Day 13: Dopamine, Dharma and Karma
From Addiction to Awakening
Today is my thirteenth day off Instagram, and it’s kind of shocking how much the withdrawal has paralleled the withdrawals from alcohol. I think it was around day fourteen when I quit drinking that I started to see the sunrise and smile again, and the same thing has happened with social media. Last night, for the first time in two weeks, I felt genuinely happy.
I knew very little about social media addiction and withdrawal before starting this process. Although I’ve taken breaks from social media in the past, I never fully confronted it, nor did I explore the science behind it. Like the alcohol industry, social media platforms rely on us to be addicted, so that they can make money off advertisements. We, the users, are the product. They want to sell things to us on the platforms. They rely on us being addicted, and this truth is hidden. Their algorithms are designed to keep us engaged, just like alcohol is engineered to keep us drinking, so we keep spending money on alcohol. (Substack is a bit different, because they make their money off of readers paying for a subscription. So if you want to keep substack ad free, consider becoming a paid subscriber of the Daily Dharma! :)
Over the past two weeks, I’ve experienced major dopamine withdrawals. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure, reward, and motivation, becomes overstimulated by behaviours like drinking, scrolling, or bingeing on junk food. When you remove these triggers, the brain struggles to regulate itself.
Here’s what dopamine withdrawal looked like for me:
Mental and Emotional Symptoms: Low motivation, depression, anxiety, feelings of boredom and dissatisfaction, brain fog.
Physical Symptoms: Restlessness, unease, and general discomfort.
Behavioural Symptoms: Cravings for social media and difficulty finding joy in activities I used to love.
Because I’ve been through this type of withdrawal before with alcohol, I knew it was temporary. My brain was healing. I turned to practices that boost natural dopamine production—exercise, yoga, meditation, spending time in nature, and connecting with people. I also engaged in “low-dopamine” activities, like reading and journaling. I got support through my teachers, coaches, and our social media detox community.
Last night, I finally felt joy again. I slept better last night than I have in two weeks, and today I felt ready to tackle new challenges.
Yesterday I did three meditations, went to a kirtan, and I spoke on the phone to a friend and long-time member of the Mindful Life Practice who is amazing. She helped me reframe my experience. She reminded me that it makes sense I’d feel attached to social media—it’s been my main vehicle for building our community over the past five years. She encouraged me to give myself grace.
For the last few weeks, the idea of getting back on Instagram literally made my stomach flip. Last night, I started to feel a bit more neutral about it, and thought, “Maybe someone could do a post for me, like once a month…” Instagram and Facebook has not been all evil in my life - it is what has helped me establish my online business. But I also have to recognize that it was my addictive behaviours with it that built that. It is my dharma, my life purpose, to be building The Mindful Life Practice, but it is no longer in service to me or others to be doing that via spending hours on end on these social media apps, scrolling, liking, commenting. My awareness around that is solidifying. Rolf said to me last week, “there is freedom in letting go” and I’m feeling that massively. I don’t want to return to the dopamine-fueled trigger-reward cycle of Facebook and Instagram . It was destructive to my well-being, and breaking free the last two weeks was hard. However, I still want to grow our community. I trust that if I focus on serving those already here—rather than chasing growth through algorithms—our community will grow naturally. (And it already is growing naturally. In the last 13 days I’ve had people sign up for the online Sutra Study, the United Arab Emirates Retreat, and the July Yoga Teacher Training). I am seeing that when I let go of the constant pull of external validation, I return to a place of clarity and inner calm. “Your dharma requires you to get out of your own way.” - Sahara Rose
There are so many things I wish I’d been doing for the last few years instead of spending hours on Instagram. One of them is playing the harmonium. I believe this is part of my dharma (purpose). This week, I ordered one from India, and tomorrow, I’ll drive to Tanah Lot, the other side of the island, for my first lesson with an incredible Indonesian teacher. By the end of the year, I hope to regularly host kirtans, immersing myself in the devotional practice of Bhakti yoga. The Bhagavad Gita beautifully highlights the power of devotion: “Whatever you do, make it an offering to me… this will free you from the bondage of karma.” Through chanting and surrender, I’m learning to connect more deeply with myself and others.
Another thing I wish I’d been doing is learning Balinese and Bahasa Language. After living on Bali for the last three years, my lack of fluency feels like a barrier to truly connecting with the people around me. Today, I took my first Balinese lesson, and I’m excited to build deeper relationships with the people around me.
We met at a cafe for the lesson, and when I got up to leave, I decided to actually stay and work in the same cafe for the rest of the afternoon. I sat back down, and James Bay’s song “Let it Go” was playing in the background (Here’s the link if you don’t know it). The coincidence of this moment was shocking to me. That song was released just before I moved to Kuwait in 2015, and I listened to it every day on the bus as I drove to work. Whenever I hear that song, I literally picture myself sitting on that bus at 5am, so sad, watching the dust and camels and sunrise go by me. I am transported back to that tremendously painful period in my life. The song lyrics are:
So come on, let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me?
