Give Up Dopamine for Lent
We all think about what to give up for Lent but Corrie Young asks whether we need to give up dopamine.
Some will take up an activity but many more will give up carbs, sugar, or smoking. As saturated as our lives are with these things, an addictive substance we seldom commit to forgo may be just as worthwhile: dopamine.
When was the last time you felt bored?
Many of us will be aware of losing those small intervals between moments where the mind wanders, or that nowadays a spare hour between activities is much more difficult to steal.
Walks have been hit worst by earphones, and the always-available access to videos, which before used to be regulated to television timeslots, means that other people’s thoughts now drown out our own.
It’s much more difficult to spot than the grim feeling of a sugar-overload.
In fact, outside of the confession queue where I won’t check any devices, I can’t recall the last time I was bored.
It’s in the quiet – yet loud – thoughts of the confession queue, where admittedly one should be praying, that God is able to speak to you, or the small period of time between distractions that you can evaluate what you are doing with your time.
G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy said that every act of will is one of self-limitation, ‘just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others’.
Boredom is the limitation of our stimulation and focus imposed from the outside; without that outside regulator that we are left to take it upon ourselves.
In other words, in the past we were forced into our down-time. There wasn’t enough to engage us constantly in the way we are now.
Human will has proved itself too weak to give it up by its own accord – much like in the rest of life, we need God to stoop down and save us from it.
I hope this Lent to give up these distractions: passively scrolling Twitter; YouTube videos whilst waiting on the train; TikTok altogether. All must go to achieve St Leo the Great’s calling that Lent must be not only ‘the mortification of the body but also the purification of the mind.’
Lent is an outside regulator in our world of abundance. ‘It’s absolutely horrible’ going through it but we wouldn’t without it.
And we expect that anything leading to God will have secondary, material benefits. But they are secondary.
“Let us not believe that an external fast from visible food alone can possibly be sufficient for perfection of heart and purity of body unless with it there has also been united a fast of the soul. For the soul has its foods that are harmful,” said St John Cassian.
In the passage here, he goes on to describe the spiritual ‘foods’ of slander, envy, and vanity.
The saint concludes: “If then, with all the powers we have, we abstain from these in a most holy fast our observance of the bodily fast will be both useful and profitable.”
Our battered attentions spans and fried dopamine receptors need fixing. Let us use this material fast to improve our attentions spans for the sake of prayer; our ability to sit in silence so that God can speak to us; and the happiness this will bring us to remind us of the goodness of Him.
Asceticism is not an end in itself, and so ultimately there is no reason for it to be practised by an atheist except to lose weight or stop smoking. True asceticism is nothing without its true fruit: Closeness to Christ.
Corrie Young