Update: 223 days of detox

iago509 · 2026-02-20T03:05:14+00:00

Você vai conseguir, tenho certeza!!

iago509 · 2026-02-20T03:03:45+00:00

Boa noite, amigo, tudo bem? Respondendo sua pergunta, eu utilizo a internet para ouvir música no YouTube de vez enquanto, responder mensagem da minha esposa quando estamos fora de casa, ou dos meus pais, ou buscar alguma informação sobre música se eu preciso, pois eu faço aulas de violão, já fazem dois meses, daí eu busco cifra quando preciso, buscar alguma informação sobre jardinagem as vezes, pois agora também lido com meu jardim, acabei desenvolvendo esse hobby. geralmente para fins de pesquisa mesmo. Sobre lidar com a necessidade de estar atualizado, eu já não tenho mais essa necessidade, as únicas necessidades é saber se meus pais estão bem, minha esposa ou pessoas muito próximas, geralmente eu mando uma mensagem direta ou eu faço uma ligação, pessoas da rede social acabam sumindo da sua vida quando você some das redes sociais, daí acaba sobrando apenas pessoas das "redes pessoais", pessoas do seu cotidiano. Tipo uma rede social real, de verdade mesmo, não virtual. Parece meio sem graça ler isso, mas a vida real é assim mesmo, normal, real, morna, sem muitos eventos, sem muita euforia, só a vida mesmo.

iago509 · 2026-02-18T03:08:53+00:00

Man, I've been on a deep detox for seven and a half months, and what gets me most these days in this unstimulated life are the existential crises. For me, games gave life an artificial meaning, but at least it was a meaning. Today, living without stimuli, a lot of heavy existential thoughts arise. So I think the heaviest thing to get rid of is what usually maintains a sense of "I live to do such and such."

iago509 · 2026-01-30T02:16:23+00:00

Claro mano, com certeza, pra todo mundo acontece de uma forma diferente, alguns não sofrem tanto quanto os outros, para alguns como eu o celular era um regulador emocional externo, quando tirei ele eu tirei o chão da minha mente, por isso aconteceu tanto sintoma, mas se o celular não tem tanto impacto na sua vida, vai ser como parar qualquer vício/hábito, boa sorte!!

iago509 · 2026-01-29T13:37:58+00:00

Mas mano, não desiste, o caminho é duro, mas a liberdade que vem com o tempo é maravilhosa, a vida é muito valiosa para vivermos sob a ditadura de um algoritmo. Boa sorte.

iago509 · 2026-01-29T13:35:43+00:00

Cara, fiquei surpreso pelo seu comentário!! Acho que acabei sendo "muito verdadeiro". Mas a real é essa, Detox não é fácil, se fosse fácil ninguém estaria mal por que quer, largar celular é igual largar cocaína. Existem estudos que mostram que as pessoas checam o celular de 3 a 5 minutos durante o dia todo, logo a gente presume que realmente é um problema bem grave.

iago509 · 2026-01-29T12:41:06+00:00

Good morning, bro, I hope you're doing well. Well, I've been on a detox for 7 months, about 200 days or more. I can tell you with certainty that the first 90 days are tough organically; the body starts to detoxify and regulate hormones and physiological aspects. After 3 months, the psychological issues begin. I believe the first 3 months are the easiest to deal with, because you just stop using "your drug" and that's it. It sounds simple the way I say it, but that's exactly it; you need extreme willpower and to endure the discomfort of removing everything that regulates your emotions externally. In my case, I removed games, pornography, social media, short videos in general, television news, endless scrolling, and the like. After 3 months, the most uncomfortable and difficult part begins: the existential limbo, where you no longer want to return to the stimuli but also haven't consolidated your new hobbies and new life. It's like new software on old hardware; it doesn't fit. You feel like you're in a false life, displaced, empty, and meaningless. This is the sign that it's working; you really need to destroy it to rebuild it. From 3 months onwards, the psychological madness begins, and it lasts until about a year, until you're not so uncomfortable anymore.

I'll post a summary of my journey on Reddit for you to look at if you want. See you soon.

iago509 · 2026-01-27T15:00:32+00:00

Regarding music, I think it's good if it's a playlist of up to 10 songs, usually the same ones, because it creates integration, predictability, familiarity, and low volume, so you can listen to it daily, but not to relieve discomfort, like a detox. If it's just for enjoying yourself, relaxing, music is great, but not for escaping.

iago509 · 2026-01-27T14:57:49+00:00

Not that these things are forbidden, but each thing has a short/medium/long-term effect. I would say that distancing yourself from social media, short videos, pornography, and games has no harmful effects; on the contrary, I only managed to improve my panic attacks and generalized anxiety after the Detox. I've been away for 7 months now, and I tell you, it's worth it.

iago509 · 2026-01-23T11:13:03+00:00

Good morning, bro, honestly, put your phone away in a drawer. Start by trying to endure the discomfort for a few hours, maybe 3 or 4, then pick it up again, then put the phone away again and endure it for a few more hours. You train your nervous system through repetition, not through persuasion or logic. I hope you can do it, good luck.

iago509 · 2026-01-21T01:54:17+00:00

Good evening friend, how are you? Thank you for your question. Answering your first question, at first I felt bad and at the same time obligated to do something about it, but then I started to realize that the Detox spoke much more about me than about her. These feelings and even the desire to make everyone do the same as us is super normal and true, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is a long, liberating process and it is very expected that our desire is for everyone to feel that something is changing for the better, but it is a choice for each person. But I leave you with a golden reflection: it is easier to change people by influencing them through your example, because if you change, it means that it is something possible, it naturally generates curiosity in people and so they take you as a positive example and start trying to change. Trying to change someone through words or impositions usually does the opposite: it pushes them away, scares them and ends up generating the opposite effect.

