work on my website before the cravings set in hard again.

I don't know what I did for the next hour and a half. I was planning to go out and get some food, buy some new flip flops (I am currently wearing two different flip flops one is a girl's flip flop and the other is a guy's that is way too big for me and is partially broken – it is a long story), and bring a pair of shorts and a shirt to the market to get repaired, but somehow it took me an hour and half to get ready. I think I wandered around my apartment having conversations in my head and ruminating on my plans (more on that later as well).

Normally, I really don't like the market. It is noisy, chaotic, and smells like people have been gutting chickens and cleaning fish. When I got there today I found a lady with a sewing machine and gave her my damaged old clothes. She laughed at the hole in the crotch of my shorts, and held them up to show the other sewing ladies, chattering away in Khmer. They all laughed. I laughed too, surprisingly the usual annoyed feeling from quitting smoking hasn't settled in yet. I bought some vegies, fruits, a pair of flip flops, and ate a few street snack foods, which are basically just rice baked into different shapes and sprinkled with nuts or stuffed with berries. I stayed away from the donut and sweets ladies. The lady wasn't done sewing so I walked around a bit more. I ended up buying a hammock. The lady had yelled "Hammock? 5$" at me earlier, and I had been thinking that I could probably string one up on my balcony, so I went back to her and got a blue one. I also chanced upon a lady selling spring rolls so I bought some for supper later.

In hindsight, maybe I enjoyed my market trip a little too much. I know that for some people shopping is a very real 'fake joy giver', but for me shopping is about as far from addiction as possible. In fact, I can't think of a place that I hate more than a mall. I can do a 12-hour hike and have energy to spare, but 40 minutes in a mall and my legs are achy, my eyes go blurry and I start whining like a child. The mere mention of infinitely long hideously lit maze-like corridors of endless crap shuts down all the motivational parts of my brain and leaves me wanting to turtle in a corner... I am not too worried that my shopping trip was the start of a replacement addiction. I wanted a hammock basically all my life and got a good one for cheap. I also fulfilled a promise to myself to try even more foods from small vendors because I think they are the poorest. I will be warry though. If I start wanting to go to the mall, this has gotten super serious, it may scare me into stopping the dopamine cleanse.

I got home and ate the fresh spring rolls I had purchased even though I had just eaten, a real schedule is in order...

I spent the rest of my evening chatting with my mom and fine tuning my hammock hanging skills!

# Friday, Day 3

No mosquito bites this morning!.. But, I still slept in till 9. I've decided to aim for 6 a.m. by Monday. In fact, I am going to put myself on a schedule and start working hard starting on Monday. Until then I am enjoying the productive feeling of simply not doing any dopamine. Well, kind of enjoying.

Already starting in the morning, today was tortuous. I just felt unsettled and antsy all day long. I ate what is going to be my standard breakfast of two boiled eggs and a piece of fruit, which left my stomach feeling a bit sore. I think pineapple might hurt my stomach, or it could be a lack of coffee and grease... My mom and sister have always seemed to be in tune with their bodies. "Oranges make my skin dry", "Strawberries hurt my stomach", "Red meat gives me a headache" and I am not sure what gluten does but that is bad too. I have not always been compassionate about these maladies, and to be honest I still believe that if you think too much and are looking for excuses, your body will manifest them for you.

However, with the number of synthetic ingredients (read: not actual food) in food these days, it wouldn't be surprising to me if our bodies did start to become intolerant of some foods. I am curious to be able to hear my body. One definite effect of smoking and I am guessing an out of whack dopamine system is that it numbs you to the natural feelings that are supposed to protect you from subtle attacks on your systems. Your body is like nooo not more big Macs and your NAC is like, Big Mac! Big Mac! Big Mac! Smoking has the well-known effect of helping people lose weight, and when you quit smoking you gain weight. This is because the drive for nicotine overwhelms the dopamine that is supposed to drive you to eat something, then when you stop, your body is used to a plethora of dopamine so it is willing to take anything it can get. Is that a stick of gum!??? I used to think that people who couldn't miss a meal were super fragile, now, three days in I feel like I need 5 meals to maintain any sort of energy. I am sure I am in some sort of withdrawal period, but once that is over, combined with the fact that I am eating all natural food, I will probably be able to exit my messed-up state and become one with my body. Man, is it going to be embarrassing if I find out I 've been gluten intolerant this whole time.

I am really, albeit apprehensively, looking forward to learning about what my body should normally feel like. If I am sitting on the toilet and feeling constipated, my first thought won't be, when was the last time I went drinking and how much water have I drank since then. I can stop worrying that every slight ache in my upper body is a heart attack from too much smoking. When I feel like eating something I can just trust my body that I am hungry not that I subliminally caught a glimpse of a donut lady walking by. I can exit this constant state of mild numbed disaster and just trust my body to run itself. Mostly, though, I want to know if I am allergic to pineapples! It could just be fruit on an empty stomach...

Either way I was super uncomfortable all the way to lunch time. I managed to get some meditation in, and I wrote a bit of my journal, and did stretches and exercise, but generally I was too tired and brain dead to do anything that required any thinking what so ever. I finally decided on a long bike ride to lunch. After, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing the best I could not to think about supper. I think I sat down on the toilet to poo 5 times. This is an ultra-strange phenomenon that I have noticed takes place over the first few days every time I try to quit smoking.

I think it must have something to do with my body feeling like it should be sending me some sort of signal, or just straight out trying to be a rebel and cause me grief. I am curious to hear if it happens to anyone else. I assume it is from shear boredom and from that retuning of the sense of the body that makes me feel hungry all the time. I googled it and it is certainly not a commonly reported side effect of quitting smoking, drinking, or masturbating...

Nothing much other than that happened today. It is a bit weird how fast time seems to go right now. It must be because of how brain dead I feel. As soon as I try and do any real thinking, I immediately want to fall asleep, you know, except when I want to go to bed!

# Saturday, Day 4

For whatever stupid reason, I had a lot of things planned for today. Which, as I have already noted, was stupid. Day 4 is the worst. I have tried quitting smoking a million times and never get past day four. At one point I had a bet going with my mom. We had over $400 on the line and even though I was broke I still couldn't make it past day 4. From my research trying to figure out if chronic pooping was normal, I learned that it is normal for withdrawal symptoms to peak in 3 to 5 days after quitting, so there it is, science confirms that my feelings are legitimate. It sounds so simple. We could even plot the severity of your withdrawal symptoms on a graph. (I hand wrote this journal at first so this is the picture).

See it is simple, by my calculations I am at the peak of the curve and with due time should begin to traverse along the x axis and gradually begin to decline... Then you zoom in, you google street view that point, you start talking about feelings again, and it gets ugly. Most non-smokers imagine the feeling of quitting smoking as frustration, anger, and irritability, (that makes me want to punch them in the face), and it is true on day one and two. By day 4 however, I don't even care about life enough to get angry. Fresh air feels heavy in my lungs and makes them itch. The sides of my eyes feel dry and the more beautiful the day is the worse it gets. People are stupid. It is so bad even a cigarette feels like it wouldn't make it better, a beer and a cigarette maybe... This is the point where all logical thought of fancy graphs, of future me, of my hurting bank account, or loving friends and family honestly just disappears. I seriously can't think of a reason not to go get a cigarette. It is only a big promise to someone and being held accountable that gets me through. Actually, that sounds too triumphant, drags me through, that's better.

On top of that, as I have noted, I stupidly planned a very spritely to-do list for today.

The first thing wasn't hard. I had to go say goodbye to my last landlord because he wasn't there on moving day. He wasn't there when I dropped by, so I failed task one. Next I had to go apologize to a bartender whom I had drunkenly reamed out on my last day of drinking. This is a long story that I don't want to repeat, especially today. I will leave it at that he had most of it coming and I guiltlessly tell people to avoid that bar, but I feel like I pushed it too far and that it would make me a stronger better person to apologize. However, as I rode up I saw the bartender was chatting with a drinking buddy of mine whom I really didn't want to talk to (at least I had the sense not to go into a bar on day 4). I rode past the bar another 3 times that day, but my friend was always there, so that is failure number 2. The third task was the hardest of the day. I signed up for a startup business competition where I need to go out and interview people who are in my target market. This seems easy because, for my business, my target market hangs out on the beach in Cambodia. All I need to do is go down to the beach and chat with random people. Normally I am good at this. If I have a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, you could even say it is my thing. However, I do get nervous as soon as there is a formal purpose to the conversation, and to make the lack of crutches worse, I am right here  .

I am ultra-self-aware/anxious/don't know what I am doing dude pushing his bike forlornly around on the beach. I feel super weak and pitiful. I try to regroup by standing nonchalantly by the pier and staring out into the ocean. I know that no one knows that I am giving myself a pep talk, but the lack of calming nicotine in my system makes me feel like I am having a full-fledged breakdown in front of the whole beach. I can't get any of my thoughts straight. It feels like the middle part of my brain is in a deep fog with only unwanted noise screaming from around the peripheries. It is the exact opposite of the 4 beers in feeling when I can string together complex philosophical rants without even furrowing my brow while sinking every pool shot with a beautiful girl looking on.

Somehow I managed to make myself hope that I was going to do an interview though...

Yesterday, while researching for this book, I watched a YouTube video called Athene's Theory of Everything. I found it by searching "dopamine and identity" as I am interested in any thoughts that have been had on this so far. It was one of those zeitgeist type 'documentaries' that sounds a bit convincing but subtly breaks laws of science and logic all over the place. Either way there was a line in there that may have changed my life. One of those morsels of knowledge that once consumed activates a part of you that cannot be turned off. A life turning point in a single sentence. It is talking about how our primal brain regions, the regions most animals have, interacts with our 'new' brain regions, the regions generally recognized as being responsible for conscious thought. It says we function best if these two regions are working in harmony with each other. This rarely happens because we identify ourselves as lone actors instead of viewing ourselves as, "momentary expressions of an ever-changing unity with no center." See, I told you it was a bit out there. But the general idea of us being a single part of a large entity is powerful. It allows you to step back and look at the world from a more objective standpoint without you in the way. It will obviously make you more caring, and the movie even claims it would help with self-regulation or self-control. Instead of seeing life from the perspective of our history and our values, we see life from the perspective of the history of everything. We will also stop labelling everything because we label things due to our perspective on those things. For example, a teenager and an old person will have two totally different views on someone riding their skateboard down a sidewalk smoking a cigarette. If you watch your brain carefully you will notice that you compulsively label things.

Here we get to the point where I was at the beach. I had this really uplifting idea that if I stopped labelling people then the anxiety associated with having people label you will go away. My theory is that I am socially nervous and worry about what other people think because I think too much about other people. If I didn't judge them I wouldn't worry about them judging me. I never thought I was a judgmental person, but I realized that being socially anxious is probably a sign that I am judgmental. This is an amazing way to learn things about yourself and it often leads to disturbingly true results. You can learn a lot about yourself by examining your weaknesses. For example, I know a few people who trust almost no one, and they are also not people I would trust.

I also think that labelling becomes a bigger and bigger problem as our society becomes more and more individualistic. This is apparent when you travel in poorer communities that are incredibly social. Think about if your house was a shack with a mat and a coal stove. You only eat the same food every day, and you don't have much to do because after the harvesting and planting seasons all you do is sit in your shop and sell a few things. What would you do all day? You would sit around and talk, and you would talk about everything, there would be nothing that was off limits to talk about. There would be no need for labelling and this would substantially release any social anxiety.

As I stood there on the beach, I tried valiantly to make myself ignore the thoughts that I was having of what other people would think if I came up to them and started asking questions about sustainable businesses. It was a raging mental battle and my brain in its current weakened state didn't hold up well. I got lost in coming up with excuses not to do an interview. I figured that people would probably think I was trying to sell them something and they were tired of all the people on the beach trying to sell them something. They may also think I was trying to get donations for my business, or that I was judging them for not being sustainable shoppers. (That's right I was imagining them judging me for imagining I was judging them. It was out of control.) Welcome to my world.

In the end, I walked down the beach staring at each interviewee until that weird force that makes you look up when you are stared at made them look at me, then I would dodge the eye contact and push my bike along examining my tires as they plowed gracelessly through the sand. I don't know what it is or if this remark is even appropriate here, but I felt oddly nerdy, I guess that slouchy feeling of no confidence makes you really want someone to come up and tell you that you are still cool.

By the end of the beach I finally admitted to myself that I had failed the third task, which badly compounded the shitty feeling of being right here  . To make myself feel better I turned the whole thing into a reconnaissance mission and found a place to lock up my bike so I wouldn't have to push it around the next time I tried. I biked home letting the withdrawal symptoms have their way with my mind, getting more and more miserable. I got home and realized I had forgotten my towel on a chair where I had sat down on the beach. I thought, "ah, this is my second chance, I knew fate wouldn't let me fail on my epic mission." I went back through my task list and failed all three a second time. If you try this 40-day challenge, I would recommend setting your sights low for day 4, because it doesn't get much more miserable than that!

There was some positive news though. I had managed to purchase a book (which was on my to-do list) on round two and that book was The Alchemist, which I have always wanted to read. I also called my dad (on the list as well). These two things along with copious amounts of green tea saved the evening. Another piece of advice for doing this is to have things lined up for yourself to do. I don't normally watch a lot of TV, but if you do, this will be even more important!

# Sunday, Day 5

I was all tuned up for getting out of bed a 6 this morning, until about 4 last night after lying restlessly in my bed for four and a half hours. Apparently insomnia is another withdrawal effect. That, plus I usually have trouble sleeping means that I could be in trouble for the next few weeks... I reset my alarm for 8:30 and managed to fall asleep shortly after that.

Getting up after only 4 and half hours of sleep was a lot easier than I thought, perhaps because of my plan for the day. A few months ago, I had the idea to take Sundays off. In the Ten Commandments in the Bible, resting on Sunday is the one commandment that doesn't really seem to fit in. The rest are all common sense moral regulations, and then there is rest on the seventh day. I do a lot of writing about the Bible and believe that the story of creation in Geneses is a very powerful story that is full of profound insights on what it is to be human. However, I am pretty sure the earth was not made in seven days, so celebrating something that didn't happen once a week by doing nothing may seem a bit strange, but today it made sense to me.

It mostly makes sense since I started my website and struck off working for myself. It is not that I do work all the time (certainly not in the last 4 days), but I do constantly think I should be doing work all the time, which any good procrastinator will tell you is even more exhausting than actually doing anything. (If only this knowledge would get me off my butt!). This mean that even if I did give myself a day off, I didn't really enjoy it because I had the constant guilty twinge that I should be doing something. On top of that, when I look back on my life and the multitude of different jobs that I have done, I realize that the daily tedium of running through to-do lists in my head, working, and running around is not what the human life is supposed to look like. Of course, I need to feed and care for myself and be productive, but there is no point to that if I don't occasionally stop and enjoy the present moment. On Sunday I can acknowledge my life. I can love life, and wouldn't it be a shame to let it go to waste? Some might call it a sin.

The beautiful thing about setting Sunday aside is that it removes all the stress and mental business from it. It feels like the day after Christmas. The only stress is making sure that I don't feel any stress. By declaring Sunday an enjoy only zone, it becomes a day of incredible peace and enjoyment, and I badly needed that after yesterday.

Interestingly, and in great comparison to yesterday, having a super stress free day on the to do list made the pains of rejecting everything I previously thought was good a lot more bearable. Aside from the odd craving and still a lot of green tea, I really didn't suffer too badly. I want this to mean that I am not at the peak of the curve anymore, but something tells me it was more from the full-blown doing nothing agenda. (This raises another interesting thing about Sundays off. Since the first few days of the fast I also gave myself license to do nothing, but it wasn't the fully stress free nothing of Sundays. You really need to commit to going stress free if you are going to do it!) I think this may be the tip of an iceberg that I am seeing. In the tug of war that goes on between the super dopamine and the long stretch dopamine the extreme pulling power of the super dopamine just faltered. What if I looked forward to everyday with the intensity of Sunday?

This is a tempting idea but also not an easy one. Let me remind you that I did purchase a hammock and two books this past week. One of those books was The Alchemist, which I started reading last night and was incredibly excited about continuing. (Even writing this post now on Monday morning I want to drop everything and read it again, and I have only read three books twice and certainly not in the same week!) As I read it yesterday, I had lots of thoughts that would have been pertinent for this book, but I can't remember any of them. Short term memory loss is a side effect of having low dopamine in the brain. Anyway, I may read it again in the next 40 days, so hopefully I will have more for the journal next time. (The book is tiny. I am not a super human reader or anything. It takes about four hours to read.)

Side note: I am realizing that I have only about 45 minutes of concentration for writing this journal, which is generally easy writing. This is already better than the first five days where I think I was averaging 20 minute writing sessions, but I will need to work on stretching these out. There is a massive level of scatterbrainedness that I tolerated for the past few days that is simply not going to work for me in real life. Several times in the past little while I have thought, I should get up and sweep. I should do some sit ups. I need more green tea. Or, I have just stared out the window and lost control of my brain all together.

Not much else happened today, just as planned! Killed it compared to yesterday!

# Monday, Day 6

I think I fell asleep around 12:30 last night, which was disappointing considering my under five hours the night before and that I went to bed at 11, but good enough to justify getting up at my goal time of 6! Kind of. Well I did.

I would have, and maybe should have, added getting out of bed at 6 a.m. to my list of do's and don'ts for the 40 days, but to be honest I didn't think of it. This list is actually only don'ts when I think of it. I guess I want to see what kind of do's I can achieve with the don'ts out of the way. This particular to-do, getting out of bed at a respectable hour, has always been a hard one for me. If I don't have something I need to do, I don't get out of bed. (I just realized that this is another connection to the marshmallow test, if I am not forced to do something, I won't do it, even if in the future there will be rewards. If you don't know about the marshmallow test, just hold on, I'll get to it – Try to remember this though, because the marshmallow test is super important to this whole book). Aside from that, getting out of bed is of supreme importance. I always tell people that the two greatest blessings are, knowing what you want to do with your life and being a morning person (I got neither). The first one is a random fluke, but the second one you can work on. I believe that morning people get out of bed because they see life differently. They see life as something that is worth getting up for, and I want that, but it is difficult. It is not that I don't enjoy life. I don't even want to get out of bed to go skiing and that is one of my favourite things to do. This seems like it wrecks my theory that people who get out of bed easily, do it because they enjoy life.

But, I still think I can salvage the theory. It is like quitting smoking. I would love to quit smoking, probably even more than I would love to go skiing, but at this moment I want a cigarette, that want outweighs the wanting to quit. It then has to do with some people's ability to see the whole big picture and override their tired feelings when they first wake up. I need to immediately snap out of the sleepy, feeling sorry for myself mindset, and snap into the 'this is real life' mindset. These were the scrambled thoughts I had this morning as I groggily prepared my boiled eggs and fruit, read the Bible, did my stretches, sit ups and pushups and tried to meditate. I realized there is only room for one thing in my brain, I just need to make that one thing, the thing that I really want. As I tried to meditate the groggy feeling kept coming back. "Maybe I can meditate while I am lying down." I seriously had this thought, and then listened to it. The frustrating part is that when I have a job to go to, I never go back to sleep. I just keep going. I get in my car about an hour after I wake up, and by the time I am at work, I am wide awake and ready to go... At the time when I lied down it was one and a half hours after I had woken up, but since now it was just me against myself, I was still so groggy...

I woke up 2 hours later having semi-failed my goal to get up at 6 on Monday. I wasn't overly annoyed with myself because I realize that the other half of getting up early is getting a good night's sleep, and that has not been going well. It is also something that I imagine people who have their life together don't have a problem with. I was also still riding the nice high from the beautiful, relaxing Sunday.