Everything that's broke
Leave it to the breeze
Let the ashes fall
Forget about me
Come on, let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me?
And I'll be me
My days have been full of thoughts about my ex husband lately. (I call him my ex husband to differentiate him from all my other exes. But I don’t think he would refer to me as his ex wife. I think he would refer to me as a girl he married, once. For a long time, I called him the guy I married, but that just became too much of a mouthful for all my writing).
Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent the last eight years trying to process and heal from this. I think it’s over and then a new layer reveals itself. And that’s what’s happening now.
I wish I’d read the book he wrote before I published mine, Sober Yoga Girl. I have never spoken to him in all these years. The last time we ever talked was when he walked out the door that morning in June of 2017. So reading his book was like speaking to him for the first time, beyond a one-line email. I wonder if he felt that way too, when he read my book last year. Until this weekend, I’d never heard his side of the story (though I’ve imagined what it could be a lot.)
Whilst there’s a lot of truth in my story, Sober Yoga Girl, there’s also moments where I am beginning to recognize that I am not taking complete ownership for what I did and how I harmed him. I think I’ve told myself a story where I am less of a villain in order to make myself feel better. I think part of my social media addiction was just keeping my mind busy, to distract me from that truth. When getting offline, my mind grew quiet, and I started to come to terms with that.
The book he sent me has huge chunks of time missing from it (the entire time from when we decided to get married to when we decided to divorce.) When I first read it on Saturday morning, I just thought he’d chosen to skip that chunk of time. As the last 48 hours has progressed since I read it, I’ve started to realize that there is no way he skipped that time. I’m starting to wonder if maybe he deleted that part of the book, because he didn’t want me to read it. If that’s true, that shows what a big heart he has, because he doesn’t want to cause me further harm. From the parts of the story that are included in the book though, I got a real eye opening perspective on how I treated him from his perspective. I thought to myself, “from his perspective, it sounds like he dated a narcissist.” As I’ve sat with it more and more I think to myself - maybe I was behaving like a narcissist. (That doesn’t mean that I’m saying I am a narcissist, just that I behaved with those character traits). It’s true that I didn’t really demonstrate that I cared about him and his emotions. While acknowledging this truth I also hold compassion for myself. I’m aware that I was traumatized, and so unwell, and just in survival mode. I was dissociated from the moment so it was pretty hard to be a present and compassionate partner. But that is just the circumstances surrounding what happened, and doesn’t excuse the fact that he’s right. I was a terrible partner to him. I think I’ve acknowledged this a few times in different things I’ve written over the years, but I couldn’t help think about one particular old post I wrote almost five years ago:
September 2020
The hotel Im staying at is alcohol free. This is not unusual in the UAE, as lots of people in this part of the world don’t drink. I find myself being reminded of a time five years ago, when I was living in Kuwait (where alcohol was illegal) and came for a weekend trip with my ex to the UAE. We booked a hotel in the emirate of Sharjah, and after a long journey of delayed flights and traffic, finally made it to our hotel around 10pm. We went down to dinner and tried to order a beer.
The server laughed at us. He told us alcohol was illegal in Sharjah, didn’t we know? No...we didn’t, or we wouldn’t have stayed there! 🤣 I was so annoyed at my ex. He’d booked the hotel for us. How could he make this mistake? I moped around like the weekend was ruined because I couldn’t have a beer with dinner. We moved hotels to Dubai in the morning upon my insistence.
Looking back now I’m like “How did that guy even tolerate dating me for as long as he did? And why did he want to marry me? I was the worst!” 🤣
Yes, I was really annoying and difficult and dramatic and self centered. I’m sure he wanted to be in a hotel with alcohol too, but we really didn’t have to waste all his hotel points and move to another hotel - we could have just driven to Dubai to drink. The fact that I felt like I couldn’t tolerate being there without being drunk says alot, too, I think.
The Yoga Sutras teaches the law of Karma, which is widely misunderstood in the western world. One of the best books I’ve ever read about this is Sadhguru’s Karma. The very basics to understand is that through our lifetime, we accrue Karma. This Karma is positive and negative based on our actions. When we repeatedly perform the same actions, we create Samskaras, which is essentially imprints on our mind to keep doing the same thing over and over again. These Samskaras form vasanas, or deep grooves in our brain, to keep doing the same thing.
In December, I said that I made some choices that weren’t in alignment with my values, and what really happened was I was jumping from man to man, from short term relationship to the next one, and basically re-traumatizing myself over and over again from exposing myself to people that may not have been acting from a place of integrity. I said to some of my friends, “I feel like I was in active addiction.” And now I know that I was. I was addicted to the dopamine hits from social media and using that, plus constantly working retreats, and trainings, and teaching classes, and leading online programs, to keep my brain overloaded and busy. What has happened since December, is that I have had a HUGE chunk of time when I am not busy, for the first time in years. Combine that with the fact that I’m off social media, and “the sand has settled, and the water has cleared” so to speak. I’ve been forced to sit in the present. And accept some of the things I’ve done, and some of the negative karma I’ve accrued in this lifetime.
