A concept I liked from Universal Man‘s discussion of dopamine detox is that of Escape Loops and Productivity Loops. It goes thus…. Cortisol is the drug released by the body to create dissatisfaction. It is the stick to dopamine’s carrot, there in order to motivate behavioural change. So, something happens that’s against your interests and requires action…. you get a dose of cortisol.

Getting fat and looking like shit in front of the mirror? That’s your SMV going down, and the rising sense of unease you feel is caused by cortisol.

Been on the wrong end of a run of +1 texts from your daygame mates? That’s your social status going down [1] so you’re denied the pleasurable seratonin and instead blasted with a shot of cortisol.

Failed a job interview? Carpeted by the boss at work? Stuck in a traffic jam?

It’s all cortisol. Your body is reacting to a perceived change against its interests and attempting to prod you into restorative action. The problem is two-fold. First, your body is adapted to a different environment and is thus misreading cues. A traffic jam is not actually a threat to your survival and replication. We are no longer in the state of nature. Second, modern society has furnished us with a range of diversions that allow us to counter-act the cortisol spike without actually addressing its root cause. Universal Man calls them escape loops, and they are activities which drown out the cortisol with dopamine without solving the problem at hand.

Porn is the big one. There are many more: comfort eating, getting blotto drunk, chasing sub-par skirt, farming social media likes, binge-watching Netflix, video games etc. They are all quick-fixes of dopamine that will wash away the badfeelz of cortisol. They are escapism.

Badfeelz (cortisol) —> Escapism (dopamine) —-> Repeat

It gets worse.

On a single per-occurrence basis, there’s not much harm in engaging in a little escapism. You’re struggling on your Moscow euro-jaunt, your mate +1s the WhatsApp group, so you quietly have a wank and go to sleep. Not a problem [2]. But what if you keep doing it?

Here we get into another problem, that of Shadow Careers. It’s a term Universal Man picked up from Steven Pressman [3]. The modern world furnishes us with a smorgasbord [4] of options to progressively climb imaginary ladders to nowhere. Think of the meta-progression in the typical video game, such as levelling up your Assassins Creed character with new skills, or progressive unlocks in Call Of Duty and online rankings. Think of your followers ratio on Instagram, or your retweets. Think of any virtual credibility.

NONE OF IT MATTERS

Shadow careers provide the illusion you are progressing in your life goals while, simultaneously, your real life is going to shit. Thus it is an extended version of the Escape Loop: create a source of dopamine/seratonin/oxytocin to drown out the badfeelz of cortisol without actually removing the problem that is creating the cortisol.

You might as well buy a white van and drive around Eastern Europe opening mediocre birds [5]

 

What’s the solution? UM reckons you should replace escape loops with a productive activity. When you you feel the burn of cortisol, forgo the opportunity to engage in escapism and instead get something done.

Fuck all that. The most productive thing you can do is buy Daygame Overkill, a detailed in-field demonstration of how to pick up girls without harassing them and without shitting yourself because a few low-t soyboys do a Fake News show about daygame.

[1] As far as your monkey brain is concerned, anyway.
[2] If I was into this kind of mucky stuff, I’d have spent all of 2018/19 on Pornhub.
[3] In a book I haven’t read but mean to.
[4] Finally, I slipped that word into a blog post!
[5] Then take all your content offline in a panic.