I did some work on my website and then headed to the beach for lunch and to do some writing. I ate lunch and a little while later a lady came by selling these horribly creepy supersized crayfish looking things. I had wanted to try them for a while and this lady was super friendly and spoke English, so I told her if she showed me how to eat them I would buy some. I ate three and then bought some mango treats from her as well, all after eating lunch already. A few hours later I started off home, but I still had a hunger craving so I turned around and bought a smooshed sugar cane and orange drink. I also bought two meat balls covered in dough for supper. I had hardly arrived home when I ate the first meatball, now, finally, I was feeling full. I read for an hour before eating the second dough ball and the mango snacks. By this time it was supper time, so I felt like it was okay to be eating even though I didn't really feel hungry. I tried to do more work, but it is still hard for me to focus on anything for more than an hour, so I did a lot of random pacing around my apartment and tidying things that didn't need to be tidied. I ran out of cold green tea and figured I would make some boiled eggs for the morning while I boiled water for the tea. At 7:30 I ate those eggs along with some tomatoes and a baguette I had in the fridge, justifying it by saying that I hadn't been able to sleep the night before because I was hungry. Sadly, my next-door neighbors decided to have a Monday night party till 3 in the morning, so all the food didn't help me fall asleep nearly as easily as I was hoping.

# Tuesday, Day 7

I don't know what happened. Maybe it was all the thinking about sleeping yesterday or maybe it was all the food, or maybe it was exhaustion from not sleeping enough, but after cancelling my six o'clock alarm, I slept in till 2pm. Still, once again, I didn't feel too hard on myself. I am not sure why, because now I obviously won't be able to fall asleep tonight, and my entire system is completely out of whack. Since I had eaten most of my breakfast, I ate a mango, and since I had slept through my morning, I skipped meditating, the Bible, and exercise. I worked on my journal for about 15 minutes before I got hungry and headed out to try and mend some of the failures of Saturday. After eating, I went to the beach to do some interviews, but once again failed to work up the nerve. It helped that I wasn't pushing my bike, which somehow made me feel less self-conscious, and I felt like I was close to doing an interview. I think tomorrow is going to be my day, so I will save what I have learned so far about social confidence for then.

Today, the theme of eating continued and became a problem. I realized it was a problem as I was leaving the beach and was hoping for a good snack. Even though I realized it, I figured I would fix it tomorrow. I figured that my long sleep in had messed me up and it wasn't worth trying to fix today. All this figuring should have been raising alarm bells.

A lot of people who don't smoke are confused when they hear that you want to quit smoking but haven't. Somehow, people who want to lose weight don't suffer from having to listen to the speech. "If you want to quit, then quit, are you weaker than that cigarette?" I think that all our failures to accomplish changes to our routine stem from the same issue, and that I was lucky to get trapped into smoking, because it gave me a front row seat to what happens in your brain when you try and break a destructive pattern.

This is how the brain keeps you coming back for more even when you don't want to. First, there are two parts of you. Even in the first sentence of this paragraph you can see the two parts at work, your brain and you. This has been called all sorts of things, the mind, the ego, the self, and lots more. It gets more and more convoluted as you get deeper and deeper into very intelligent people's efforts to describe and pin meaning on this strange aspect of what it is to be human. All I know is that there is an absolute "I" that wants to be better, and a second voice that tries to disguise itself as that absolute "I". The absolute "I" wants to get up early, go skiing and quit smoking. The imposter is speaking on behalf of the system.

The way I look at it is that the imposter is our animal brain. It is the brain that evolved for millions of years. The other half is the special consciousness that we have that makes us human. That is the absolute "I". The confusing part is that the conscious part of our brain has the side effect of being able to listen in on the animal brain. (This is obviously not scientific, but stick with me because it is at least a good tool by which to understand addiction). The key here is that we accidentally think that what we are listening to is the absolute "I" thinking and making conscious decisions, but really these are just thought patterns, specific orders in which our brain fires synapses that it knows will get the dopamine fix it wants. For example, I think that I am making a logical decision every time I think, "I might as well wait till Sunday to quit so I can quit on a new week" and on Sunday when I think "I may as well wait till the first of the month." However, as much as those arguments sound like me making a conscious decision, it is simply a thought pattern the brain remembers to do to get nicotine. This may sound far-fetched – two voices in your head and everything – but, I have been observing this phenomenon for 14 years. This is why I say I am lucky that I smoked. I got to know these voices and their tricks and recognize their patterns. Even after I deconstructed the 'logic' in the arguments, just repeating them in my head would be enough to break off my effort to quit. The logical thing would be to quit. I wanted to so badly that I couldn't be happy until I quit, but I kept listening to these excuses. How is it possible to have both desires living in my head, with logical arguments for both? I am not schizophrenic, so it is not. One of the voices must be a fraud.

The difficulty is realizing which voice is the fraud. Since I have been listening to the imposter for so long, I should have recognized it when I started doing all my 'figuring'. The sinister part is that I did recognize it, I knew that I was using food to fill some unfilled desire that was likely stemming from a nicotine craving, but the pattern can still control me. (I imagine its control has something to do with the general fear that is the backdrop to my, and I believe most people's, life, and it was made more powerful when I was too scared to do my interviews.) However, it still got me by playing one of the most basic cards it has, 'I might as well start fixing it tomorrow.'

I also went out for supper an hour after I got home and ate my breakfast for tomorrow before I went to bed. This needs to stop. I am not considering this a failure of the dopamine cleanse. Food was not a primary source of dopamine for me when I started. It is still not, so this minor lapse is acceptable to me. I still did not buy a donut or a chocolate bar or a can of pop, so I managed to stay within the fuzzy lines. But, I did make the food rule, precisely so I wouldn't take up food as a replacement dopamine injection so actually (and this is me, not my mind this time) I will get it under control tomorrow.

# Wednesday, Day 8

Not going to lie, this sleeping thing is starting to bother me. One of my many hypotheses about this experiment was that I would need to fill up the void created by stopping all my habits... Spending most the night trying to sleep and most the morning sleeping is certainly not going to lead to any grand realizations about being a better, more in control, satisfied, successful person. This morning was a lot better than yesterday morning as I was up before 10 instead of 2, but this still means that by the time I am done my morning routine it is almost lunch time. I am missing at least four hours of productive time. I do accept that the physiological changes to my body over this past week must be extreme, and that I need to be patient, but I only have 40 days here. Today, however, marks one fifth of the way, over a week! I really want to get on with the positive replacements. On the bright side, my brain seems to be getting less foggy, and it is getting easier to make myself sit down and do small bits of work, so I am not hopeless. I think a little bit of frustration with myself right now is what I may need to drive on to the next point of this experiment.

As for food I did alright. I only had a bit of fruit left for my 10 o'clock breakfast, and had a normal soup and rice lunch just past twelve. I went for a swim in the ocean at 4, so that provided me with a solid amount of temptation, but luckily I only had enough money to buy some more eggs for tomorrows breakfast and a single mango treat (these are unripe mangos that are served with an ultra-salty spicy mixture, I think I may be the only foreigner who likes it because every time I buy them I get big smiles from the locals). I bought my supper with lunch, and almost made it to six o'clock before I ate it. The only down fall was that later in the evening I was hungry and ate some of the fruit I bought for tomorrow's breakfast. Mostly I did not have to spend a lot of time fighting myself though, which was nice. I did however, spend a lot of time meditating today, and think that I maybe should have made an earlier mention of the importance of meditating to this plan.

I have been meditating on and off for about a year and a half now and every time I have been on, I started feeling hopeful for the future. Every time I was off, I was usually smoking and drinking and running my body to the limit. I think it is the after effects of sugar and alcohol more than the effects of meditation, but every time I switch from an abusing my body phase to a being good phase I notice a surge in the amount of random dialogue within my head. It is impossible to say what is influencing what because of the extreme unscientificness of my 40 day fast. I do think that cutting down on the random thinking and rumination in my head is a major step towards understanding the mindset of people who've got it all together. At this point I shouldn't have any refined sugar or alcohol left in my system, so I am counting on meditation to stop the runaway thoughts.

So far, however, my random thought processes are worse than ever. Writing this journal doesn't help, because all day I am narrating in my head what I am going to write later, then forgetting what I said and doing it all over again. I also seem to be a compulsive planner these days, which I didn't realize until just today. I think it has been going on for quite a while. I've always liked having things organized so this makes sense, but the rumination and the fact that very few of my plans ever work out makes me think this is a habit I need to drop. Over planning is a waste of time.

The meditation I do is fairly personal. Since I believe in God it is centered on that belief. I have been trying for three sessions per day, morning, afternoon, and evening. (I moved the night one up to evening because I think it may be messing with my ability to fall asleep).

I will likely talk a lot more about the things I have learned from my mediation practice as this will also be the longest I have ever consistently done it, and I am already noticing massive improvement in my ability to focus. I haven't settled on an exact technique yet so I don't have a lot to say, except that I am doing it, and I think it will have a big impact on the result of me in 40 days.

I eased up on my alarm clock for tomorrow, allowing for 7 instead of 6, hopefully that helps a bit, and I can use my consciousness and excitement for life to get up and get going before the first quarter of the fast is done!

# Thursday, Day 9

Coming up on a quarter of the way through and it is already tempting to spew all the wonderful things I've learned and ideas I've had, but I will hold it. Even though I don't think I have much to talk about today. I am getting tired of reporting that I slept in and failed to go to the beach to do interviews, and I am still struggling with eating normal amounts of food. I think, from my revelations about sleep on Monday, that I could possibly include sleeping in as a possible fake dopamine boost. It is succumbing to a mental feeling of desire, but it is almost certainly not an actual dopamine trigger. Either way, I think I am making a personal rule for myself starting tomorrow that I will be up at 6:30 for the next month, if only to make sure these blog posts don't repeat the same thing for 40 days. Hopefully that will help straighten out the food thing too, because it will put me on more of a schedule, so I don't have so many excuses.

It crossed my mind today that if I am always going to feel hungry anyways, I might as well use it to lose weight. I think this program would be good anyone wanting a new dieting idea, as you are basically fully resetting your bodily settings anyway. I think those will be the two major changes I implement for the quarter way mark.

Even with getting up at nine today, I find it very difficult to write this journal entry at around 8pm. My mind feels like it is in a balloon, and my eyes are blurry from the stupid fluorescent lighting in my room. My mind and body are in a fight because my mind wants to go to sleep to avoid writing anymore and my body wants to stay up because it is sick of lying in bed and doing nothing for the past 9 days. I think I am also going to have to make a rule that I can't go to bed before 10pm.

I was pretty brain dead yesterday and I am wondering if this is a result of my trying to write a blog post for work. (Yes, I have only tried to write one single blog post in the last nine days, and it still isn't done which is starting to stress me out). I actually want to write more about meditation to make up for the pitiful attempt yesterday, but it seems way too complicated. All I can do is stress like a drunk person waving his finger at you that it is important, without being able to give you any comprehensible reasoning. I am currently reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, and I would like to inform you in an illuminating way that the now is indeed powerful... My brain seems to be shutting down... I think I am going to read a book for the rest of the evening.

# Friday, Day 10

Woo, I almost watched T.V. yesterday! I was thinking I would just watch some news because it is pretty much just like a documentary and I deserve a break anyways... I definitely gotta keep an eye on my brain these days. It can be crafty!

So, it is the big one quarter mark today and it is hard to believe. You would think that time would stand still when you are torturing yourself, but this has not been the case. One majorly helpful reason for this is that the challenge and the journal combine to not leave me a choice about giving up. This is key because in the areas where I do have a choice, like with food or, as I almost convinced myself last night, watching TV, I am having problems. However, for the other stuff, when it is fully not an option, I just don't think about it. If I spent hours every day imagining the sweet taste of icy beer or debating with myself if I should go for a drink, I think the time would go a lot more slowly.

The other thing that makes the time go fast is the haziness in my mind. Somehow, I can just wander around my apartment and the time just disappears without me doing anything. Any time I sit down to try and do some work it is like bush whacking through the jungle. I am really hoping this clears up as I do need to get some more work done, and I would like to see some higher quality writing. This mind haziness would be the first and most notable thing I would tell you if I was giving a quarterly report.

The second, as you probably would guess, is difficulty sleeping. This is also truly awful and probably has something to do with the first thing. I did a first round of preliminary research about dopamine today (mostly just by watching a bunch of YouTube videos) and one of the many interesting things I learned is that dopamine, along with the other mood altering neurotransmitters floating around in your brain, is reregulated and fined tuned while you sleep. I think that this would explain this past Tuesday's 2 p.m. sleep in, my brain realized it wasn't going to be able to function without any sleep. I failed again to get up at my appointed time of 6:30 due to some shifty late night reasoning that tomorrow morning will technically be the first morning of the second quarter. (It is never good when the brain comes up with an excuse before you are even in the throes of 6 am battle). Armed with my new science knowledge, I now know that if I want to rebalance my dopamine levels, getting on a regular sleep pattern is essential.

The final observation for this official quarterly report is that I am on the downhill part of the withdrawal symptoms. They are still haunting me. A screeching baby gives me a barely controllable urge to punch someone and just looking at a frosted mug takes my breath away a little bit, but at least now I can write the words frosted mug without feeling like I am going to cry.

The only one where the withdrawal symptoms are probably going to only get worse, is sexual release. I am going to save talking about this for a whole separate journal entry. I am excited to do some more research on pornography, sex, and masturbation because from what I know so far, sex is one of the strongest natural dopamine transmitters. I am curious if cutting out all sexual release is a good idea. In a way, it is like cutting out food instead of just unhealthy food. I read up on it a bit the other day to make sure I wouldn't explode, and although what I read wasn't reassuring, I think I am going to continue with the experiment the way it is.

On top of forcing a stricter schedule for both eating and sleeping, I am also going to make a few other changes for the next few days. The first is that I am going to begin doing more legitimate research into dopamine and its effects. I am happy that I went the first ten days without knowing the actual scientific background of what I am doing. This way I had a more objective view of what I was feeling, rather than quickly identifying with every possible side effect and just agreeing with the literature the whole way a long, but it is now time to bring some order to this madness. I really hope that it helps.

The second thing that I am going to do is force myself to be more productive. A man can't live with no dopamine at all (I think). Otherwise I will soon just hate my life and that is about the exact opposite thing that I want to happen. I figure that I can start to get myself feeling rewarded by accomplishing things. I think that this is going to be key to getting rid of that tension of wanting that has led me to over eat a little bit in the last few days. Part of this project is to get rid of the cravings for bad things, not just the bad things themselves. What is the point of quitting smoking and chocolate donuts if you just sit around all day wanting cigarettes and chocolate donuts? I feel like there is a sense of peace that I am missing out on, a sense of focus on what I want. You know those people who eat just enough until they are full and then they just say, "I'm full", even if you are at the breakfast buffet at the Cheese Cake Factory. That is who I want to be: skinny, healthy, happy, and wholly focused on doing what I want to do.

The third and final thing is that I am going to add social networks and email to my list of cheap dopamine rushes I want to avoid. As I am getting back going on work, it is always tempting to take a quick look at my twitter feed or see if I have gotten any important emails. Since I still need to use social networks, I am going to set aside an hour in the morning where I can work on them and then do a single check in the evening when it comes time to make plans for what I want to accomplish the next day. What I want to fight is my tendency to look for an escape from any hard focusing I am doing. This was a regular occurrence when I was smoking, usually about every 45 minutes I would get up and go for a smoke. As the day wore on it would get more and more. I can already see it happening, that I will check all my communications channels way too often. I want to be working and posting for the existential validation that comes from accomplishment, not for other people's reactions. I think that Facebook and other social networks are a very real problem for some people, and I don't want to be gaining any more very real problems!

That about sums up my feeling about the first quarter and goals for the second. Wish me luck!

# The ¼ Way Interlude

Hey, this is Greg, alive and well and coming to you from after day 40. I wanted to interject and get a few things clarified before we watch me go too far down the rabbit hole. The first thing I want to do is assure the reader that I do indeed manage to conquer the sleeping problem. It is still a distance away and you will still have to hear a few more pathetic declarations of commitment before I manage to do it, but it is worth it. You can see the special lack of self-control that led me into the need for this dopamine detox in the first place... I can't even trust myself from evening till morning the very next day.

Something that was not as obvious to me during these trying first ten days, was the amount of "revelations" I had about stuff. Even as I read them, I can see why I was excited about them at the time. They are life changing ideas. The fascinating part is observing how profoundly my life doesn't change after each one. It is a bit humiliating really. If anyone who is reading this is tempted to try a dopamine detox of their own, I would highly recommend keeping a journal. The vision of yourself that it creates is another great reason not to go back there!

A third note I wanted to add regards the marshmallow test. On day 6 I mentioned it then totally forgot to get back it. The marshmallow test was a famous experiment that involved giving a child a marshmallow and telling him or her that they could have a second one if they waited to eat the first one until the experimenter came back. The test rose to infamy when several years after it was done, it was shown that kids who waited for the second marshmallow were far more likely to be successful in life. Ever since there have been a multitude of books and papers written about why the ability to wait for a second marshmallow can determine a child's future.

I personally know that I would have eaten that marshmallow straight away. Once I have it in my mind that I can have something, there is very little that can stop me. I wouldn't even feel bad about it. The voice in my head would tell me, like on Day 0, "Don't waste your time. You are going to fail anyway. Soften the blow and just do it now," and I would listen. Because I would eat the marshmallow, I am also quite interested in why I am less likely to be successful, and more importantly, how to stop it.

I again have a lot of good theories on why I am a marshmallow eater, but since we have all watched me fail to get out of bed time and again, I think it may be better to go back to watching me in action. It is still clearly too early to be drawing any conclusions about how to become more successful at life!

The take away for the time being, is that ideas are nothing if they don't lead to action. All my life I have had theories, but they didn't change my life. Strangely, it was random little thoughts that would have all the impact. Once, I noticed that all the worst things that had happened in my life had turned into the best stories. This weird little fact revolutionized the way I looked at things. I could sit through terrifying or horrendous situations without a word of complaint. The weird thing is that I only noticed how much this thought had changed me a few months later. There was no plan to change anything. A new idea had simply come into my mind and changed the lighting on all the situations of my life.

After realizing that little fact, I proceeded to tell everyone who would listen, and was continuously baffled when it didn't change their lives. I still have no idea how those life changing nuggets of information fit so exactly into seemingly prepared spots in a specific brain. My guess is that there is a procedure to create an open mind to certain things and then something about fate or the oneness of the universe brings along the perfect fitting piece.

I think this is the most effective way of changing your life – something just barely better than pure fluke. The solution to your problems will always be personal. There is no telling what line or information nugget could be the point that ricochets your life in a new direction. You probably won't even notice when it happens. It is just a matter of knowing exactly what you want, keeping your mind open, but never looking directly for anything.

That is not to say that I don't reach any conclusions by the end of this journal, but it is to encourage the reader to keep an open mind. The thought processes in our minds that make us wait for the marshmallow or eat it are all subtly different. You may hear a theory that you like and forget about it tomorrow. That is okay. It may not be the one the fits or it may not be the right time for it.

# Saturday, Day 11

Today was unpleasant. I got some food sickness last night. The kind where you repeatedly wake up and try decide if you need to make a dash for the bathroom. I did have to make a few trips but nothing serious. To make matters worse, there were two dogs that barked together from about one till three in the morning. If I had a gun and could see those dogs I would have shot them, guaranteed. I think I got delirious at one point, but the dogs barked in a pattern. The smaller sounding one would make a subtle single yip, and then the other one would go off in a predictable high pitched, very loud, four bark sequence, except for every now and then he would just lose it. The funny part was that eventually I thought that the small one was taunting the other one who was also trying to sleep. Bark! Shut up, shut up! Bark! Shut up, shut up! Bark! I will come over there and strangle you to death you low down worthless two-bit piece of trash!... Bark! Shut up, shut up! Every now and then the responder would have some self-control and I would hope that it might be over, Bark! Nothing. Bark! Nothing. Bark! Shut Up, shut up! That was a truly horrible sleep.