I expressed all of this today to Fran, my personal trainer, and he asked me, “When you take ownership for all of this that happened with your ex, do you see yourself in these stories? Or is it an older version of you that you don’t even recognize anymore?” I told him, yes, I still see myself in these stories. There are things I did since I got sober, especially in the launching and first year or so of the Mindful Life Practice, that I feel are self-centred and narcissistic. I justified my choices and my behaviour for various reasons and excuses - aka I told myself a story about it to make myself feel better - but I know that I caused harm. I have to take responsibility for that. There are people I need to make amends to.
But the thing about all of this is that while I move through this process, I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t need to get stuck in the negativity of the truth and think it makes me a bad person. That is not going to serve and benefit the world. Taking ownership and apologizing is one way to start to heal. And then, I just think about the karma I want to put into the world today to pay it forward.
For example, I wrote yesterday about the really cruel google review I got for a yoga class. Today, I thought to myself - I can’t change that review. I can’t change what I did in that class. Maybe I was talking about myself a lot. Maybe the music was loud. The serenity prayer asks us:
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference".
I can’t change that review. But what can I do to put more positive karma into the world?
I attended a yoga teacher’s class today and I remembered that ten years ago, when I first started teaching yoga, a senior teacher at the studio I worked for came to my class and took the time to write a note about how much she loved my class to me. It made my day, and ten years later, I still remember the contents of that note she wrote and the fact that she took the time to write it. I decided that I’m going to take an active role in putting more positive karma into the world by sending a message to that yoga teacher of the class I took today, telling her not just that I loved it, but the specific things I loved about it (which is the truth - it was awesome). And instead of fostering resentment towards the woman who gave me the negative review, in my Metta meditation I’ll keep bringing the woman with the negative review into my thoughts and thinking loving thoughts towards her. And that’s how I’ll try to resolve this karma.
Last night I hosted a live Zoom meeting with my community. We run that Sober Soul Sunday every single weekend, and it’s the most consistent I’ve ever been about something in my life. I think I’ve run it for about five years, since 2020. You can sign up for a membership for our community here.
Detoxing off social media has reinforced how important the work we do in the Mindful Life Practice is. Community is at the heart of yoga—the Buddha taught about the importance of Sangha (community) as one of the three jewels on the path to liberation. Together, we create spaces where no one feels alone, whether they’re navigating sobriety, a social media detox, or life’s other challenges.
Here are the upcoming retreats I’m so excited to share with our community, and I want you there.
United Arab Emirates: February 18 - 23 or 21 - 23, 2025 Letting Go Retreat
India: March 9 - 19, 2025 (one room left!) This is a Sober Women’s Adventure around India.
Arizona: May 16 - 18, 2025 Sober in The City Event
Bali: May 25 - 31, 2025. A vedic meditation & yoga retreat coled by my friend Rory Kinsella and I.
Bali 200-Hour Teacher Training: July 7 - 27, 2025
Bali 300-Hour Advanced Teacher Training: September 1 - 18, 2025
If any of these resonate with you, I’d love for you to join us.
The last thing I’ll share is that in December, I had the beautiful opportunity to have dinner in Nosara with Deva Primal and Miten, and my teacher Tommy said to Miten, “Play Alexandra Second Chance. She needs to hear this song.” Here are the lyrics:
Here comes your second chance
You'd better believe it
Open up and receive it
Here comes your second chance
Take a deep breath
This is your second chance
My friend Becki said to me last week, when I was complaining about someone who I’d labelled as a narcissist in my life, “would it help you to see yourself in them a little bit? And then you’d take it all less personally?” I snapped at her and said, “I don’t take it personally. I’ve seen him do this to so many people. It’s not personal.” I think last week I just wasn’t ready to see the situation that way. I’m starting to see myself in so many of these people from my life that I’ve labelled as “narcissists.” While it’s helpful for me to identify this behaviour in order to distance myself from it, the truth is that there’s a part of me in them. And if I want other people to forgive me, then I have to forgive others.
Today I have lots of songs to share - but just one more! Shane Koyczan writes in How to be a Person,
Forgive. Realize that some people are still learning. If forgiveness is not possible, then think of everything you have ever wanted to be forgiven for, but weren’t. Hold that uneasiness in your mind until you feel absolution becoming a wish. Realize you can grant this wish for others. If you are waiting for forgiveness, then be prepared to wait. Be prepared to stand in the path of time and wither. Respect that forgiveness is difficult, not all trespassers are equal, and not everyone will heal according to your schedule.
In service and gratitude,
Alexandra
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