I bet you 100 euros that you're reading this on your phone when you should be doing something else. Maybe you're at work, maybe you're on the toilet, maybe your kid is drawing on the wall in the corner of the room and you're too busy scrolling to notice. Don't worry, you're not alone. You're just another lab rat in the biggest experiment in human history. And spoiler alert: you're losing
Let's look in the mirror. Seriously. We have smartphones, smart watches, smart refrigerators, and soon we'll have smart bottle stoppers that tell us when we're thirsty. We live in an age of absolute abundance. Never before in human history have we had so much access to comfort, calories, and entertainment. And yet, if you look around us—or, let's be honest, inside our own heads—we're collectively as unhappy, anxious, and as fluid as a wasp in a glass of juice.
Why? Because, my dears, we are ordinary drug addicts. And I'm not talking about the ones hiding in parks. I'm talking about you, reading this on your screen while your other hand is reaching for something sweet or checking to see if someone liked your lunch picture.
Science has finally caught up with what common sense has been telling us for years, except we were too busy watching videos about popping pimples on the YouTube (yes, people actually do this, and they do it for hours on end) to get noticed. It's dopamine. It's that magic chemical that makes us feel good. The problem is that our brains are designed for a world of scarcity, not a world where a delivery guy brings you a pizza and a six-pack of beer to your couch while an algorithm serves you the exact news that proves you're right.
Imagine your brain as a seesaw. On one side is pleasure, on the other is pain. When you eat chocolate, watch TikTok, or buy something stupid that you don't need, you the swing tilts on the pleasure side. Great, right? No. Because the brain, those sneaky little accountants, wants balance. As soon as you lean towards pleasure, it sends little gremlins to the pain side to even things out.
And what happens when you keep pressing on comfort button? When you scroll to unconsciousness? When you drink coffee for coffee? When you “just one more episode” on Netflix? Those gremlins on the pain side multiply. They become a permanent crew. And suddenly you don’t need that cookie or that phone to feel good anymore. You just need it to keep you from feeling desperate. Congratulations, you just destroyed your inner engine. You’re driving a Ferrari that you’re pumping cviček into.
The funniest thing about all of this is that we think we'll solve the problem by making it more comfortable. "I'm stressed, I need a vacation." "I'm sad, I need a new game." Wrong. It's like putting out a fire with gasoline because it's liquid.
The solution lies in something modern man hates more than a dead phone battery: pain.
Yes, you read that right. If you want reset your brain, you need to stop pressing the comfort button. You have to embrace boredom. You have to go into cold water. You have to run up a hill until you think you're going to spit out your lungs. Why? Because when you subject your body to pain (physical exertion, cold, mental exertion without distractions), the brain sends dopamine to the other side of the swing, to "comfort" you. And this dopamine is the real one. The one that lasts. The one that doesn't leave you empty.
So, instead of looking for a miracle pill or waiting for a reform that will "arranged life", try something radical. For 30 days, put down your drug of choice. Whether it's sugar, Instagram, the news, or whining. For the first two weeks, you'll feel like someone's pulling your fingernails. These are those gremlins protesting. But after four weeks? After four weeks, you might find that a sunset is actually beautiful and that having coffee with a friend (without your phone on the table) actually makes you happy.
The world will not stop, if you don't see every post. But you might finally feel what it's like to have a swing standing upright again. Or, you know, stay on the couch and wait for the AI to cuddle you. Your choice. But don't say I didn't warn you.