I did wake up at 6:30, but I wasn't even sure if I had slept and still felt sick to my stomach so I ended up going back to bed after only twenty minutes. I only slept till ten once I fell asleep, so I was still super groggy when I got up. I went for some soup and had the hardest fight with my self-control yet. I wanted an ice coffee real bad. Actually, it's 8:30 pm and I still want one. The way I got over it was telling myself that some of the readers of this journal will probably find coffee the hardest habit to kick, so even though it is minor compared to nicotine, alcohol, and porn for me, I stayed strong so that no one else who might want to do this detox would have an excuse. I also fought it because I recognized one of those telltale stories my brain plays when it wants to get something. I was planning to head to the beach and do the interviews I still haven't done, so I figured if I let myself do one bad thing, then I couldn't back out of doing the interviews because the whole reason I had drank the coffee was to make myself do the interviews. I know, my brain is quite the scam artist. The thing is that I have heard this line before. Everyone probably has. Another similar line is 'if I pay a lot to use it, I will for sure use it' (like when buying a gym membership to convince yourself to workout). I knew when it came down to it, I still wouldn't do the interviews and then I would feel like crap about drinking the coffee after being so good for 11 days. Plus, it would act as a slippery slope, and I would almost certainly end up having another coffee down the line, and slowly dismantling and wrecking the whole thing until I just gave up and told myself I would start again, which I probably wouldn't do because I would get all depressed. Yeah, I know these parts. I've walked down these roads before.

I went to the beach. Since I had gotten my hopes up over the ice coffee I decided that before I would start the interviews I could sit, gather myself and have a coconut. (The awesome thing about Cambodia is the amount of delicious, nutritious substitutes there are for pop and beer - green tea, sugarcane juice, mango shakes, and coconuts, to name a few. However, don't go travelling thinking that you will do this, because beer is still cheaper than those things, cigarettes are even cheaper, and everyone is drinking and smoking, so you will fail. Remember, I've done this before. It is only because I have destroyed myself so badly on cheap alcohol and cigarettes that I have the motivation to avoid that scene, but it is still tempting). I probably shouldn't have made the concession, because I never did the interviews, which I really regretted because there were pretty girls everywhere on the beach today.

I came home and did some work on my website, but I didn't feel like doing anything. The more I think about it, the more I think these interviews are going to be an integral part of this experiment. However, I really don't feel like doing anything today, so I will write about it tomorrow. My theory now is that the interviews should be something that I enjoy doing, so maybe if I do them on Sunday, a day when I am not allowed to work, I will look at them as being fun. Like I said, my brain is a scam artist!

# Sunday, Day 12

Oh man, this weekend was the yin and the yang. Today was the bright side! I am making a point of not rereading any of my posts so that any patterns I discover later are not polluted in the process of writing, but I am pretty sure last Sunday was also good. To be honest, it is blurry (my short-term memory is still super bad!) I am not sure how it went. I know I read the Alchemist and then Facebook messaged everyone about how awesome it was, and that I wrote a little bit about taking Sundays off. I would highly suggest this if you do this challenge. You will be tempted to do stuff, especially if you are as useless as I have been for this first part of the challenge, but don't. It is truly rejuvenating to let yourself have a full day to just enjoy.

This leads to a Ted Talk I watched today called Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong by Johann Hari1.

The talk has been viewed over 4 million times and it is worth all 14 minutes of your life to check it out. Even if you are not addicted to anything, it has life changing ideas in it, and what I am going to talk about is not even the main point of the talk. Hari interviewed a professor by the name of Bruce Alexander who studies addiction. Alexander says that what we know about addiction comes from earlier studies where rats were put into cages with two water bottles, one with heroin and one just water. The rats would almost always get addicted to the heroin, overdose and die. Alexander, however, saw a problem with this experiment and changed it up just a little bit. Instead of keeping the rats in a boring cage, he kept them in a veritable rat wonderland, all while offering them the same two varieties of water. When he did this, the rats went from almost 100% overdosing to 0% overdosing. This statistic is so shocking it doesn't seem real.

The point is that the way you behave, whether good or bad, has a lot to do with your cage, with your life situation, with your mind situation. (It is cooking hot here and it is incredibly uncomfortable to sit at my desk because it is just a coffee table. Instead, I am sitting on my bed, but the heat of the computer on my lap is also uncomfortable. I just had a craving to get up and get some water, not because I am thirsty, but because I figured my brain is too tired to keep focused on writing... or maybe it is the situation...) Other than being physically comfortable I wonder what other factors are contributing to my cage. Closely related to physical comfort is being in good shape. Today I did a lot of biking and I also ate a ton of fresh seafood and fruit while sitting on the beach (I told you it was a good day). I feel a bit bloated. In my mind, I have always wanted to be skinny and muscular, I think it would give me more energy. That is just the first thought that came to my mind, I don't think it is really that big a part of my cage.

The cage question is a great one. It really makes you think because the things that would drive you to addiction are not always obvious. I am still feeling cravings, mostly in the form of food cravings. My life on the outside is fantastic. I feel pressure to make money and be productive, but that is a good thing. The cage must be mental. Another part of the cage theory is that humans need something to bond to, and if they don't have healthy relationships they bond to something else, this is all just theory, but it sounds good. I don't have a lot of human interaction in Cambodia, but when I do, I drink and smoke more. I use those things as a crutch for my social interactions (I've decided this because of my stupid hard time with these interviews). I think that I am too caught up in the imaginary world of labels and judgements. I am sure most addicts are in much worse cages than mine. There are whole worlds of physical abuse and loss that I know nothing about. But, a cage is a cage if you can't break the bars. I also learned some interesting stuff about how the human mind cannot handle intense ranges between different levels of light, size, emotion, or importance of decision. Our brains always need to scale the difference between things to a level it understands (much like the balancing of the NAC). So, I wonder if this cage seems so strong, because I have not really had to battle with anything serious in my whole life. It could be why there is so much depression now-a-days. We have no reference for what is truly bad, so our brains get carried away on something simple. It kind of makes sense. For the most part you don't see as much depression in the third world even though you would think they have more things to be depressed about. At least when life is truly bad there is something you can do about it. You can focus and work hard. When the depression is in your head, it seems like the world is falling around you, but since it is in your head, there is very little that you can do... Now I am done and back to the cages. I think I am on to something serious for myself about social anxiety, the need to bond to other humans, and my cage.

The whole reason I brought this up was to say that on Sundays, no matter what, you should release yourself from your cage and see what the world is like when you love it, when your life is a veritable paradise! However, now I realize that the cage can be mental which is going to take some work to get out of. Now that I think of it, I didn't do my interviews again today. I got up early, so I was proud of myself for that, and then just thought I should relax at the beach all day and do a lot of meditating, which I did.

I think another cage for me is not being certain in what I believe about God, which is of the ultimate importance to me (to be honest it is baffling to me that it is not of the ultimate importance to everyone), anyway, like I said earlier this week, I think that doing these interviews is going to be an important part of this process. For now, I am going to continue enjoying my Sunday. A bit of personal writing, reading and learning!

1.https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en

# Monday, Day 13

Today I got out of bed at 6:30. It was not nearly as glorious as I thought it would be. I may as well have been asleep because I have no idea what I did until 10:30. At that point I decided I might as well go for a bike ride and get lunch because hopefully that would wake me up... I am still trying to think what I did for the first four hours... I may have done a lot of reading. I couldn't have meditated... Anyway, 10:30 lunch didn't really help either. I did a small amount of work on my website but any time I would engage my brain too hard I would feel like I was passing out. I did a lot of reading and YouTube video learning but not much else. The worst part was at the end of the day I still couldn't fall asleep. I am not sure what to do with this sleeping thing. It feels like it is kind of ruining the project, but not really. I do feel healthy and generally happy, when I am awake enough to realize it. The pull of cravings has been less and less, and I can focus more and more on things. I started listening to Behavioral Economics by The Great Courses1 that I bought a long time ago, which is about behavioral economics. It is going to be perfect research for this project because it is all about why we make the choices we make.

An interesting thing I have learned so far is that dopamine neurons do not fire on receiving a reward, they fire on anticipation of a reward. This probably explains a lot of the success of being able to quit so many addictive things at once. Because I just straight up said, "absolutely not!" I don't give those neurons any expectations about firing. I guess it is all about hope... So, I wonder why I can't get out of bed, am I not hopeful that the day will bring about all sorts of rewarding experiences and accomplishments. This is very likely. I still don't feel excited about my work, my blog posts, or even my progress with meditation and religion. Maybe I am trying to do too much. If I had smaller more attainable goals that I could wrap my head around it would probably help. The standard advice is to break down your goals into steps so you get a small dopamine rush every time you cross something off. The problem is that I think motivation also comes from believing in the whole of what you are doing... I need to think a bit on how to fix this. I would say my life goal is to help people feel true happiness through breaking out of the societal spiral of pleasure and acceptance. This is truly a hard one to feel like you are making progress on. For now, I may focus on something else I read, which is that you need to make certain you achieve your small goals. If you don't achieve your small goals, then you are making the situation worse. Remember, dopamine neurons fire on anticipation, but if the reward is less than what was anticipated it is worse. You receive negative feedback.

I am way too tired today to be making any goals and I am not even sure that what I have written makes sense, so I am just going to leave that for tomorrow.

1. The Great Courses "Behavioral Economics" by Professor Scott Huetell. https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/behavioral-economics-when-psychology-and-economics-collide

# Tuesday, Day 14

This morning I woke up at 6:30 then hit my snooze button a few times. Then I must've accidentally turned off my alarm and slept in till 9:30. Damn! All that hard work from yesterday gone. The thing is that this morning I feel completely fantastic. I was a tiny bit groggy when I woke up but that quickly faded. I skipped my whole morning routine, just because I was excited to get to work. Weird.

Last night just before I fell asleep a girl I liked from a while ago sent me a message on Facebook just asking what I was up to. (I sort of broke my social media rules without thinking about it, but then I was up for a while thinking about the girl and it showed me why I have these rules in the first place!) This morning I was thinking about it and thinking, what if she came to visit? I think this is what put me in such a productive, awake, and relaxed mood. The girl is possibly a bit out of my league. However, I have been told by a good friend that you should never say something like that. You must believe that you are good enough. If I want to be in the zone/productive/happy all the time, I need to believe I am important/value myself /think that I am awesome. In some way confidence is key. Wow, I really think this is my first important breakthrough. The way it manifested itself this morning was to my very core. Even my body language was different thinking that I was important and good enough for an amazing girl. I do think the girl thing is not really the way to go about it, at least for me, but the idea is solid. If I truly thought I was that awesome, the way my brain would operate would be different, it would be there in the present, not off imagining things, everything would be sharper and more focused. It also crossed my mind that this mind set would not be possible if I was still smoking and drinking, mostly because then I wouldn't value myself so highly. No matter what I would have the burden of somehow not thinking I am awesome.

Confidence is going to have to play out in my life as the idea that the Universe/God loves me, and because of this, I am going to have to change the way I understand love. It needs to become much stronger. I now need to believe that I am an essential part of the Universe. I guess I also need to strengthen my love back to the Universe. When I get out of bed in the morning it needs to be as if the most perfect Girl ever wakes up beside me. The first thought across my mind will be how to make her smile. I will unwittingly push myself to do better things and take more responsibility because if She loves me, of course I am that good. I will walk taller, talk stronger, and think harder with the confidence that She gives me. The Universe made me who I am and it needs me to be that person. It is important. Only I can do it. If this isn't a reason to get out of bed in the morning and be awesome, I don't know what is. We'll see how it works.

After, my super morning I went to the beach and got some great food, did some dopamine research and had a phenomenal meditation session. I am starting to like meditating when people are around because it makes me focus on not getting distracted by what they are thinking, which usually is the main thing that distracts me, if that makes any sense... After that I went home with the hopes of getting more great work done. I grabbed a sour mango and sugarcane juice on the way home and chilled in my hammock while I ate them and read. I didn't quite feel like working so I tried meditating again, and then reading some more, then ended up just wandering around my apartment thinking. After that there was no way I could make myself do work so I read some more. After, I watched some YouTube videos on dopamine and had an epiphany.

I think that the no work spiral started from riding my bike to the beach. It started because of a down time for my brain where I started daydreaming. I have noticed that my day dreaming is becoming intense. It happens often and makes me totally forget what I am doing. I think that daydreaming releases dopamine. I have read before that in brain scans the human brain looks almost the same when it is doing an activity and when it is imagining doing that activity. So, once you imagine doing something it is like doing it, and that releases dopamine, which then numbs me to the dopamine release that I will get when I do work. This has been a recurring pattern. My last week has generally been, sleep till 9 or 10, work till 12 or 1, go for a bike ride and go to the beach till 4 and then don't get back to work till 8 if I get back to work at all. I think that I really need to cut out the day dreaming, but I am not sure how to do that. Hopefully just being aware that it is a major problem, I can stop it.

Goals for Tomorrow (This is from yesterday's idea that I need to make goals that I promise myself I will do. I have tried this tons of times and always fallen into the trap of making the goals too hard, failing, and making the whole situation worse. Even as I write these goals I want to make them harder because I won't be satisfied with my day if I only achieve these small things, even though I have accomplished this or less basically every day so far. Still, I hope I can work my way up from these three tiny goals relatively fast! Okay, I added a weird fourth one, just to remind me of today's lesson.

To-do

1.) Finish journal entry for the day.

2.) Add two stores to my website.

3.) Do one interview!

4.) Try and monitor my level of daydreaming.

Note: These to-do lists, continued for the whole journal. I decided to delete them out because they would make no sense to anyone reading and were just wasting paper.

# Wednesday, Day 15

My supreme revelation about the universe being a beautiful girl who loves me did not help me to get up this morning. Luckily, I had to take a shit, so I was up at 9. (In case you missed it that was a sad sad joke.) I may just not set my alarm tomorrow and see how that works. I hope that having a list of goals and learning to trust myself to complete them will help (if I can trust myself). This morning I still had the feeling that I wasn't sure what I was going to do and didn't want to make the decision between the pile up of ideas I need to work on, so I just wanted to stay in bed.

I am also still feeling hungry all the time. I am adding that to my to do list for tomorrow. Exactly what and where I am going to eat, so I have no choices to make. I need to take away the dopamine expectation level. That is the difference between people who lose weight or quit smoking or are successful, and those who fail. They just decide to do it or not do it. They don't even let dopamine get in the game, or they make success the only dopamine worthy expectation no ifs ands or buts.

It seems that the only promises to myself I can keep are not promises to myself, but to the reader of this journal... I have been stellar at keeping all the initial promises of the fast. Today, someone posted a picture on twitter of girls swimming topless in the ocean, which was a cruel trick on my sex starved mind, and I didn't even think once about going trolling around on the internet. However, any promises to myself I seem to fail with impunity. I only made three out of four on my promised to-do list from yesterday. Between those stupid interviews and getting out of bed with the sun, I feel like this triumphant 40-day journal is going to read like the 40 previous days would have read if I wrote a journal about quitting smoking. I'll do it tomorrow. Now, I have plan. Oh, what if I try this trick. No, really, tomorrow will be the day. Fuck.

I seriously considered just giving up on the interview idea, but I seem to remember writing more than once in this journal that I think the interviews will be important. There is no reason to be so nervous to go up and talk to some random people, so that nervousness is a sign of something wrong. Also, the rat paradise experiment highlighted the need for social interaction to avoid addiction. I already know that even if I begin a social interaction with no alcohol or booze or food or something to do with my hands, I always end up breaking down. In the past, that was one of my biggest reasons for failure of quitting smoking, just hanging out with people. I don't feel like I am nervous when I am with people but it seems that I am if I can't do these interviews. So, it is on the list for tomorrow again.

Other than that, the list worked well and made me feel good about my day. The stopping daydreaming project was perhaps the most successful of all. I brought a notepad around with me today and wrote down all my longer day dreams. This seemed to help me stop doing it. Normally I recognize that I am day dreaming but instead of stopping I just continue because, hey, it feels good. Also, I think that it will be interesting to have a diary of my daydreams, so I can see what I obsess about and how often. All in all, I had a good day and am pleased with my two new innovations, I just need to do those freakin interviews!

# Thursday, Day 16

Well, hopefully this is the end of the complaining about sleeping portion of this journal! I just didn't set my alarm last night, and I woke up at around quarter after 7. I think that not having an alarm set made my sleep better because I wasn't stressed about falling asleep, it also helps that the suns comes up at 6:20 so eventually I get woken up by the sun. I was a bit tired throughout the day but all in all a good day. The one down side is that it is 11 p.m. as a write this and I don't feel too tired...

I think that fighting daydreaming is one of the best theories I have come up with yet! I am a lot more willing to sit down in front of my computer and in general a lot happier. However, I do need to work on what to do with my mind when I am not daydreaming. I think that this has always been my problem. This may be getting into a problem that is specifically mine and not appropriate for further exploration in this journal because it won't be helpful to the majority of people who read this. However, I may as well flesh it out today so at least anyone who has the same problem as me knows they are not alone.

I think too much. That is the basic explanation of my problem. But, when it comes down to it I spend most of my thinking in useless daydreaming, and I largely daydream about what people are thinking of me. It is not just, "oh they think I am so cool", but whole conversations with people about how awesome a part of my life is. The other out of control aspect is planning. I plan what I am going to do all day long and I never actually do it, but I do daydream about doing it and then daydream about telling people about how awesome it felt to do it. Yeah, I know, when I write it down it sounds super crazy, I am really hoping that this is a level of thinking that most people do and just don't talk about...

The important thing is that all the addictions that I am quitting are suppressants to that day dreaming in some form or another. That is why it is so hard to do these interviews. For the past 14 years I have been using drugs, T.V., porn, food, alcohol, and cigarettes to numb and distract my brain and now, before this project is over, I have to find a way to get comfortable with who I am and slow the voice in my head down a bit. I did have some insightful thoughts about just being at complete peace with no thinking, just happy to be who I am, which I hope I will be able to grow through meditation, but I do need to take it out and do some social practice too!

Another majorly important thing is that my enjoyment of little things has skyrocketed over the past few weeks (either that or I have been experiencing an abnormal amount of super rad stuff). I have read my new favorite book, listened to my new favorite band, and wrote my new favorite blog post. I have also been in a state of just intense bliss eating noodle soup, sitting on the beach, or just chilling in my hammock. Things are tasting sweeter, songs are more beautiful, and days are brighter. Today after finding my new favorite band, I got worried about a fall after the high that I normally get from awesome music, but it didn't happen. Instead, I hopped into bed, grabbed the laptop and wrote this post. Booyah for me!

# Friday, Day 17

Got up at 7:15 again today! This time it was a lot harder. The feeling is exactly like being addicted to something. Your head is heavier even on the inside than it is on the outside. Somewhere in the fog you remember a promise that you were going to fight this feeling tomorrow, but it is hard to make out the person you promised that to. You know that person will probably be back but ah who cares... Except I got my tablet turned on and started checking Instagram and Twitter.

I fully realize this should not be allowed in this challenge. It is replacing the fulfilling purpose to get out of bed because I am essential to the functioning of the universe and such, with a mundane dopamine rush of 'oh gee, I wonder if anyone loves me on social media!'. However, not getting out of bed is ruining this experiment, and I am still counting that as one of my two social media checks per day.

I am also reading Gabor Mate's "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" about extreme addiction. He says that it is very normal to experience physical exhaustion when you are feeling mentally drained... I realize anyone who has studied for an exam or been sad can tell you that, but I just wanted to say it because that book title is epic! Anyway, I felt that shit rain down on me for the first ten days, and I think it is beginning to wear off.

On top of getting out of bed before my 16-year-old self, like a respectable adult with something to do, I freakin kicked ass today. I did all 5 things on my list (the daydream journal was a bit of a cheat because I didn't really daydream today, which is a good thing). Plus, I did some extra stuff, and I am writing this journal before 10, so I may even do some more stuff, but I'll probably read my book...

I am hoping that I will look back on Friday, Day 17 as the turning point, which would be nice because it would give me something to talk about on the halfway mark. I am excited about how I feel today. I did tons of work (about 2/3 of the work I hope to do on a regular basis soon, and as much as I could normally do on days before this challenge).

Today, at one point I got that feeling when you lose a tiny bit of weight. The feeling really comes from how you would feel if you got yourself into perfect shape, but you get that feeling from losing half a pound. Like you are finally your actual glorious self. Your back straightens and you walk around taller. (This is like how I felt when I imagined a beautiful girl loving me.) You hold in your gut a bit too, but somehow your posture is more relaxed this way. You kind of get that one corner of your mouth smirk like you own the world and you can actually feel your left eye sparkle. And, all that pales in comparison with the walk, or should I say swagger. I had a Malaysian boss who I could write a book about from the knowledge I learned from him and he always said he could tell everything about a person by their walk. In some way, I need to hold onto this feeling. The trick, as anyone who has had the feeling before, is after the break where you catch a glimpse of another reality, it quickly fogs back over and your brain goes back to doing the same old things, not paying any attention to how awesome you are, or even feeling awesome for that matter.

I got the feeling a bit when I was meditating later too, I think this is a good sign!

# Friday, Day 18

Went to bed at 2 p.m. and still got up at 7:10 a.m., no alarm. Until about 8 o'clock is a blur of passing back out then fighting it then finally getting my tablet in my hands and getting to my savior Instagram. Then I just fully indulged deep into the Facebook feed. And, awake! Kind of. I was tired all day. The fact that I had my list of things to do helped tremendously in the fight to get up though, like it was probably the reason I kept fighting, so that is a major breakthrough.

Basically, I don't really want to talk about the rest of the day. I kind of want this to be a journal that everyone can use so I don't want to talk at length about my second greatest addiction, and the one I am coming to believe is by far the most powerful. Sex and masturbation, there is nothing wrong with it. It is completely natural and even necessary to enjoy a happy healthy life. In fact, I have read a blog where the guy quit for 21 days and he said that he even made a doctor's appointment and it turned out the challenge was even a little bit dangerous. I subscribe more to the idea that we are still animals at heart, and due to the 9-month birth cycle, there is no way that we evolved to need to ejaculate every day, or even every month. That being said, today I questioned that little piece of flimsy pseudoscience heavily.

I spent probably about 4 hours today browsing pictures on the web. There was no sexual release, if you will, just some straight out psychological torture. I feel like this needs to be included because of the mental hoops I had to create for myself to escape. It was like I had a front row seat to the battle between the animal instinct in the brain and the conscious decision making faculty. What made it even more interesting was that during this super weird, all day sex torture/trial (I did it three separate times throughout the day - my body is still feeling like it is reeling in mass confusion), I was reading Gabor Mate's book on addiction.

On the one hand, I could feel the incredible fog of mind where the entire world goes out of focus except for what you want, then on the other hand this clear and present sense that was me. It was the weirdest thing because they would switch back and forth throughout the hour or so I would be browsing. I can't recommend not doing this highly enough. I am sure I took some years off my life. But, it was kind of like going to the brink and looking over and seeing how it feels. Again, don't do this. It is something that you would never chose to do. It is something that you find yourself doing because your dopamine system is out of whack, and then you are fighting the unnatural out of wackness with something else that is unnatural.

I am curious if this will have any noticeable effects on the future. I have promised myself that I won't let it happen again. I know I said porn was off limits at the beginning, but I meant masturbation to porn, but now I am saying porn. I really hope this will have made it easier to make it through to the end with the sex part, and maybe have forced me a little more into reality and away from that cloudy reward driven mind. Another good thing I learned from that experience was I can train myself to switch on that super conscious me. I think it is better to practice with just meditating, and possibly outright dangerous with this method, because who knows what will happen to the mind under that kind of stress.

Daydreaming was taken up by sex, but surprisingly this made for less other daydreams. I do need to work more on stopping my overactive mind. This is one of the most important points. That and doing my beach interviews. I did do a tiny amount of work on the website, so I'm calling my list completion skill still good. I may do some interviews tomorrow if I just suddenly feel the vibe, and I have a phone call planned for the morning to hopefully encourage me to continue with the getting up thing. Other than that, it is Sunday tomorrow, and I am going to the beach and eating seafood and fruit all day!!

# Sunday, Day 19

Ah Sunday. There is some wacky withdrawal brain chemistry going on because it is intensely difficult to remember what I did. I even started to write about half the day at lunch and the other half at night so I remember what I did with my day. But, on Sunday I write my post on Monday night which makes for a sketchy and somewhat perturbing venture into the fog.

I do know that I got out of bed just before 7! And, I gave my dad a call and he is coming to Cambodia to visit me so that was a great start to the day. It didn't stop there either because whole days where you allow yourself to do what you want, and what you want is to go for a 10-km bike ride along a pristine beach and eat seafood and fruit, is always awesome. And, I think this dopamine thing is working because I am getting a bigger rush from writing.

Things are starting to look up, and not just because Sundays off is a genius concept. My entire perspective on life is changing. I am getting mind altering ideas for my website and for the direction of my life more than daily and my energy level for getting work done is steadily going up (although it is still only about 60% of what I want it to be at).

Today's idea is all about the voices in my head... To be honest, I could be crazy, but I don't think so. I am curious about what goes on in everyone else's head. I do a lot of dysfunctional thinking for sure. I am going to make a list starting with a relatively normal one so that you don't think I am too crazy. I get music unbearably stuck in my head. I can think, 'okay I am stopping repeating these five words of this song now' and be back at it with in two seconds, even when I am truly trying. This inability to stop it is a crucial common ground between all my dysfunctional thought patterns. The next one is that I will plan and replan and then repeat the plan in my head. I think both could be called rumination. The third one is another one I've mentioned before. I imagine telling someone something about my life. This could be an imaginary story or true story, it doesn't matter. I have realized from the day dream journal that the person I talk to is usually from a set circle, but if I just saw someone or if I am expecting to see them soon then that person is more prominent. They are all people I know, except for girls that I wish I had stopped and talked too. Or, it can be imagining what I might write on Facebook on a picture from my life. That is also a big one, and, although almost never do it, it has wrecked many a stunning sunset. I noticed the other day that I also talk in my head while listening to music on YouTube. I really want to tell someone about how awesome it is. I get addicted to songs and listen to them a whole bunch until I am sick of them. However, I never remember the words to songs because after just living in the moment the first few times, I start to talk to someone in my head about it. "Oh, look what that drummer does with just the snare and a high hat, I love the look on her face just before she gets ready to sing that line," and on and on.

There is a lot to be learned from your thought patterns, but I imagine the happy successful people I want to become like have a lot more control over their brains. I may be trying to replace the dopamine I would normally get from social interaction with my imagined conversations. I think they are like addictions. They even resemble what I was talking about with porn when your brain is in the foggy, uncontrolled state. The good news is the more I notice them the more I can fight them, but it is extremely difficult. In over 4 hours of bike riding yesterday, I am not sure how often my mind was at peace but it sure wasn't enough. It helps to be in a super beautiful setting that can take your brain away, but even that doesn't work for long. Another way day dreaming is like an addiction is that even when you notice that you are doing it, you don't want to stop, because you've got a good story going. You are also not sure if you really want to quit, because what would you do with that time otherwise? My answer to that would be to fully relax and enjoy blissful happiness. I should be able to simply listen to the music as I bike down the beach. The other clear solution is to pay attention to what I'm doing, or find something to do. This will need to be a focus coming up here, and I think I will talk more about it as the days go by. Like I said, I don't remember as much as I would like.

I didn't even bother to make a to-do list for Monday. I was so into doing nothing. As usual I got a good dopamine rush from accomplishing doing nothing this Sunday.

# Monday, Day 20

Halfway! That is crazy. I can't believe how fast it has gone. I thought it would drag achingly by with every moment being the worst, least nicotine, caffeine, alcohol filled moment possible. It hasn't been super easy, but to be honest, at this point, I feel like it is going too fast and I don't want it to be over.

Except for coffee! Oh man, an iced coffee with condensed milk, Cambodian style is all I thought about this morning. They make them with a super strong finely ground coffee that has a totally unique taste. Then they just load in the condensed milk and ice. I will be drinking at least one per day for the rest of my time in Cambodia. As for all the other stuff, even a sexual release? I think that I will stay away from it all for a while, maybe I will phase in the allowed addictions one at a time.

Actually, I think there is a really important point here. I am quitting cigarettes and masturbating to porn (now I need to really spell it out) forever. However, after 40 days, coffee, crap food, weed (another one I might do on day 41), TV, booze, and even cigars will be back on the table. Although, it will be interesting to monitor to see if I become dependent on them which is a real fear for booze and cigars. The important point however, is the unique role that coffee plays here. It is the only one that I have daily that I don't think is a problem. So, it is the only one I am craving on this day 20.

I never believed that caffeine influenced me. I would happily drink a hot cup of coffee before going to bed. I just liked having a coffee in the morning because I liked the taste. Now, I think a bit differently because the amount of caffeine and sugar in these ice coffees delivers an actual jolt where you see the world through clearer eyes, but I still think it is the sugar and the pleasing flavor that I am addicted to. Either way, a cup or two of coffee is not bad for you, and I can easily go without it. I may be slightly dependent on it for my day to day joy in life, but I don't see it as being a bad thing, like TV or greasy food, or cigarettes, etc. I guess it is because of how natural coffee is. I may start drinking it without sugar.

Another thing about how easy this fast has been, is that I am worried for what will happen when it ends. I think that living life by these strict rules makes it much easier to fight cravings. Just saying no to any expectation is totally different than being out there in the wild with every addiction staring you down alone. That is why coffee is hard now. It is the only one I allow myself to imagine a tiny bit. I have done a lot of reading about dopamine lately and I haven't seen anything about the idea of just shutting down all hope of getting a fix, but I believe it works like the placebo effect. If a possibility is just shut off in your brain, for example, if you take what you believe to be a pain killer so believe you won't feel any more pain, then that possibility is simply no longer a possibility. A lot of the workings of your brain are based off expectations so you cut it off before the source. In other words, we and our world are completely defined by a set of knowledge and beliefs that we have (most of which we don't even know we have). This statement is a bit cliché, so it is easy to miss the importance of it. These beliefs and knowledge are so ingrained in us that we don't even notice the box they have put us in. It is the cliché story about the fish and water. The crazy thing is the power we have once we knock them down or doubt them even for a second. That power is called freedom.

Imagine if a doctor gave you a pill and told you that it may be a placebo or may not be. Now you don't fully trust the doctor and the placebo has lost a massive amount of its power. You can't make a placebo work once its hand has been dealt. Saying, "this pill will do nothing, but just believe it will work and it should do the trick," will not work. The freedom comes either from ignorance or knowledge, and you can't go back once you have chosen it.

You and I are not made to live in slavery to our desires. Once we see them for what they are, we can begin to truly understand who we are, and we can begin to be free.

I think the state of dopamine dependence and constant want creates the fogginess I have been talking about so you don't see reality clearly enough for this to be even remotely possible. However, these last few days have started to show me glimpses of reality. I have come a long way in these last twenty days. I woke up at 6:20 today, and although I still really need to be able to fall asleep better, that has really been the key to my feeling better and better. I am going to do a lot more research on dopamine, and step up my work schedule a bit. I would like to start doing a bit of yoga and work outs, but that might be overshooting so I am just going to stick with raising up the schedule. I had a bit of a mental schedule in mind for today this morning and I am doing decently with that today, the only way to obtain that "get stuff done" energy that I am looking for is to start to push myself a bit here. I think I have been deservingly easy on myself so far, but it is time to start trying to make some real magic happen!

# The ½ Way Interlude

At first I thought it was the idea of not setting an alarm that got me out of bed, but on rereading the journal the clear winner in the last ten days was the to-do list. The nice thing about spending 16 days frustrated by the same problem is the extreme sense of accomplishment on finally beating it. Apparently, the trick is not to come up with world changing, universe encompassing truths, but to come up with something that is enticing to you right here, right now. I think the problem with the previous theories was they were too abstract. I needed something solid that I could grasp and haul myself out of bed. This piece of advice will be useful in redecorating my cage...

Despite the pure glory of getting out of bed in the morning and being productive. The aspect I found most intriguing about the last 10 days of journal entries was the research about rat paradise and addiction. Now, in the introduction I mentioned that I have had a good life so far. I do not have a cage built out of terrible things in my past. However, I have mentioned that all the artificial dopamine stimulants I use are clearly covering something up. Going a bit deeper, my struggles with being social without cigarettes and booze gives a hint about the cage I am living in. It is still not clear why I feel so socially anxious, but the day 14 breakthrough was an interesting look outside of the cage. When I imagined having a beautiful girlfriend and how I would behave, my world was totally different. I knew I could not be confident if I was drinking because it would dullen who I am. This is because it was a way I felt, not something I thought. The question I should have asked myself then, and everyone should ask themselves, is what is holding you back from feeling that good all the time? It is important that the answer to this question be graspable like the purpose that is getting me out of bed.

Getting into good physical shape is an important part of breaking the cage. I breezed past that in the journal, but over the next twenty days I learned the importance first hand. Losing weight and getting more flexible was one of the most powerful things I did over the 40 days. This is largely because it is a concrete step you can grasp. It is not a wispy ideal that is impossible to hold onto when the going gets rough.

Another important thing is to force yourself to do the things you don't want to do. About 8 months after I completed the 40 day challenge, I did it again. It was crazy because after the first time I was sure I would never do it again. But, after a lot of thought, I got really excited about doing it because this time I knew so much more. The main thing that I did was plan all sorts of uncomfortable social gatherings. I hung out with friends I normally drink with. I attended meetups with strangers. I met up with people I am normally awkward with on the best of days, and more. I immediately recognized that what I said on day 17 about using dopamine stimulants as suppressants to the voice of my imagination was true. At first it was incredibly difficult. But, it quickly became easier. In fact, once I was stripped of the suppressants my mind quickly realized that it had to focus on what I was doing in the moment. I never needed alcohol in the first place, my brain just tricked me into believing I did. I am proud to say that I am quickly building real social confidence, and this has turned out to be a major door out of my old cage.

To be honest, when I wrote about that TED Talk in my journal, the impact was not nearly as powerful as when I read the journal later. Even with the knowledge in hand, it was hard to see the cage. I guess the truth of the idea wasn't ready to truly settle in my brain. Now I realize that we choose easy comforting stimulants because of an insecurity or fear, but then over time, those stimulants add to the insecurity. They become a part of the cage. And, since I was still consumed by the struggle of constant want up until day 30, it wasn't clear to me at the time that I was still not attaining the freedom I deserved. I didn't realize that I was constantly scrambling to try and find my way back into the safety of what I knew before.

Let's see if the next 10 days can bring us any closer to a true and free version of me.

# Tuesday, Day 21

Day one of the second half, and I am hoping this is day one of the rest of my life. Although I did not finish my list, it wasn't for not working hard. I think I may have almost put in a 12 hour day and I feel extremely good about it. I also ate three square meals. They were still a bit big, but that doesn't bother me because they were perfectly healthy.

I don't think I have mentioned it yet, but I get an intense craving session just after I eat every time. I still get that and end up eating a piece of fruit, but that is the only remnants of craving. The important thing now is going to be building an identity around this new person I have become so that when the fast is over I can continue to stand firm. There was a moving story in Gabor Mate's book about an old man who quit drinking, got himself his first place, got a good girlfriend and two months later found out he had cancer. The recovering alcoholic who was telling the story said that she expected him to say he was planning on going on the craziest 6-month bender of his life. But, he was so thankful for the life he had built and his experience of sobriety that he was going to live every minute to the most even though it was only six more months. This is what I need.

I have a lot of ideas about identity and believe that identity is one of the single most important aspects of your cage. You can get identity from what you do, what you own, who you know, and a bunch of other external things, or you can get identity from something inside. This is going to be a part of the next 20 days' journey. Seeing myself through different eyes. Perhaps I need to stop seeing myself altogether. I know for sure happiness and human connection are going to be necessary. If I don't see myself as a happy person at the end of all this, I will be at danger of falling back.

I also need to crush this rumination and nonstop thinking. Every morning I wake up and I feel like I was stressed out in my sleep, and then, as soon as I shake out the sleepiness, my brain is off again. I think now that I am clamping down on daydreams the other stuff is getting worse. I have had a song stuck in my head like you wouldn't believe.

I am also hoping that my physical wellbeing improves. I actually did a decent little work out and yoga session yesterday and today but my physical situation is worse than three weeks ago. I am sore, my breath tastes hot like cigarettes, my teeth hurt, I feel like I have a brewing ear infection in my right ear, my throat was sore this morning, and my heart just takes off at random sometimes. I feel like it was worse today, and that a lot of it was from a totally unexplained mystery stress that seemed to pervade me all day. I think I must be coming up on another turning point in my body's reregulating. I am not too worried about anything. I realize when I write down that list that it looks terrible, but they are all super minor. It may be a bit deserved because so far this has been surprisingly easy. In theory, I should be coming up on feeling amazing. I am exercising, going for ocean swims, eating copious amounts of fruit and rice and fish and chicken, and doing nothing unhealthy.

I am hoping also that the brain fog continues to roll back, because I would like to be able to complete a list like the one I set out for myself today.

# Tuesday, Day 22

Haha, I know that yesterday I started my journal entry with something like, "Hopefully today is the first day of the rest of my life." Well, that fell on its face. Today was a slight disaster. I spent the whole day trying not to fall asleep and did a total of about 3 hours of actual work. I also thought up an idea for a desert - a concoction of angel food cake and fruit and condensed milk, and spent the whole day fighting myself not to go have that.

I am not putting doing those interviews on the to-do list anymore. I still want to do them but they can't go on the list. The stress is not worth it and I can't handle it yet. All in all, I couldn't handle anything today. The physical symptoms of anxiety were heavy. I think I am losing weight somehow and that might give me the anxiety feeling... That doesn't make any sense with how much food I have been eating, but maybe my body is so used to shoring up the extra calories from beer, it doesn't know what to do with all this green tea.

Wow, today really sucked. I think that doing this list thing is an amazing tool to become a better person but when you let yourself down, it really sucks. It feels like I am still fighting all my old problems, but without the use of any pleasure inducing soothing tools. This would have been the type of day that would have ended in getting gloriously drunk and smoking and a full break down in my normal day to day life.

However, days like this are probably a good thing because it allows a peek into myself. I am a bit of a believer in the break it down before you rebuild it mentality, but right now I feel like I had started the rebuilding phase and then broke it down again. I don't even feel like writing this journal but I didn't want to screw up tomorrow starting today already. But that is it. Nothing insightful.

# Wednesday, Day 23

Hmmm, I am not sure whether to hope that I am getting throat and ear aches because of bad water or not. I felt quite ill this morning and had a super weird sleep last night. I still got up before 7, got to work before 8:30 and had a good work morning which was impressive though. In general, I think that my body is working on balancing but I certainly don't feel 100%. My heart keeps randomly starting going too fast, I am a bit shaky, and that feeling of general anxiety is persisting. On top of that, I have stopped taking my daydream diary and my brain feels crazily out of control. Even when I am meditating I can't get a minute of no thinking.

I am not as useless tired as I was for the first 20 days, but my ability to focus on work is still dismal. I have the energy to sit in front of the computer, but I don't have the clear mindedness to properly focus and get down to business. I feel like my thoughts spinning out of control leads me to make poorer judgement on my work because it drains my mental energy. I need to work out my brain... Because of this feeling, I have done my third day of yoga and pseudo working out in a row. It is a way to try and make myself focus on the here and now a bit more.

I learned an interesting thing today about the way we make decisions for the future. There are lots of factors but the interesting one is that we need to know if we will be able to trust our future self. Why should I leave anything good for future me, if I am not sure if he is just going to waste it? For example, yesterday I wrote my journal entry for the day because I didn't want to ruin today, that shows good respect for my future self! When I started this experiment I often saved the entry for the next day. The big difference is that now I have this list that I feel obligated to do and I trust myself to want to do it. I think this idea could be extrapolated to people who have a very good idea of who they are and what they want. (It is impossible to be this way if you are fully run by immediate gratification for obvious reasons). So, people who have a strong self-identity may tend to work harder because they know that the person in the future will take those rewards and move them even further, or that person will be disappointed that past you didn't do any work.

I do not think of myself as having any real sort of identity. It is helpful that I started travelling because that gave me a bit of identity as an explorer and adventurer, but that is about all I have. I am terrible at saving for the future. Even now, being my own boss, I have trouble making myself work extra hard. I don't have a career, or family, or even any real skill. I don't even have a good idea of how I look. My mind is often in daydream land so I can't take anything from there either.

Part of the problem is that I don't think that my identity should come from any of these things anyway. I believe my identity should be in conjunction with the great 'One', and that I should take confidence from that. However, I think that some sort of idea on 'who I am' is going to be necessary. It needs to be a bit subliminal/ingrained in me because thinking it is not useful either. The problem is that who I am fluctuates with how I am feeling. In the next 17 days I believe that I need to stop daydreaming and come up with a solid idea of who I am. Not just an imaginary desired 'who I am' but the actual me. I think I also need to continue with these to-do lists. Although I have not been perfect at finishing them, I have been working very hard. I am still making them too hard or overestimating how fast I am at doing things. I am also being too much of a perfectionist on them, as I haven't finished the list again!

# Friday, Day 24

Today would be a good day to get drunk! Man, apparetly my body has not stabilized in any sort of way. This morning I felt horrible. Like maybe throw up, maybe shit my pants, headache, super tightness through my chest horrible. I think it may be from eating just fruit in the morning, but I am not sure. I also took three big healthy poos today which was weird and hopefully means this is over, but I don't think so because the feeling in my chest and through the core of my body came back throughout the day today.

On top of that I felt wickedly depressed. This is the first time in a while, but is seemed to be brewing over the last few days. I just wanted to go to sleep. It may be exhaustion. Somehow despite all of that I am going to finished my list today. I just need to do an hour of book research after this. I think I am going to go to bed at 10 and hope for the best. However, this felt like a normal depression feeling. I think I need to get out and be social, or maybe go for a bike ride. I may just see how tomorrow goes and then plan for Sunday. Normally, around this time I would go out for some drinks and chat with some random people. It is Friday night.

I do wonder what sets off this depression feeling. Is it really the lack of social connection? Sometimes I feel like social connection is just another distraction or dopamine rush that you run to. I know it is good for you, but is it really the whole meaning of everything. It is similar to when I daydream about talking to people about what I am doing. Is it all just a big round of showing off what we are doing and trying to impress each other? I am feeling more and more like some sort of identity/spiritual breakthrough is needed here. I can see a deeper meaning to the social connection part. Like when you have a family you are not trying to impress them, it is just nice to be loved. I guess that is the hard part for people who think too much, we ruin love.

I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. Trying to take joy in the day to day drive of completion, although I have been having a few daydreams about my business taking off again, and I am also feeling disappointed that one of my happiness blogs doesn't look like it is going to get published. However, just writing this made me feel a bit better about the whole thing.

I kept my daydream journal a bit better today. My mind is still out of control. I am hoping for just a big snap, and everything goes clear and peaceful and I feel confident, where I know exactly who I am and am clearly driven. Sixteen more days! I think I just need to keep pushing myself to do more work. It is like exercise for my brain!

# Saturday, Day 25

Well, I don't think I was depressed today, but it was a rollercoaster ride, through a tunnel, with a light at the end. I went to bed a 10 yesterday and fell asleep by 11, I think. I had some weird dreams and woke up to go pee but all in all it was the best sleep I have had yet. I woke up around 5:50. I was still tired and kind of dosed until the sun came up and finally checked my clock to see it was 6 30, so I set my alarm for 7 and dosed some more. I felt nice and rested for the first time ever, but that was to come back and haunt me later. The rest of my morning was also nearly perfect. I went to lunch early because I was super hungry but then came back and finished up my promised work on my website. I took a nice break and listened to my book on tape before starting on my blog posts, and then it all went to shit.

I had the realization that I need a job that provides a lot more dopamine stimulation. Maybe something scary like a war time journalist or something. The problem with being a writer is that your dopamine rush is dependent on what other people think of your writing. Whereas being someone who helps people for a living or does action packed stuff or completes big projects, can get their rush from that. I guess everyone should do a job where they get a good rush from what they do. Dopamine is the drug that makes you motivated to do something you get a buzz from. It is what makes you engaged and focused in your work. I have always said that that is why I don't try too hard at life, I need to be motivated by something meaningful. In actual fact, I do get a rush from thinking and solving problems. I guess just I need to change the way I look at my work. Rather than hoping to impress people, I need to get satisfaction from what I do. (This is hugely important, and I hope I remember it, this will change the way I write). This, I think is true for everyone. One of the most detrimental things you can do to yourself is to try and find happiness from other people's opinions about you. Especially when you think about what I was talking about yesterday with identity, if your identity is based from what you think others are thinking of you, it is on shaky ground.

Anyways, I am only having all these helpful thoughts now, so after sitting down with pen and pad in hand I thought that maybe I should do some meditation first to get rid of the sleepiness I was feeling. Then, ten minutes into that, I realized I needed a nap, and took my first nap. I was worried it might screw up my burgeoning sleep pattern but, since then I have had a headache and just wanted to go back to sleep and still do, so that should be alright. I didn't quite finish my list which I am disappointed in. I think I need to make the list more doable for the next little while, as my energy levels are still very volatile. This headache is not from dehydration and I never normally get headaches, so I think it is a result of this experiment and all the hard thinking I've been doing. Even my reading and meditating has been intense. I guess I am really hoping that these 40 days will be a turning point in my life and I have been pushing it a bit hard. That being said, I am only giving myself a tiny bit of leeway because I am still nowhere near being a go-getter, successful, loving life guy! Although tomorrow is Sunday, and I really do love Sundays!

# Sunday, Day 26

I went to bed early last night and decided to stay in bed for a bit this morning. I had the realization that my body is also hurting because I have lost a bit of weight. Nothing shocking but I can tell from how my pants fit. This would explain some soreness and tiredness, so I figured I would give myself a proper rest today, which turned out to be a bit boring!

I read for a while then relocated to the hammock and downloaded an audio book so I wouldn't have to do all the work of holding the book and using my eyes. I also did a lot of thinking. I think I mentioned a light at the end of the tunnel in Saturday's post and forgot to talk about it. I am still not sure. The glimmers I am seeing may be a mirage because it is just too perfect they would be showing up on day 26. I am just preparing for the final homestretch. I think I have made it through all the super hard parts. My body has relented with its constant complaining and now it is my mind's turn to start to bend. Without a full perspective shift, this whole thing will not be worth it. Right now, I have next to no desire for beer or cigarettes or even porn, but if I don't become a different person then when the walls of the 40 day challenge come down and I am set free on the world, it may just be a matter of time.

But, I am pretty sure the glimmers are real. I can feel them and they feel real. It is like I have left behind the foggy tunnel vision of desire. Now I am walking around in just fog with no particular desire in any one direction. This is why I notice the daydreaming so heavily, and I do still have a slight aversion to any hard working/thinking, mostly because it feels a bit fruitless and like I am trying too hard and just getting lost in my head. However, there are also moments where everything is just clear and easy. Since I am not having one right now I can't explain it, but I think I will get to know it a bit better. I felt it distinctly today and yesterday. Just a little bit less lost I guess.

I used to get annoyed with the saying "just be yourself." Like anyone could know who 'their self' was. You could see that if you had a lot of cravings you might think, "well I like cholate, snowboarding, and making people laugh." But, when you identify with what you like, 'who you are' changes all the time. And it gets worse, it can be influenced by what other people think, by what you ate, what you watched on TV, and the shoes you are wearing. How the hell are you supposed to know who 'yourself' is? Well, I think that I am starting to discover that under all your likes and wants there is a person. That person is fairly well buried under a lot of shit though. I mean, even as I try to conjure up the feeling of being me I just feel cloudy, like my brain doesn't want to do the work. It is going to take some practice, but that light is shiny, and I do like shiny things!

# Monday, Day 27

I feel like I may have won the war against sleep. Although I feel a bit scared saying that out loud, I think sleep may be a vengeful opponent and evening thinking of war with it means it has won... But, mornings are starting to be outright enjoyable, I mean the first 20 minutes of waking up is still a fight but my list of things to do and the streak I am on of having relatively productive days gets me going. I am going through the motions to have a successful life, but I am still not really feeling it. I still imagine the successful pop out of bed in the morning types to not have to battle quite as hard as me, but I figure you have to fake it till you make it for a while.

By midday I accomplished a lot and was feeling good about it. I went for lunch and the feeling about lunch that has been bothering me came back again. It takes me a long time to decide where I will go and what I will eat. One of my favorite meals of all time is homemade turkey soup with homemade bread and butter, and in my head I am trying to recreate the feeling of that meal with every meal I eat. I want tantalizing simplicity and striking flavor. I want my soul to be refreshed and my body to be soothed. I want a lot from my food. I want a dopamine rush. I never get fully what I want and I usually go through a short battle wanting to buy a donut or cake, then buy some sort of fruit. On top of that I am looking for new fruits every time. This is a key indicator of dopamine, looking for a novel experience. This happens because dopamine gets you psyched up for something (lunch), then when that doesn't quite satisfy the expectation it makes you want more so, since I am not allowed any of the good rushes I suffice with fruit, but it knows fruit and that won't be good enough, so what about a new kind of fruit? Then, when I get the same old mangos I need to deal with a slight down time due to reward prediction error. To make up for that, I get really into peeling my mangos.

I recently read that addicts get addicted to the process of doing drugs. Anyone who has been addicted to weed for a while can attest to the joy of rolling a joint. You feel like it is a spiritual process, setting out your tools in front of you and doing everything just so... I think I am getting addicted to mangos. I have an exact way of peeling them, and I mean exact, so exact that I am thinking about making a YouTube video because it is perfect. Then I savor the mango bite for bite. I think if someone saw me eating a mango at that point they would be slightly disturbed but slightly turned on. It is erotic. I am kidding a little bit, but the dopamine feelings are getting real and distinct at this point.

I just bought a new haul of fruit, but after this I am going to limit the fruit to one piece with breakfast, and just eating lunch at lunch. I think I will even cut out sugarcane water for a bit, although there are some people that I always buy it from and I think they will miss me. I realize that it is not possible to cut out all dopamine rushes but if my goal is to resensitize myself to dopamine then I think I need to get the low hanging fruit. Not that fruit is bad for me, but I think that getting your dopamine from novel foods is not what I want. I want to be getting my dopamine from social connections and being productive, and the occasional nice dinner.

Anyway, after lunch I got super tired again, but this time I battled through it. I got distracted by a chapter of my eBook which inspired a blog idea, which I promptly wrote and published on my blog, which I am very pleased about. I also wrote Sunday's and today's journal entries and almost finished a major update on my blog, which I think should be done tomorrow, so all in all a good day, but I ate too much at supper again. I am going to recommend committing to a stricter diet at the outset for anyone doing this. I am going to have to think about how I will do that, and set some rules for the last quarter of the challenge, but for now I am cutting back on the fruit!

# Tuesday, Day 28

I was awake a 7 today and my mom called me at 7:20. Usually I would just skip that phone call because 20-minutes-after-I-woke up Greg is usually not an exciting human being, but I was awake enough to answer the phone and even chat for an hour! After that I got straight down to business and made up for lost time, finishing everything that I wanted to do before noon, and then going for lunch. Kicking ass at mornings is starting to feel a bit routine! Although I still wouldn't say no to an ice coffee!

I did a bit more work after lunch then went to take a half hour siesta in my hammock. I went to mute the speakers on my computer and hit a button that automatically minimized the google browser I had open. In a split second my mind recalled any movie where a teenaged boy was caught looking at something he wasn't supposed to be looking at and hit that button. And, in that instant, I sat back down to look at some porn. I quickly caught myself, but I am amazed at that tiny of a trigger. I never even knew that key existed on my keyboard, but that quick sequence of thoughts in literally under a second almost made it happen. I am reminded of what I have been reading. Your brain's OFC remembers cues and upon receiving them, starts your body on a path to getting that reward. It is handy to know that brain science, because it helps to see it begin to happen and then shut it down.

I have decided on a strict food schedule for the rest of the time. I will have two boiled eggs and baguette and a mango for breakfast, then put myself on a strict $3 budget for lunch and supper (that is three dollars for both – yes Cambodia rules). This should keep me away from over eating and any treats, but keep a tiny bit open for a sugar cane drink every now and then. The exception will be Sundays for some seafood. I am excited about this decision as I feel like that loop hole in my walls against desire was unnecessarily tiring me out. The difficulty is that I will lose some weight for sure and I want to continue upping my productivity (I am about stable at 70% of what I need to do to feel good about my day). The one other thing that I am noticing is music. It is funny because that weird craving feeling, although insanely weaker is still creeping around and it is working to find other outlets. I have always known that music videos and good tunes were another of my greatest time suckers, but it is funny to see it come up in place of cigarettes and sweet foods.

For the most part I think music is going to stay a part of my daily diet. I don't see any harm in listening to it while I work, and occasionally being like 'oh yeah' when YouTube picks a good one for me, pausing my work, turning it up and just jamming with it. The interesting and troublesome part, is the habit I talked about when I talked about daydreaming. After I hear a song a few times, I want to share it with someone in my head and chat with them about how awesome it is. This deteriorates quickly into full-fledged daydreaming sessions where I watch YouTube videos for an hour in a row (it doesn't happen that often and has only happened once on this challenge). This is just something I must be aware of. It helps that I notice the craving to listen to music as a craving, so when I identify it that way I need to run, but when I am just listening to music for a bike ride or to work to I am going to keep listening. Other than that, I think I am going to be squeaky clean for these last two weeks.

My meditation has gone up to the next level, and I think I may even have the where with all to start writing and focusing more on positive things I am doing to fill my now almost perfect days.

# Wednesday, Day 29

Didn't fall asleep until about 1 a.m. last night for some reason, but I was still up at the crack of dawn, so I am calling myself a winner against sleeping in! Also, I am super excited about my new food restrictions. I have turned off the last craving. I am almost sure I will lose more weight this way as well. Before I was still eating 3 square meals just with a bunch of snacks and I was losing a bit of weight, now it should be intense.

One of the big things about having these big windows of time where I am not jumping from one craving to the next is finding an excuse to get up and walk around. No matter what happens I can't sit in a chair for 4 hours in a row every day. A kind of funny off shoot of this has been that the last two or three days I have done little impromptu work out sessions out of pure boredom. (Don't tell my body, but I think I may have tricked it into looking for healthy ways to get dopamine rushes.) I have also done four consecutive day of yoga.

I am a bit worried that I am going to get too focused on losing weight and working out, as I often look at those things as unhealthy motivators because I am motivated by what other people think of me. It is a fine line between working out to gain more energy and working out to make yourself look good and feeling good because you look good. The reason I say it is unhealthy, is because no matter how good looking you are, it is always in your imagination when you think other people think you look good. (I am tired so sorry if that is hard to understand). Unless every single person is saying to your face, "wow you look good," then it is in your head. Also, your looks will fade no matter what, so it is an unhealthy thing to get your confidence from... What I am trying to say is that how you look is not the 'real you'. I think that part of it can be, like your dimples or the twinkle in your eye, but for the most part the actual you is on the inside.

Which brings me to my brain wave of the day. This new person that I am looking to be is a more confident person. I am not sure which comes first, stopping daydreaming, getting a firm grasp on my identity, or gaining confidence. I think they all must have to grow together like the three colors on a candy cane.

I had my idea about confidence when I was doing pushups. I normally give up on the third set, with some excuse like, "it is not worth it to be sore tomorrow," but today I had another glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel and I decided to get it done. Then I continued to have probably the closest thing to a real workout session that I have ever had. I guess it is that trust in yourself thing that I was talking about when I started making my daily goals. The decision to not back down once you have decided to do something is all important. I do almost the same thing with my to-do lists as with my third set of pushups. I make an excuse about not finishing them, and I feel genuinely good about what I did do, but I don't get that confidence boost of making it through the hard part.

I have often thought that confidence might be the key to all of this. To snapping out of it, taking life and doing whatever I want with it. If we go back to my example from the beginning of imagining you were the US president, my first genuine feeling is that I couldn't handle that. However, I know from the past and seemingly crazy life decisions I have made that I do have a fair amount of confidence hidden inside. Sometimes it just takes something like getting thrust into being the president of the US to bring it out. But for the most part, if I try and imagine myself going to a gala with all the most successful bloggers and writers in the world, I would feel nervous and out classed. So, to become one of those people, I at least need to believe that somewhere inside I am one of those people. I realize that I need to get some confidence by proving to myself that I am that good, but I do believe you also will have a hard time getting that good if you don't already believe you are that good. This is a paradox I could get stuck in and go nowhere, but I think that if I clear my head and work on my identity I can start accomplishing some small things. That will give me a clearer feeling on what I am capable of, and then I will produce better stuff and everything will spiral together nicely.

I was thinking about it and wondering, again, why do I daydream and plan impulsively? And, I realized that a lot of those thoughts and day dreams can be chocked up to non-confidence. If I believed I was the shit, all those things would just fall in line. I have a whole speech about squirrels and how they fearlessly jump from tree to tree, but it is getting late and I want to get to bed early today, so that must wait. I am going to make my list undisputable from now on.

# Thursday, Day 30

Well, I was not expecting time to fly by like this. That is one month with no alcohol, fake food, cigarettes, coffee, sexual release, or TV. The crazy thing is I am worried that it is going too fast. I don't want it to be over. However, I am also interested to see how I am after this. Right now, I feel like without rules it will be even more empowering to be in control of myself, and with the rate I am developing good habits, I don't think I will want to go back to any of my bad habits.

Today was probably my best yet. I crushed my list and it was by far the hardest list yet. I spent three hours on one of the articles - wrote it, edited it, and even sent it away, and it was a good one! I have to admit I ate a second mango, but I spent under 2.50 on lunch and supper, so the 50-cent mango was part of the budget I set up for myself. I know that is one of the half assed excuses I was talking about yesterday, but making compromises is a harder habit to break than I thought. (I would like to point out that I am remembering what I wrote about yesterday and that was impossible at first – it still feels fuzzy and I could have written that two days ago, but I am definitely getting clearer). I will be perfect with food for the last 10 days, only eating at specified times, no snacks. I am excited about this. The problem with today was that I didn't sleep well again and was super tired for a good chunk of the day. Pushing through it was okay though. I did decide to take a nap, but after I didn't fall asleep in the first 5 minutes I gave up on that idea.

A truly amazing feeling is that I am beginning to feel real feelings. Like, I know I am tired because of a lack of sleep and not just from fighting cravings or out of whack chemical imbalances. I also felt mostly full after all my meals instead of just igniting a rampant desire for more pleasure. This is a major change for me. If it wasn't for plate sizes I would never know when to stop eating. I have no idea what the feeling of full feels like to normal people. I see people eat a Big Mac and half their fries and say they are full. These are full grown men. To me that is insane, when it comes to McDonalds I don't even have a full feeling just a line between where the sick feeling in my stomach overpowers wanting more double cheeseburgers, which is somewhere between six and ten. I think my dopamine system for pleasure overrides the normal system for saying enough food and I keep eating until the signals get intense. Hmmm, there is tons of evidence that the very best thing you can do to live a long life is to not over eat. I always assumed it was because of the extra energy it takes to digest extra food and the extra crap in that food we are overeating, but I wonder if it could have to do with having balanced brain chemistry. The feeling of desire translates to stress because it is insatiable and stress is a killer. Stress also kills dopamine receptors so it is harder to feel satisfied... And, dissatisfaction is a dopamine imbalance. That is an interesting idea! – I really hope that by the end of this 40 days I can think all the way till the end of the day. I am currently writing these journals in a super tired haze from all the work I have been doing. I am afraid of reading these entries later!

I didn't work out today, but I was sore and tired from the last few days and needed the rest. I still need to do half an hour of work on my newsletter, which is just easy reading, and I need to get in a good meditation session because every time I tried today I started falling asleep. I am thinking I want to get to bed by 10 tonight! So, I am off, I will give a better three quarter journal entry tomorrow, right now I can't think of anything to say other than I am feeling good and loving it, but the mental push is still a bit exhausting.

# The ¾ Way Interlude

As I was reading over this section of my journal I thought it was a bit strange that the posts seemed to be getting even more rambley and nonsensical. I thought as I got more clear minded my posts would become cleaner and more polished. Then I looked at how long my to-do lists were getting. I totally forgot how productive I was during this thing! I was writing my journal at the end of the days and I do remember that it was a real push to keep focused. A key takeaway from this 40 day fast is that you need to build up new habits. You can't just expect to be able to write for 10 hours per day and have your brain comply. It is like working out. It is not just your willpower, but your body power that needs to expand. Focus and energy also need to climb hand in hand. I also think this is true with figuring out your identity. An identity is not something you can just acquire by deciding you need one. It is something that takes work.

To this day, I am still working on the identity piece of the puzzle. So, the fact my journal entries trying to make sense of identity are a little nonsensical is probably forgivable. All the major religions and philosophies are trying to explain 'who you are' and even they, these timeless books by mystic sages, end up causing confusion and even war. In the end, it makes sense that only you can experience the real you. I would try and explain what I learned about identity and the resulting essential confidence, but it turns out to be a major theme for the next 10 days as well. I think it will be best to let ultra-productive but tired me give you 10 more days of rambling before omniscient me from outside the journal jumps in to pull it all together.

The same thing is true for my repeated attempts to explain the different voices in my head. For now, just know that I am not schizophrenic, and even though at first I thought it was a personal problem, I now believe that the way people think and imagine is a key factor in the difference between the masses and the successful people. It just shows up in different ways.

I think we are all trying to protect ourselves with flurries of activity, thought, and even addictions. Whether your thing is constantly rushing around or being lost in your own mind, I wonder how different it is to being an alcoholic or chocoholic. The rushing and the thinking are just better disguises of a fear that lives within us all.

We desperately don't want to be weak and powerless so we either build like maniacs, get lost in dreams, or just grab whatever will numb us the best. But, none of it works, so we keep on going and trying to get more and more of whatever our tonic may be. Am I comparing an unceasing CEO to a drunk? Yes. In fact, I think the drunk may have leg up because he is more likely to notice something is wrong. This applies to the parents who are trying to build the perfect home and the retiree who is trying to build the perfect future. We are all trying frantically to protect ourselves in one way or another, and what I realized, the thing that set me free, was that it doesn't work.

The important point that I want to make in this interlude is that even the struggle to intellectually defeat this problem will leave you constantly wanting more. It is the same as the struggle for security. You can get to a place where you have a grasp on the idea, just like you can get to a place where you feel stable and secure, but you will be left on the crest. You will never be able to jump over the other side and take the plunge into peace. Fear will hold you there.

Daydreaming is my effort to gain power over my situation by thinking. I believe most of us (the masses) are all blindly struggling to somehow gain power over our situations. It is ironic because even me writing this book and you reading it could be efforts to gain this power. We are all like heroin addicts, relentlessly focused on what is in front of us without ever stopping to consider the bigger picture. We have no idea of who we are or what we are doing. We just think and work and smoke and eat and drink, and then go to sleep so we can do it all over again believing someday we will wake up and be there.

If we only just stopped. We might see that we are already here and that we are already ourselves. God, it is good to be free!

# Friday, Day 31

Holy jumpin' I am tired. I finished my list in good form. A few things took me longer than expected and it is 9:40 right now. I still feel like I wasted time between tasks and did more daydreaming than I should. I am hoping for a much more effortless feel to my day, rather than a tortured, hap hazard, barely making it through, style.

I also think I will start writing half this journal at lunch and the other half at supper because right now my brain is too fried to do anything decent. All in all, it was a perfect day by all my standards. The most perfect day yet. But, I still feel like there is something missing. I tried to be confident, and working out gave me a good boost of energy, but after a while I got too tired to care. I guess energy is also important in the game of kicking ass at life.

The problem with energy is that it is so fickle. I am sure that every diet and home remedy for energy is a load of BS. I know people who drink every night, chain smoke, and refuse to eat vegetables with tons more energy than ultra-fit healthy eaters. It is all in your head. It is how excited you are, but more than that. It is how in the zone you are. If you are in the zone for life, not worrying or overthinking, but just taking things as they come, you burn a lot less energy than constantly battling with everything. I get this feeling when I go camping. I am never debating what to do next. I just know and I move effortlessly and peacefully from task to task. (The problem with that example is I am usually drinking when I am camping too.) (Wow! Right now, I can imagine camping without constantly drinking and I think I could enjoy it! That is good news!)

It may just be that I need some more practice at this lifestyle because trying to write a book and a journal every day is super hard work. And, to be fair, it is ever so slightly getting easier with practice. I may just be expending too much energy on each task. Just like working out will probably get easier, writing should get easier as well. Also, I expect I am still feeling the wear and tear of recovering from dopamine imbalances.

Hopefully tomorrow feels a bit better, today I felt a bit depressed by the end of the day.

# Day 32, Saturday

I woke up at 6:20 today and got out of bed feeling fully rested. I ate strictly on schedule, and only had a few craving for the sliced bread I have in the fridge for breakfast. I started work at 8 instead of 8:30 since I was up half an hour early, and put it a solid four hours straight. After lunch, I didn't get my usual nasty sleepy spell, and worked amazingly up to 5:20 when the internet crashed. I did some meditation and a work out and ate supper a bit early. Now it is after supper and the internet is still not back, so I am writing my journal to keep pace on my to-do list. I might have one day this good every two months normally and that is usually followed by a drinking and smoking spree. This is the third day in a row where I have just rocked it at life.

There are a few things that still feel wrong. I still don't feel as happy or as driven or as energetic as I would like to feel, but all three are improving slowly. Just getting into this rhythm is magical. It is amazing to see what life feels like with natural healthy dopamine stimulation. This is exactly what I was hoping for! So, I am quitting this project. I am finished!

Haha, I am not, but that is how I feel right now. I can see why a lot of the habit-forming advice on the internet says go for 30 days. You get in the rhythm and you see that it feels good, but I also think that leaving it at 30 days would leave you in a weak position. I haven't experienced a full euphoria from living my dream life. I am just a lot better than before. I would like to catch a glimpse of the dream to hold and savor for better motivation when my life is not guided by the rules I have during this fast.

I am afraid I still don't feel quite good enough to override a good cigarettes or porn temptation, but I am definitely getting there. I have also decided to continue with the food eating portion of this challenge, probably for another 40 days. I would like to be in the habit of eating healthy and working out regularly, and since I only really started that a few days ago, I might as well continue.

Today I learned an important lesson about not wasting my time deciding what to eat that I need to apply to all small decisions I over analyze. It was cool. I usually pace around my apartment for a while before I leave to go get food because I can't decide where I am going to eat. This is mostly because I don't want to go to my regular places. It is not just the food. The one place is dirty, and the other place is super busy. Plus, they are run by local Cambodian people who don't speak English, so to push your way up to the front and get yourself some food is intimidating. What happened today though, was since I didn't want to waste my time deciding because I knew I only had an hour for lunch, and I wanted some time for relaxing in my hammock doing nothing. So, I just made a quick decision and went. I waste far too much energy on tiny little choices like what I am going to eat. Continuing this diet will help me not to waste so much energy on those tiny choices, and I really want to have more energy! Another thing to help not waste so much energy on small choices and to stop my tendency to want to plan in my head, is to have actual stuff going on in real life that takes my attention. This is probably why I had so much energy when I used to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week and still went camping on the 7th day. I had real life things to do and I didn't have time to waste thinking, which I suspect is the exhausting part. It is definitely the exhausting part when it comes to writing! I need to make what I am doing more real in my head. I guess that is coming with not having a job to go to in 3 months!

Another major energy sapper is stress. Today I paid my first rent bill. The whole month I have been stressed about how much my utilities were going to cost. I was reading my water meter wrong (I was reading the decimal as a whole cubic meter so I thought my water bill was going to be a fortune.) When I got my bill, it was way less than I expected, like less than half. The energy I got from releasing that stress was amazing. I didn't even realize I was stressed. Figuring out what else is stressing me is going to be really important. I guess that is another reason why confidence is so important. I forget what I wrote about confidence a few days ago. I know the last two days I was super tired when I wrote this journal, so I don't remember what I wrote, but there is an important theme of confidence going on here! Anyway, the internet is still not on, and that T.V. is looking good.

Guess I will do some writing on a different project. It is a shame because I was doing so well with my list today. It was going to be the best day yet. Over 9 hours of good hard work! Oh well. Maybe I'll do some good writing, but as the last few days' journal entries show, my skills decline past eight o'clock!

# Sunday, Day 33

This Sunday wasn't quite as great as the last few Sundays. I need to put a bit more variety into having fun. The relaxation part of my day was extraordinary, and this is possibly the first Sunday where I really felt like I had earned some time off. Another fantastic part about the day was my meditation session. The idea of having nothing to do helped me to realize that meditation is to be enjoyed, not stressed over - squeezing a little bit of peace into a hectic day! I am also sleeping majestically, so all in all there are not a lot of reasons to complain.

And yet, here we go. This was by far my toughest day fighting smoking, drinking and masturbation. I can't believe that after 33 days I would throw it all away, but if I didn't have this journal to keep me accountable, I certainly would have. It started as I cruised along the beach on my bike. This was my third time doing it and the paradise feeling wore off a little bit. I think I am trying to recreate the first time, down to eating the same food. As I bike down the beach I always need to fight daydreams of having a girlfriend or meeting a girl on the beach. This time I didn't fight it so well and after only one time down the beach I was ready to head home. There were so many Cambodian groups drinking beer and having a blast that it really made me feel bummed to be alone.

I was pretty determined to go to church, but when I biked by it was just tons of young Cambodians and the Australian that I know wasn't there. I almost went in anyways because I badly need to meet some people but I didn't. As I rode away, the urge to smoke nearly overwhelmed me and hung around for a good hour after. Especially after wanting to drink on the beach, I started to think I need my cigarettes and beer to be social. This crux between being lonely and only making friends doing something I hate was a miserable feeling. I went home and because I had spent my daily allowance for food on lunch, I ate a crappy supper of bread and boiled eggs, one of which was rotten.

Then, I didn't have anything to do after supper and the loneliness really set in. I think I really need to push myself to meet some people in the upcoming week. I know I can be sociable. It is not like I was always drunk and smoking when I made friends before. I don't know why it is so hard. I need to do it before the end of this 40 days or I am going to immediately get drunk just to make some friends and that will reinforce the whole idea that I will be stuck in this miserable crux my whole life.

I badly need my confidence boost soon!

# Monday, Day 34

This was my first day of my last week of this challenge! I can't believe how far I've come. I would already recommend this to anyone. It is just incredibly enlightening. On top of getting an unbelievable amount of work done, not faltering or craving at all, eating healthily and easily getting up on time, my writing and energy levels are also going up. I know I promised I wouldn't put going to the beach on my to-do list, but it is one of my main things left to do to really push this here. I need to have a vibrant social life. It is in all the studies as the most important thing to having a happy, addiction free life.

That being said, I read the other day that a lot of people with addictive personalities treat relationships like addictions as well, and I thought that was an insightful idea. I think I do this. I am a bit too extreme in relationships, probably even with friends and family. The book I was reading also talked about the need for a personal identity before getting into relationships, so you wouldn't depend on the relationship to fill in your identity. I feel like I still need a lot of work on my identity. I have been working super hard on it and thinking a lot about identities, but it still needs some refining. I realize that the idea of just discovering your identity over a month is a bit crazy, but I feel like, with so many things that I was hiding behind out of the way, it is possible to do it.

Before this experiment, I would often try to do a write up on who I am and would get super confused on the difference between who I was and who I wanted to be. The person who I was I didn't want to be, so I would think that it couldn't possibly be me. In the end, I never really got a good picture, even now, I am wondering about simple things like, am I an extrovert or introvert? I used to be so friendly and talkative to people, and still am to people I know. But now I can't even go to the beach and chat with someone. I think I need to write some more about identity, probably tomorrow.

I don't have a lot of energy for writing this entry because I just also wrote the Sunday post, and I had a computer melt down today so that set me back on my to-do list. I am still crushing it with quality work but I've also got a lot more to do until I am done. I wanted to mention that I am still feeling like I have a lot of anxiety going on, probably slightly more than when I was smoking and drinking. This is weird because I thought I was mostly worried about how shitty I was feeling due to smoking, and now I don't have that. I also am intensely more irritable. Those fucking dogs that bark at night I would still shoot, and the lady in the apartment next door brushes her teeth for 15 minutes (no exaggerating) and hawks up a loogie about every minute of that. That sound becomes super horrible when it is repeated every day for 15 minutes. It is all I can do not to lose my mind just yelling. I feel like both things are annoying things I was probably a bit numbed to before, and now I just need to get used to again. For the most part I am good though!

# Tuesday, Day 35

I will admit, I am thinking about coffee a lot these days. That first cup of coffee is going to be the greatest tasting thing of all time. I've already decided that I will have one cup of hot coffee just when I wake up, then save the rest of my French press for around three when I will have an ice coffee with condensed milk. Oh, my goodness, Cambodian ice coffee... ahhh. What I do hope is that I don't just freak out and end up drinking six cups of coffee. I could do that. The self-control that I have learned is not that powerful, but I think I will be able to just enjoy a small amount.

Today had a few ups and downs and I am feeling a bit empty. I killed life pretty much the same as I have been, but I just wasn't feeling it the same way as yesterday. I think I have been yo-yoing with good days and bad days for the past week. I wonder why. Maybe it is some set of expectations of myself. I feel like I need joy to be inputted into my life. The joy I am getting from being good and productive, and especially the joy I am getting from writing good blog posts is okay. However, I do notice the lack of joy from cigarettes and booze and donuts and coffee and masturbation, although I really don't mean joy. I mean, I notice the lack of being able to numb myself when I am feeling a lack of joy. I felt a bit depressed today. I had the thought today that it doesn't matter what you are doing, if you are doing it alone it won't be that enjoyable. There is some truth in that statement, but probably it should be, if you don't have someone to share it with, life won't be fun... Still battling with the social aspect, but that does lead me nicely to talking about identity which I promised to do yesterday. (Oh baby, remembering what I said yesterday! I am thinking clearer and clearer by the day!)

I have a complicated relationship with identity right now. My whole life I never really had a good idea of who I was. I couldn't imagine how people saw me, even when I was younger, and I still can't. However, I am afraid to define my identity as the way people see me. I don't think that is identity. I think it works for a lot of people and that they define themselves by the way they think people see them, but I don't think it will work for me. What I mean by defining myself in the way other people see me is by anything superficial. From smart to well-dressed to funny, even defining myself by what I have done or by my morals, is all defining myself in the way people perceive me. They are all things that people could respect me or disrespect me for. They are all things that I could have confidence in. (Think about the way a successful, tall, well-dressed guy walks down the street.) The problem with this type of identity is that it can be knocked down and therefore is not real.

This is obviously a personal feeling and it stems heavily from my religious studies, so if you do have confidence in yourself because of your social status, that is cool. In fact, aside from having some sort of belief in your identity as a soul, social status is the only way to really have confidence. It is something like that documentary I watched at the beginning with the stuff about you being part of the universe at large. You can allow yourself to be the central importance to a world that exists only in your head, or you can try and find how you fit into the real thing. I realize that this all sounds whimsical, but it is crucial for the positive effects of this dopamine challenge to continue and to grow. It is as if that fog I have been talking about all along was hiding who I am from myself, and now that I can see me. I need to find a way to learn to like me or when the opportunity comes I am going to choose fog again.

I guess I am building up confidence in myself through the work I am doing and these to-do lists, so it isn't completely religious. It is about finding and fulfilling your way. It is a bit confusing. I have been doing more and more meditating and reading about Taoism and the Bible over the past few weeks and am really building up my faith into something that I can hold onto, although it is not something I can explain. I tried to in a blog post for The Way I Walk and it failed miserably. I am trying to explain how I am learning to let go of all my rational explanations without ever being irrational... The important part is that I am beginning to figure out who I am and even more importantly, learning to be happy with that person and at peace with that person. That is the key of this whole identity spiel.

I am still not sure where a partner fits into that, but as I said the other day, maybe it is a good thing that I am figuring all this out before I find someone!

# Wednesday, Day 36

Oh man it is nice being able to feel like this journal is getting boring because I just keep reporting awesome days (days where I do my list, eat my food budget with no snacks, and get up on time. I've been working out every day without it being on the list, and my work is even improving. The cravings are getting less and less too.) On top of that I was feeling quite chipper today as well! There is surely a rollercoaster effect going on here, so I wonder how I will feel tomorrow. Today I wrote most of a blog post that I feel super good about so I will keep track of the actual quality of my work and see if that is what is making my mood go up and down. The good feeling started before I wrote the post today so I am not sure about that theory. I also spent almost no time deliberating what to do about lunch and just rolled on through everything I need to do.

That reminds me though, I do have a major confession. I went to eat soup for lunch and the lady didn't have any left. She said she had rice and pork and then mumbled something. I said okay I'll have that. I sat down and she came up to me and said, "You want sweet milk?" I knew right away that she was thinking I wanted a coffee. Although the thought crossed my mind, you know, just to be polite, I said "Oh, no coffee today please." She misunderstood me and brought me an iced coffee with no milk. I am not the kind of person who can say no and tell her to take it back, my whole meal plus the coffee costed $1.25. I would never in any circumstance be rude to that lady. I look at it like it is my fault because I don't speak Cambodian. Plus, I can't leave the coffee without drinking it because that would also be rude, so I had to drink a coffee. I think because I wasn't expecting it at all and felt bad about drinking it, I didn't get too much pleasure out of it, and it wasn't a big deal. I even forgot about it till now. The funny thing is that just yesterday I was writing about how much I wanted a coffee.

I was in such a good mood, feeling clear minded and confident. My brain wasn't buzzing with worry, and the sun was shining. It almost felt like the universe just forced a reward on me. I did some grocery shopping and pre-bought a packet of coffee for my celebration on Monday. I went home and did even more good work. On my 3 o'clock siesta, I was listening to my audio book, which is a book about meditating by Pema Chodron, and I had a few more ideas on confidence and identity.

I am starting to get the tinges of feeling like I might be a good writer. Like that I will be able to find work writing if I want to, and that gives me a strong piece of identity. Also, the meditating, yoga, and food restrictions mean that I am feeling leaner and more relaxed which also adds confidence. (I noticed that confidence before lunch and think that it was a big reason for my happy mood). I feel like, despite what I said about not having confidence in earthly things that I am still getting some. I think that the important part for me is that I want that feeling because I want to feel like I am being true to myself and not trying to impress other people. My identity lies in my purpose.

I still catch myself doing a lot of daydreaming. In fact, this afternoon was particularly bad. As I started having the confidence that my life might work out, I started thinking about what I would do if it did. Sometimes the daydreams about my plans working out involve telling other people how they worked out, how I barely pulled it off and how scary it was. I think this is a very damaging type of daydream because they go back to getting a false style of confidence from impressing other people. I am getting better at noticing these and nipping them, but they still come. The other daydreams are a cross between planning and fantasizing, where I imagine something working out then plan what I would do next and then imagine that working out and what I would do next, all the way until I am rich and famous. I think this type of daydream just gives me some dopamine stimulation and makes it harder for me to do real work. This is obviously bad but the other kind is worse. It doesn't hurt my confidence by giving me false confidence.

Yeah, I am going to call confidence you get from thinking other people think you are cool, false confidence (and I still think most people run off false confidence). And, I am going to call the weird inner confidence when you just feel relaxed and at peace, somehow in the flow with a true purpose, real confidence.

A huge part of this that I am not sure if I have mentioned yet is something I have been reading in the Tao Te Ching. It says that the man who is happy in the mundane everyday of life and who seeks no greater purpose is the truly enlightened man. The book goes into great depth on this concept but I think this simple idea is life changing. You hear this wisdom all the time, be happy and enjoy the journey, but for me it finally sunk in just now. I think I always thought, "yeah I'll do that but after I get this and that under control." Even throughout this dopamine cleanse I have been constantly waiting for the moment of happiness. Once I am getting up early, not being controlled by cravings, doing the things I say I want to do - then I can just relax and enjoy. The turning point was born when I learned to realize that I am only able to be my real self in this moment. I can't plan myself into existence. It is beginning to show in my writing. When I look at writing as something that I enjoy doing and not as a task that needs to be accomplished, it starts to flow. It gives me a sense of peace and happiness while I work. Even though I am seeing no results now and may never see results, I am quite stress free. I am happy and not strained, and even able to be funny in some of my articles.

That was my realization in my hammock, that part of my identity is being funny and playful and childish. That part of me does not show up when I am worried about what other people are thinking of me. Over the past years of my life, I largely used drinking to set that part of me free. I guess my identity is who I am when no one is looking, just relaxed, enjoying putting ideas together and making jokes, not worried about impressing other people.

# Thursday, Day 37

Well, today we take a slight detour off the sunny trails and deep philosophical meanderings and into the dark side where it all means nothing. This is horrible to admit. Last night it was around 3 am. I couldn't fall asleep and was feeling worried about the next morning. I really didn't want to see all my hard work go to waste with a sleep-in, but I knew I wouldn't be able to function on only a few hours of sleep. I know what I did wrong. I let my mind really go off into daydreaming. Remember how yesterday I wrote about how excited I was about the feeling that my projects might work? That feeling really got out of control. I started planning and one daydream lead to another. It made me feel not even tired because I was so happy (see there is that wisdom about being happy is being energetic). Around 3 a.m., I don't know what I was thinking, but I figured I would watch some porn like I did around two weeks ago. Those crazy thoughts that you are not controlling really got to work on me. It is interesting now that I know about dopamine, so I can see how my brain manages to almost shut out the little angel on my shoulder. Anyway, one thing led to another and yada yada, full perfection for 40 days – failed.

I have had all day to think about it. Well, all day since noon when I woke up. In a way, having a failure so close to the end was a good thing because it made me think a lot about what controlling myself day to day is going to look like. Without the dopamine challenge, will it be possible to maintain control? I realize now that completing this challenge will in no way make control a fully effortless thing. All day today my mind was raging, that dopamine hit was strong and it wanted more. The excuses were flying at me. Especially, 'you failed, it is all over.'

Well, it is still going. My Brain just wants to throw this whole project in the garbage. It is like it sees it's opening and is going full tilt. The cool thing is that I am fully aware of the foggy feeling that is trying to blank me, and I can distinguish those needling thoughts. They are not at all like the normal cravings that keep you alive. I have started to recognize when I am hungry and even when I am full. However, right now it feels like I am at the beginning again. The only reason I can hang on is I am so close to the end anyway. Like I said, this breach may have been a good thing. This feeling right now of just giving in to all temptations because of one mistake is what I will need to face all the time. In three days I will be out in the wild. I won't have the restraining device of telling myself I might as well control myself because I have three days left. My life isn't going to be just peachy and I can't just start daydreaming of ease and perfection. I am going to finish this out in style, although I am not looking forward to going to bed tonight. It is already eleven as I write this.

Anyway, I did do a good amount of work even though I got up at 12. I didn't finish my list but that was more because I put in nearly 6 hours on one thing. Hopefully back to it tomorrow. The real failure would be totally losing control because of one mistake.

# Friday, Day 38

I had another crap sleep last night. It was super hot and I have a lizard in my room who keeps harassing me. Haha, there are lots of these little lizards in Cambodia. They normally hangout on the walls and catch bugs. However, I have a super weird one living under my fridge. He comes out every day around 7:30 p.m. and checks the places in my room where the bugs hide while the lights are on. I have never seen a lizard that stays in one place like it is a home, and they are not normally scared of people, but this one darts back to his home every time I move. The problem is that I think he is blind or handicapped in some way because he runs into walls, and if I'm not paying attention he also runs into me, which, if I am not paying attention, makes me jump. I am nervous that I am going to jump in my sleep and squash him.

Anyway, I still got up early and did all my work but I was half asleep all day. I feel good though and am especially happy with my food eating regimen which I seem to be getting used to. I think I will add a 3 o'clock snack as I seem to get hungry around that time, but I am keeping my eating habits once this is over... I don't think I had any deep thoughts today. I was too tired, good thing I had the lizard story or this post would be nothing.

I am still slightly sad about my failure yesterday. It is going to take some of the awesomeness out of victory, but not that much. This has still been a life changing experience. I don't really feel that bad about it, maybe it is more just the tiredness. To be honest, I think I am better at regulating my bad moods than I am at regulating my good moods. I am still having a lot of trouble with the daydreams of all my stuff working out. I think it could be from stresses that I am not noticing. My life right now is a stressful situation, but I don't feel stressed (not including the weird anxious feeling in the mornings but that is actually decreasing). I am really looking for a peaced out, satisfied, friendly, happy feeling all the time, is that too much to ask?

That's it for today, was hoping for some quality posts at the end here but not today, and the lizard is around again so I may not sleep well again tonight!

# Saturday, Day 39

Holy Shit, I am not going to be able to sleep tonight. I feel wired and it is 10:30. I am pumped about life right now. I am going to put a lot into keeping my level of productivity and positive action as high as it has been. It is awesome being able to be excited about the things you are creating rather than the things you are smoking, watching, eating, and drinking.

Last night I had the bright idea to turn on the air-conditioning which knocked me out cold - pun intended. I have been sleeping in puddles of my own sweat and in fear of lizard attacks. I figured the cold air might scare the lizard out of my room and give me a peaceful sleep. The lizard is still around, but I did get a good sleep. I also worked super hard on my projects all day. I almost missed supper, and I almost forgot to eat my mango today. I actually just ate it because that cleans up the food in my house and I am planning on doing a full fast tomorrow for my last day.

I am still finding it hard to fight off the daydreaming and I am sure that that is what is standing between me and full consciousness. My meditation sessions are becoming super good though. I just need to maintain that feeling for a whole day! Again, I don't have a lot to say and am feeling a bit brain dead from working super hard, and it is close to my bed time (I have never had a bed time that I felt like I need to keep before!)

As usual I am taking a nice relaxing Sunday, but as I mentioned, I am going to do a full fast with no food. I plan to go for a massage on the beach and then bike up the mountain to the temple and spend some time there.

# Sunday, Day 40

Today was not like all the others. First off, I didn't fall asleep till four due to another torrent of daydreaming and lizard fears, even with air-conditioning on. I didn't get out of bed till 9, and when I did I almost got sucked into doing work because I have some important stuff on the go. But, I got that under control. I didn't even do all my laundry. I also felt hungry immediately when I woke up, and since I was doing an all day fast, that was a worrying way to start.

I felt lazy all morning from a combination of no sleep and no food, but I figured it would make for an interesting mindset later in the day! Around one I went out to the beach to get the massage I had promised myself but the beach was super busy so I just went for a swim. After the swim, I went for a brief stroll. I stopped at a restaurant to get a coconut to drink but they didn't have any, which in hindsight I am glad about. I skipped my plans to visit the temple and just went straight home. I listened to my book on tape in my hammock for what seemed like a long time, but around 3:30 found myself sitting in my room with nothing to do. I decided to read my Bible. It was my plan to start a big study around this time so I figured I would get at it. I read for about ten minutes and then fell asleep for two hours.

You would think that I would be super worried about falling asleep tonight and falling off my amazing track, but I am writing this on Day 40 Sunday night (I allowed myself to write my journal this Sunday by saying that it was more like therapy than work, haha – excuses) and I am feeling incredibly peaced out and relaxed.

Once I woke up I continued reading and meditating for a few hours. I felt really frustrated that I was not really getting the breakthrough that I had hoped for. I couldn't understand the Bible in the way I wanted to, but underneath I was not feeling the sense of peace in who I was that I am looking for. I have not had the epiphany that I predicted on Day 7.

I cut my hair, shaved and sat back down on my bed. As I sat there I thought about everything. My ever-running brain, my sitting on the earth as it spun in space, the weirdness of my awareness, and who I am, and realized I am different.

-- I am not joking that lizard just jumped out of nowhere and landed in the middle of my bed and ran off. He must have come from the ceiling. He made a loud noise as he fell off. I think he just launches off anything to catch a bug. It scared the crap out of me. I don't know what to do with this little guy. It is by far the weirdest lizard I have ever seen. He is chillin' on the side of my bed right now. This the first time he hasn't just run away from me in terror. It looks like he is a bit shaken up by the fall or that he caught whatever he just attacked and is digesting it.

That scare made me feel hungry! I have done well all day. Mostly the thought of coffee tomorrow morning is the only torture that I felt. I laughed out loud today at my book because the characters broke out their last bit of real coffee during WWII and went into detail about how much they enjoyed it. It figures that I would read that today! You'd think it would put things in perspective but it just made me feel sorry for myself.

... I was writing about how I am different. That lizard just threw me right off! I am really annoyed at how afraid of it I am. I feel like he is testing me in some way, mostly because he is so weird. Anyone who knows these tiny little geckos that are in all warm countries knows what I mean, this is the weirdest behavior ever. I feel like a president wouldn't have jumped the way I just jumped, and I was feeling all peaced out and calm. I was at my best and still I was afraid. I guess I still have a bit of the lizard brain!
Part 3

The Meaning of it All

# Epilogue

On Monday I treated myself to my planned coffee schedule and it was glorious! The following day I went down to the beach to chill and have my first beer in 40 days. That was also glorious. The next three weeks were all amazing. I got a volunteering gig that satisfied my need for sober socialization and I maintained my breakneck work schedule. I even went out to the bar a few times and didn't smoke and drank a reasonable number of beers.

Then one night I had a stressful night of socializing planned with a bunch of people I was nervous around. I decided to buy some rolling tobacco, so I could have an out if things ever became awkward. I made it through the night, but the following Saturday I bought a pack of cigarettes, and slowly lost control after that. It sucked. There was a point that the hopelessness I caused myself by wasting that 40 days of torture, made me think I was forever destined to be a hopeless alcoholic, chain smoking, pornography watcher.

This phase only lasted a little while, and when I was ready, about two months later, I sat down and read my journal. The blinding light of the aha moment still didn't strike but it got me thinking about some of the patterns and turning points from throughout the 40 days. I regained a healthy portion of the self-control I had lost and set about making a few of the wrongs right.

I developed a little 5 tool system from the inventions I made up over the 40 days, and as I put my system into use I started to feel hope again.

Still, my old addictions kept resurfacing. On the surface, they appeared to be under control. I mostly only drank around my friends. I only smoked one or two cigars when I would go for a walk and needed an excuse to get out of the house, and porn was almost a non-issue. The problem was I knew that it wouldn't take much to knock me back into my old ways. The underlying issue still hadn't been discovered, and my productivity was down. Worst of all, I was nowhere near solving the problem of what separates the 'successful' from the 'masses'. This is around the time when I decided to do the fast again. This time I would do it right. I would be social. I would control my food intake from the beginning, and I would exercise. The patterns from my journal were staring me in the face and I knew the solution couldn't be far off. This time I figured I couldn't fail.

# The Solution

"If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.

Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful. It is that they are unconscious." David Foster Wallace

This may seem like cheating but I need to rephrase the problem a little. The word successful is not a good word for what I was trying to discover. It has the wrong connotation. I assumed that a CEO of a billion dollar company or a president would have the have the state of mind that I want, but I was wrong to say it that way. They do have the drive. They do have the ability to pop out of bed in the morning, and they don't get easily sucked down the easy paths of sugar or booze. But, they are just as likely to be joyless and numb. They are just as likely to have surrendered all control for a fix. It is just that their quick fix is probably different. It is probably money and power. Not definitely, but probably. The person I know who made me realize the existence of the "successful" person is still a prototype for what I am looking for though. He is financially successful, but he is not driven by money or power or acclaim. I don't think there is a specific word in the English language for what I am talking about. In the way that what I am talking about is what I believe we are all looking for, successful is the right word, but it has too much cultural baggage. Enlightened is another word, or happy, but these words also have extra meanings that take away from what I am trying to get at.

I imagined a few more people that I thought had what I am looking for. A farmer who lived off the land. His days were routine and he didn't think too much. He was seamlessly connected to the earth and understood life without thinking. He owned almost nothing, but had no desire. He was thankful. He trusted the world with no worry. There was also a church going lady who didn't have a bone of judgement in her body. I didn't get to know her well but I can't imagine anything damaging her spirit. She loved helping for absolutely no reason. I wasn't even sure why she went to church because it seemed to me that there was nothing she could learn. She was bewilderingly kind and joyful. I also imagined an old man who understood me completely, when I spoke he heard no background noise. His life and problems didn't affect the way he saw the world. You could see it in the clarity of his eyes. His life moved smoothly without a plan. He was not afraid of death. I thought of children. They were innocent and they spoke and behaved without thought. They looked at the world with wonder and held no grudges. They connected deeply with everyone who smiled at them, but were never swayed from their focus. Their spirits were free. These people could all laugh and have fun. They were never too busy. I am not sure if they knew something I didn't know, but they had something I wanted.

My introductory description of the masses still stands. (I had the inside track on what was happening in their heads.) After doing the dopamine fast I understand even better what makes them tick, the blanketing desire to sleep in the face of stress, the overwhelmed shut down mode, the bad habits, the overthinking, and the lack of confidence. Those things were still clutching at my ankles as I stumbled over the 40 day finish line. However, as the fog dissipated I realized even more certainly that there was something I needed to find - a path, a place, a rock on which my feet needed to be. During my second dopamine fast I got serious about finding that place, and because of the journal you just read, I knew where to start.

# The Imagination

The roots of the dopamine system are fed by expectation. It is impossible to be happy when the brain is always looking for a greater reward. The more time we spend expecting something to be awesome the more likely it won't satisfy. We all already know this. It is why the book is always better than the movie, unless you watch the movie first. The problem is that expectation is also what drives us to do all the right things. We pay attention when we drive because our expectation is that we will die if we don't. We go to school because we expect that it will benefit us in the future, and so on. The question is how to manage our expectations so that we get to where we want to go, but are satisfied with ourselves when we get there.

Part of the problem is that our culture is about go, grow and get more. There is something inside us that thinks satisfaction might me bad. We are worried satisfaction might be too smug or cozy or lazy. What if we get to there and stop trying? However, I posit to you that anyone who thinks this way doesn't truly understand what satisfaction is. It is yet another distortion created by the imagination. Real satisfaction, real peace exists in a realm that can only be understood when you get there. The constant drive for more in our culture is not wrong, but it is pushing us away from the place we really want to be. A person who loves everything they do even if they don't get where they are going, and a person who works hard, constantly achieves, but never feels satisfied are living in worlds that are hard for each other to understand. And, the line that is separating those two worlds is expectation or, as it appears in my journal, daydreaming.

# The deadly cues

There is a disagreement between scientists on whether daydreaming is a good thing or a bad thing. One camp believes that daydreaming can be good for positive visualizations, making decisions for the future, and problem solving. The other camp calls daydreaming mind wandering and points to its connection with laziness, loss of focus, and dissatisfaction. Both camps have loads of data to back up their positions. At first I thought the disagreement was because of two separate ideas on what daydreaming is. I personally could identify with both types of daydreaming, but the one I talked about the most in my journal was obviously the negative one. I thought about trying to list all the different types of daydreaming and comparing them with how they manipulate expectations (and I still may do that) but a more compelling connection jumped out at me.

The difference between positive and negative daydreaming is the level of conscious control.

When our expectations go haywire it is because they have become unconscious. This can work in a few ways. The first one is the one that inspired me to do the dopamine fast. It is the brief flash of feeling that accompanies an imagined indulgence for a craving. A great example of this is the intense need to pee when we expect that a toilet is coming into range. It sets your brain and body down a path that is basically impossible to turn from. It is also the flash of imagined flavor and texture we get in our mouths when we see a piece of chocolate cake. This is the most horrible loss of control over the brain. It is responsible for the brain fog. A shock wave roles through your whole brain and leaves nothing left but desire. The slightest wavering of a conscious decision not to smoke to a thought of lighting and dragging your first puff and consciousness disappears. A sexy picture can set you on mission for some internet private time, a smell can send you to the fridge, the clanging of a glass can transport you to the bar. These cues take brutal control over brain. It is savage and efficient – one second you are going along with all the good intentions in the world and the next second an innocent little thought strolls into your brain, the smell of wine flashes through your sinuses, the flavour rolls over your tongue, and your mind goes blank.

The good news about this type of unconscious expectation is it is just as easy to destroy as it is for it to destroy you. All it takes is to say a revolutionary, absolute, and final no. It is the story of the 30 year smoker who throws away his pack and never looks back. It is the first and most glorious step into the real and conscious world. The realization that you exist and that this is your one chance at life becomes clear and that super powered cue is left dead and useless in the middle of the road. Line up the craving to overeat and just shoot it between the eyes. Conclusively decide that it is just not happening anymore, and it will disappear!

The bad news is that I have no idea how to create this kind of almighty earth stopping decision that you are no longer going to be a slave. For me the 40 day fast was my first taste of such an experience. It was crazy that I just decided this was what I was going to do and the cravings for cigarettes and alcohol just fell away. (I had thrown away 50 half packs of cigarettes in the 5 years before that thinking each one was my big final no.) The things where the line was a little blurry, where the no was a little less final (food cravings), still caused me trouble, but the most ridiculously hard addictions disappeared like they were never there. I felt negative physical symptoms, but never even thought of having a smoke or drink... In fact, that was the key, the full blocking out of thinking about it. I didn't even give those thoughts a chance at grabbing my consciousness. This is the only way to win because your consciousness is king. If it gets taken down there is no fight to be had, game over.

The other bad news is even if you do manage to defeat the deadly assassin snipes at your consciousness, it doesn't mean you are free and clear into the beautiful world of complete consciousness. This is why the 40 day dopamine fast didn't lead me directly to a revolution about being "successful".

Let's go back for a minute to the battling camps of scientists. A major argument by the scientists who argue daydreaming is negative is that it is proven to make people less productive. There is a famous study of women who were trying to lose weight that found the ones who spent the most time imagining what it would be like to be fit were the least likely to achieve their goals. That study has since been replicated for other dreams, from desiring an intimate relationship to getting a promotion1. The flip side is the story of Noah Stewart a world-famous opera singer who began singing at the age of 14. He still remembers his initial performance2. He completely engrossed himself in his role by fully imagining his character. He now spends time visualizing himself before every performance. He says he spends more time performing in his head than he does physically practicing.

You can see how the involuntary positive daydreaming of the dieters contrasts with the deliberate fantasy of the opera singer. The human capacity to visualize an action before we do it is an incredible tool for avoiding accidents. However, it has its own possible accident built in. We may just get stuck visualizing. In fact, we can get addicted to visualizing. (This is literally what is happening with addiction to pornography.) This is a much sneakier form of addiction than the addiction caused by the brain fog. We don't even have to stop what we are doing. Most the time the break from consciousness to unconsciousness is unnoticeable. We just slide away from reality.

The scary thing is this sneakiness is not even the worst part about getting lost in the imagination. The real terror is when we start to believe the imaginary situation is real.

"What!?"

Haven't we already identified the people who are living in fantasy. They are being taken care of in institutions. Those of us who are permitted to roam the streets are in the real world! Right?

1.https://www.psy.unihamburg.de/arbeitsbereiche/paedagogische-psychologie-und-motivation/personen/oettingen-gabriele/dokumente/oettingen-1991.pdf

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ngjdf

# Your World VS The Real World

What if the cage is your head? Remember the secluded miserable heroin addict rat cage and the fun and fancy cage with all kinds of friends and the well-adjusted rats? My thought is that unconsciousness is the cage or maybe the glass box. It is hard to tell we are living in a world that is created by our personal experience because that is the only perspective we get. However, there are clues if we look very closely... Some small thing in your life goes wrong and you suddenly get the feeling that your entire life is out of control. You get a new pair of shoes and for five hours you are the world's coolest person. You have a drink and all your problems go away. There is always a need for more. Your bad day at work makes everyone seem like terrible people... None of this is real. The unconscious world changes with what you ate for lunch or if it is payday. It is unstable and fragile. The main clue that you are living in your own personal world is if it is run by desire and fear.

The unconscious world always results in fear and desire. As we fall deeper and deeper into it, we develop an unwillingness to interact with the world. We may start to believe we are better than the people around us, or maybe that we are never good enough. We may think that we need more money or to be more beautiful. These feeling will be in constant flux depending on how we feel and as soon as it starts to feel out of control, our mind will helpfully instruct us to post a selfie on Facebook, buy a new pair of jeans, or pour a glass of wine.

Take my life for example. As I said in the introduction, it is a good life. When I compare the opportunities and freedom I have compared to the people who live around me in Cambodia, it seems obvious that I should be a happy person. In fact, everyone who is not dead and who wakes up in the morning with a choice of what they are going to do should be gloriously pleased with their lives. I don't need to compare myself or my life to anyone else's. I am alive and the world is beautiful, that should be enough. But, I don't live in that reality. The whole world of social anxiety I created for myself exists here. Once I took away my mind's ability to constantly hide in the next pleasure, it needed to build the fortress of unconsciousness a little stronger. I became more and more susceptible to long fantasies where my life was amazing. My unconscious world was so sweet, I became afraid of what might lie outside of my cage.

You may think that your unhappiness because you hate your job or because you can't afford something is legitimate, and that all you need are a few logistical changes to be happy. What I think needs to happen to you is for you and your family to be transplanted into another family's circumstances, preferably a poorer family. Soon all of your 'needs' will change. This is all because our fake worlds are all based on what we imagine about other people and what we imagine other people are imagining about us. We don't know who we are so we develop a fragmented picture based on comparisons to what we see around us. Then, when we get things we think we want, we quickly realize it doesn't work the same way we imagined it. We may wish we could travel more, but we never realize how much we hated instability. Or, we want fame and don't realize how much we valued freedom. You may wish you looked at certain way, but you don't realize that the way you look represents who you are. Anything other than what you have is a lie. What you want is just a bunch of imaginary expectations. The only way to find peace is to just be you.

The quote from David Foster Wallace at the beginning of this section is from a commencement speech he made entitled This is Water. He begins the speech by telling the old parable about the little fish that didn't know what water was. This idea that you are unconscious of the real world is not new. I think it is worth considering that being born again or finding nirvana may just mean finding the real you. There are tons of people from all walks of life who know this truth. It is the story line for some of the world's greatest books and the main message of poetry and music around the globe. However, it is totally possible to know we are living in an unconscious reality and never break out of it. David Foster Wallace himself committed suicide three years after giving the commencement speech. Breaking out of the unconscious level of the mind is impossibly hard. You can see the truth on the other side but still be unable to break the bars. Forty days of stable natural expectations gave me that view too. It possibly even opened the door to my cage, but to take the big step out is a move that does not come with a script.

# The Truth

When I first heard about the marshmallow test, I realized that I would eat the marshmallows because I immediately justified why I would eat them in my mind. I figured the pain of waiting for the second marshmallow would be greater than the pleasure in receiving it. My mind chopped up time in a way that made this equation add up. I knew I would immediately forget the pleasure after I had eaten the marshmallow, so the pleasure of the marshmallow was not super valuable. Also, if I had two marshmallows I would eat them both right away and it would hardly increase my pleasure. The pain of waiting, once I had the mental picture and flavour of the marshmallow in my mind, would be unbearable. Therefore, I eat the first marshmallow right away... It seems logical. You can see why it bothered me that this way of thinking meant that I was likely to not be a very successful human being (in fact, it did predict the exact over stimulated addicted person I became).

When I stepped back from the problem and tried to examine it from a bird's eye view I had a sense that the it somehow stemmed from a break with reality. The best description that I could come up with was that I didn't truly realize that I was going to die someday. Morbid, I know, but knowing you will die makes you realize you exist. It takes you out of your head and makes you live life with purpose. Now I see I would have eaten the marshmallow because if I didn't I would spend the time waiting for the second one lost in desire. However long the scientist took to return, I would be lost to my unconscious. The people who wait for the second marshmallow and are destined to be "successful" in life, are people who don't succumb to that unconsciousness. For them the wait wouldn't be that long because they don't spend the time imagining the taste of the marshmallow in their head. They spend their time in reality.

Imagine being in the head of the zoned in entrepreneur, the grateful farmer, the giving church lady, the wise old man, or a child. What is it like? It is quiet. They are just them, no worries or desires. You know that feeling like you should always be doing something else, even when you are doing what you need to be doing. They don't have that. Almost every time I sit down to write I still for some reason need to tell myself that this is what I want to be doing. For at least the first 20 minutes consciously quell the urge to get up and wander away. That feeling comes from the unconscious world. Even if we are cleaning the dishes, we are doing what we need to be doing. People who are conscious, people who are really being true to who they are, are in the moment... You've probably heard that before and been frustrated by it. Telling someone to be in the moment is like asking a smoker why they don't just quit smoking, telling an anxious person to stop worrying, or telling a depressed person that there is nothing to be sad about. When we are lost in the unconscious world it is truly difficult to escape because it is so hard to figure out what is real.

A good place to start is your body. I clued into this over the second half of the 40 days and then really zoned in the second time I did the fast. Your body is real no matter what your imagination says. It is an anchor to the real world. Most people break up a human into three parts. The body, brain and spirit, or your heart, mind and soul. It is easy to think of these things as three separate entities at war with each other. Your mind wants a cupcake for some dopamine, your body doesn't want it because it is already carrying too much weight, and your spirit has no desire but takes delight in the soul another person put into creating the cupcake. This division was a mistake I made throughout my journal and have made throughout my life. I (which I presumed to be my spirit which I presumed to be 'the real me') was constantly trying to tame my mind and body. In other words, I was looking as my spirit as the unfortunate slave owner of two unruly slaves that were always fighting.

The insight that this may not be a completely accurate perception came when I watched a TED Talk about posture and the reciprocal relationship between the mind and body. The TED Talk was about a study on how posture affected confidence. They found that people who assumed a big confident posture received a huge confidence boost. This is the exact reverse of something we already know to be true: when we are confident we naturally take on a big confident posture. The mind does not control the body nor the body the mind. The two are interrelated. I think the body is a good place to start when looking for the true self because we often give the body the lowest place on the totem pole. This is not the case. It is an equal part of the real you. Now I like to think of the mind and body combo as an exact reflection of the soul, but you could also think of the mind, body, and soul as a complete unit. I don't think there is much difference. The important part is that each one is a piece of the other. I've heard of the body described as a meat suit for the self. Not only is this gross sounding, it is wrong. When you change something about the body it changes how the mind works and this impacts the soul. The moral of the story? If you want to discard the unconscious you and live in the real world, action will make a difference.

# Your Body is Where it's at

Start by getting yourself healthy. Stretching, exercising and dieting were some of the most powerful lasting changes I got from doing the fast. I know I said that food wasn't a real problem for me, but on my second fast I realized that this was not true. It is amazing what you see when you get out of the water for a second. Now, as I sit in a library in Canada writing up this final piece, I look around and see that everyone has a juice box, a bag of M&M's, or a large coffee. That meat suit you're fattening up is part of who you are! If you want the real you to be happy, energetic and confident your body needs to be looked after.

On day 28 I mentioned that I was feeling good, and I thought it was because I had lost some weight. I also said I was worried I would start to become obsessed with how I looked if I started working out. This is a real fear. Being fit and good looking is highly prized in our culture, so it is easy to fall into the trap of exercising for what other people think. As I tried to explain a few times in my journal, what other people think is a completely imaginary idea. You cannot possibly know what is going on inside their heads. This is provable. Just watch yourself, one day you will think everyone is loving you and the next it will be the opposite. If you are really lost in the unconscious world, you will make up reasons that they might hate you today, but really it was a simple mood swing that changed your imagination. If you don't believe me, start asking people what they think of you. It doesn't change that much unless you change dramatically. That is how the real world works.

Another thing that happens in the real world is that you become more awesome when you have more energy and health. You will love yourself more if you show yourself some real love. Your body wants to be a certain shape and weight, and that will be different for everyone. You may think that you need to be super skinny to be happy, but check yourself. Are you living in a magazine reality? Do you think that people will love you more because you are skinny? This is the imaginary world. In the real world, you will have maximum energy and fun when you are in the right shape. Take care of yourself because you love yourself, not because you think it will make others love you.

This is the easiest step to becoming conscious, but watch out for the pitfalls. The other day I read an article by a very sexy girl who was a surfer and a poet. The article was about living your dreams. At that moment, it was very hard for me not to believe that the real me wanted to be a surfer poet married to this girl. The fact that I can't surf, write poetry, and that I would feel insecure with her as a wife (you know, the fact of reality) didn't play in at all. It is so easy to see what someone else has and think that is what you want. Likewise, it is so easy to see the cupcake on the counter and think that is what you want, or think you would much rather sit and watch TV than go for a run. The only thing I can suggest is to start eating healthy and being active (go for 60 days). You may not need to do a full dopamine fast, but you do need to stop getting drunk, smoking, and feasting on fast foods. When you are done judge how you feel (which will be awesome) and go from there. It might just shake your unconsciousness enough that you get a peek at the real world. I think that is what happened to me on day 7 when I wrote the introduction to this book. I saw another life, and it wasn't an imaginary life from a TV show. It was more real than anything I'd ever seen.

# What do you worship?

The mind is a much more difficult thing to reel in. After you have fought the physical cravings and had a glimpse outside your own little world, the real work begins. It is like the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (a ranking of the most basic needs to the most complex). At the bottom, there are the basic survival needs of food, sex, and shelter. These translate to the basic physical cravings I went to battle with over the 40 days. The next things we need, according to Maslow, are security, social acceptance, esteem and self-actualization, in that order. It is interesting that like the basic needs, security, social acceptance, and esteem are all things we can become addicted to (think money, fame, and power). It is also interesting that self-actualization sounds an awful lot like 'the real you' or the consciousness we are trying to attain in our effort to escape the cage.

Like the basic physical needs, security, social acceptance, and esteem, we'll call them the phycological needs, are essential to our individual survival. Without them we will die or at least be miserable. Also like the basic physical needs, the phycological needs can take over our minds and lead us down a hole that will never return to the surface. The difference between the physical needs and the phycological needs is how much harder it is to pin down and destroy something that lives inside your head. For example, there is no point in me even trying to argue with someone who doesn't realize they are living unconsciously. To them the personal world seems so complete that if they can't distinguish the bars, anyone who comes along and tells them they are trapped will sound incoherent. For those of us who have the inkling that something might be wrong, we still need to figure out what it is and then we need to do the impossible and somehow break free. As I already said, there is no formula for how to identify your chains or break them, but I did find a few things over the 40 days that were helpful.

The first thing to do is get the body under control. This includes getting healthy as well as defeating the cravings. For this step, the 40 day fast was incredible. Being able to distinguish between your body needing a cheeseburger or your mind wanting to numb itself is essential. It lays the mind bare. Only then, you can see what is happening. My daydream log was also an incredibly helpful tool. I learned that my mind was especially hard to disengage from dreams of the future in all the three categories of phycological need. I loved imagining one of my projects working out, creating esteem and stability for me, and I loved imagining meeting people and having them think I was interesting and funny.

If you don't think you daydream enough to learn anything from it, there are other signs of unconscious living you can use for self-examination. These include addictions, overthinking, emotional volatility, stress, or unstable body image. When you notice any of these things, which guarantees you are living unconsciously, examine where they came from. When you discover the answer don't make excuses – this is key. During the 40 day fast I had few friends, no girlfriend, no job and was running out of money. I could easily have let myself believe the insecurities I was creating in my mind. This is the difficulty with the phycological needs, you must be standing firm when they come calling. They are not like a piece of chocolate cake where you can simply remind yourself you ate lunch an hour ago and the hunger isn't real. The phycological needs are buried in unconsciousness, and untangling them from the truth is almost impossible. That is why I said earlier that one of the greatest things would be to live like a poor person in a poor country. This is about the only thing that could show you how completely your frame of reference is in your imagination. Your desire for more money, social acclaim, or esteem is developed from subliminally comparing yourself to other people, and worse. Your ridiculous idea of what you think you need comes from the very head of the unconscious – your pride.

This is where the real battle begins and the seed from which the unconscious grows. I believe it is the Self from Jesus' "Deny Yourself" and Buddha's "illusory ego", and that it is described by many others in many other ways. Yet, for all the words describing it, every person who sets out on the journey to escape the unconscious will be shocked when they discover it has been living inside them all along. It is the thing that you would lose if life were to absolutely crush you in the most embarrassing, painful way, and there was no coming back, and there was no reason to hold onto any bullshit anymore. That is the line between the unconscious and the real world – you. Just switch off your mind for two seconds, feel the air in your nostrils and open your eyes wide and look around.

Try it.

You just saw the real world. Now imagine how you walk and drive around with your brain just spinning. That is the unconscious world. Somewhere inside you something called the self, ego, or pride, is making you believe that it needs to be this way. It probably just made you ignore that sentence or made some excuse. That is the problem with calling it pride. We know pride is a bad thing and we don't want it, this thing that I am talking about is something you desperately don't want to let go of. If you think cigarettes or chocolate cake is hard to say no to, this is going to disappoint you. It is harder. The only way to get through it is to believe that what is on the other side is better.

# Finding Your Purpose

Just so we are clear, when I am comparing the real world to the unconscious world. I am talking about the actual real world. The one spinning around the sun with trees and people that all obey special laws of nature and comply to mathematics. In the real world there is a reason for everything. The universe is an intricate puzzle and everything is connected to everything. You are a part of this puzzle, but when you are in your head the puzzle gets messed up. You see the whole thing as all about you and you miss the real picture. This is a problem because when your piece of the puzzle is missing it hurts the world. I don't think I need to tell you about how self-absorbed people damage the world. Plus, that would just give you an excuse to ignore your own self-absorption... I also think we have probably talked enough about what you shouldn't do.

After you have lived for a little while without all the mind-numbing stimulants and caught a glimpse of the much harder to get but much sweeter happiness that comes from that, and after you have observed your mind and seen the way self-centered desire consumes you, what comes next?

In the real world other people are also real people just like you. Look around and you will see unconscious people bumping into one another and the occasional child or wise old man cautiously navigating among them. Your first instinct will be to be disgusted by the behaviour of the unconscious. Watch out! If that feeling is your permanent attitude, it means you are also unconscious. Why? You cannot logically despise someone for actions they are unconscious of. You can have a surge of animalistic rage when someone accidentally steps on your tail, but that is not a logical feeling.

You may also look around and feel pity for all the people throwing themselves down empty holes in the pursuit of happiness. This, sad to say, also points to a level of your own unconsciousness (albeit a slightly higher level). If all you can do is pity someone, it is an indication you think you are better off than them. However, since they are an equally important part of the real world as you, you are no better off than they are. The only way to help other people become conscious (and we badly want them to become conscious because we are all a part of the same puzzle) is for us to be in our place of the puzzle and therefore make the real picture clearer to them. When we look at people clearly, we see that each one is equal and valuable. Each person is critical, not only for their ability to give, but also for their capacity to receive. Those unconscious pieces may e

Remember how it is expectations that drive our motivations? The way to look at the world is to expect everything to help you fulfill your purpose (to be in your place, in the puzzle metaphor). When you are free from desire, fear, and pride, this expectation will never let you down. You know the way a child gets totally absorbed with their toys or a farmer can seem to be an actual piece of the landscape? There is a whole set of literature on that state of mind. They call it 'flow'. My favorite example of flow is a mountain climber with no strings way up on a cliff face. What is going through his mind? There cannot be doubt or fear. He must trust the mountain and expect to find himself at the top. There can only be the mountain and the climber in perfect focus together. Even time is gone. This is a trademark of people who have found their purpose.

Flow is the same as the meditation state, which I did a bad job trying to explain it in my journal. The problem is that the right method is different for everyone so it is not worth trying to go into it again. The important thing to realize is that you cannot think your way out of a mind problem. It is like trying to be the best at being humble, or trying to be wise or holy. They are things which require you to admit you are not capable and to just surrender. For people like me, who overthink and over analyze, just sitting and not thinking (meditation) is an act of surrender. For others involving the mind completely in an activity is an act of surrender. This is the flow.

Think about people who do a hobby for absolutely no reason - a military strategist or the star gazer who is not trying to impress anyone or change anything. My friend who was the prototype for my introduction to 'successful' people, has two of these hobbies. They are massive pieces of his life and have taken up thousands of his hours, but I didn't even know about them for our first 2 years of friendship. Those hobbies are him. He does not gain anything from them. This is what a purpose looks like. You can't overthink it. We cannot know our purpose while we are still unconsciously driving toward accumulating more and more of our baser needs. This makes life a fight. Flow is more like a flight. It is not what you do, but how you do it.

Your purpose is not some end goal of something that needs to be created. For example, my life will be complete once I write this book, build a school in Africa and have two kids. Purpose is a path, and the only way to walk on that path is to be fully conscious. This is how the 'successful' people remain happy even when their projects fall through or when they don't get what they want. Who they are is not dependent on those things. They can remain joyful and at peace through the hardest times.

There is not much more I can say than that. It is a beautiful notion that we are all pieces to a breath-taking picture, but the difficulty is that it means we all need to find our own places. It is an impossible conundrum that the only way to escape the unconscious world is to live consciously. If the personal world is what is caging you in, you yourself are the one who is creating the cage, how then can you break it? It takes a mighty heave. All you can do is want it enough to reject numbing yourself every time the going gets tough and to stomp out every aspect of your pride then wait. Submit yourself. Really listen to other people. Wait. This is not all about you. You must be connected. Only then can you find your purpose.

# About Me - Post 40 Day Fast

When I get in the car for a long drive these days my mind still loves the idea of a cigar for the road – opening the window and having that warm feeling just roll over me. I may even have one someday. But, it can no longer control my mind. I immediately switch from imaging a feeling to enjoying real life - the scenery, the music, my company \- and I am satisfied with that. It is also still a battle when I open a bag of chips. After my 'serving', I still want to throw away the bowl and go to town on the bag. However, now I know that if I eat the whole bag I will be left still wanting more, the same way I do if I only have one bowl. The difference is that the wanting more feeling will last all day and maybe more. I know that if I release control of my mind to the Cheetos, it will be a long time before I get it back.

I expect that I will need to be less and less careful as the cues from my old life fade away. Soon getting in the car or opening a bag of chips will no longer fire up the old dopamine system with such expectant gusto. It is crazy how a fifteen-year battle to quit smoking and pornography can just fade away like it was no big deal. My friends are all drinkers so I think alcohol will always be in my life, but my social experiences during my second fast taught me that I can enjoy myself and even be enjoyable without alcohol. I am substantially more physically fit, and I think I will be doing stretches and meditation for the rest of my life.

I am still trying to become a 'successful' person, but now I realize that it is the journey that will get me there. I know that sounds cliché, but the truth is that if you keep waiting for some grand revelation your life will be a waste. You will not find goodness in the future, it exists only in the here and now. This is the real world.

# The Second Fast

If you want more information on my second fast (which turned into a 60 day fast) or how I am doing post fast, check out dopaminechallenge.com. I am constantly updating it with free journals and my continuing research about motivation.