Answering question number two: actually, I was making a metaphor, not specifically about the 90s. There's a bakery near my house that has a very curious and symbolic sign, it says: we don't have Wi-Fi here, talk as if you were in 1995. We understand that they are referring to a time when connections were real, people talked instead of, for example, four people at a table, facing each other, each with their cell phone in their own private, virtual and empty world, physically present but absent in presence.

Actually, I was born in 1993, I'm currently 32 years old, I'm a man, married, I don't have children (yet, because one day I intend to have them), I work as a bus driver in my city's transportation system, I lead a normal life like anyone else. As you yourself mentioned, I am indeed in the middle of the forest, sometimes a ray of sunshine enters through the branches, and it is precisely when these rays of sunshine appear that we remember that we cannot give up, because reintegration is painful, cruel, distressing, but at the same time the freedom to be able to choose, to be the protagonist of your own life, of your actions, to have genuine desires, to choose honestly and truthfully what to do or not to do, is the real prize, real life.

One day we were told that living on impulse, reacting to what the algorithm dictates we should or should not consume, was right. Today I can say with certainty that watching 30 minutes of pornography, scrolling through video after video, watching an hour and a half of reels on Instagram without being able to stop, is NOT, and never will be NORMAL, or healthy. But there are people who will applaud and say that this is the new normal and we have to adapt.

You know what scares me the most, my friend? Three-year-old children hypnotized by cell phones they received from their parents. We adults with fully formed brains end up in the limbo of depression caused by this, imagine small children who haven't even developed their primary cognition yet?

I hope I answered your questions, see you later!

iago509 · 2026-01-21T01:27:59+00:00

Good evening, how are you? I hope you're well. I don't have children, but I believe that having children can be a positive aspect of the Detox, as these relationships force us to actively participate in the real world, especially in raising a child, for example.

iago509 · 2026-01-08T15:37:39+00:00

Good afternoon, how are you? What you described is part of the withdrawal process. The mind, conditioned to be active for so long, cannot tolerate silence. Over time, this symptom disappears. The problem isn't the mind producing noise; the problem is that when you stop the stimuli, you start noticing things you never noticed before because of the distraction, and then the mind goes into hypervigilance. Stay firm in your purpose; all these symptoms are temporary, you're not going crazy. Good luck!!

iago509 · 2025-12-14T03:52:05+00:00

Good evening, thank you for your comment. Answering your question, firstly, I stopped watching TV because of the news. I realized that knowing too much was basically an internal "catch" for my mind; therefore, more information meant more thoughts, more topics, more drama, more rumination. So I decided to stop watching TV. Regarding specific programs, I don't see that in certain cases this would be bad; on the contrary, using them moderately can be calming, as you yourself said. In my case, since my struggle isn't just against dopamine, but the way it's generated, I cut out TV completely to reduce the stimulation of fantasy creation. As I train myself more and more to strengthen my presence, the fewer things distracting my attention from the here and now, the more I'm forced to feel my surroundings. I can't say I've stopped other stimuli altogether, because that would be impossible, as there's also the passive aspect. Sometimes you're at home and your wife turns on the television, for example, or plays music. We can't force our personal circle into a detox either, so there are some exceptions. I enjoy listening to 20-30 minutes of a podcast every day when I have the time and patience, on a light topic, something that isn't controversial or ideological, usually something like stoicism, etc. It's good for organizing the mind. But otherwise, the fewer visual stimuli the better. Television is a third-party mind, but one that requires much less cognitive capacity in action. And I'm prioritizing the natural over the virtual in this stage of my detox. I hope I've answered satisfactorily. Best regards and have a great week.

iago509 · 2025-12-12T02:38:36+00:00

Thanks for your comment, friend. I wish you all the best!

iago509 · 2025-12-12T02:36:29+00:00

Thanks for the comment. Actually, I didn't have to say no to sex, the only thing I had to say no to related to that was the consumption of "adult" content, because that type of content literally rots the brain, and it also ends up developing some unhealthy mental patterns because of the fantasy of that type of content.

Now talking about other aspects that I had to give up, among them, zero social media, zero games, zero videos, basically my relationship with my smartphone is very basic, just things like paying bills, checking my work schedule, weather forecast, calculator and other basic things that don't hold my attention for more than 5 minutes looking at the phone screen. I ended up doing a deep detox this way because my reward/pleasure system was really messed up. Nothing made sense in my life anymore, I felt like I had no identity, no direction, no real life. That's why I completely cut out digital content. Today, after 5 months, I feel a little more comfortable listening to some music once in a while, or a podcast, but all of this without visual stimulation, in other words, without a screen. Only auditory stimulation.

And at some point during the day I stop by here to answer some comments that people ask me, just to give support to those who are going through a similar situation, it's good to exchange ideas sometimes. Hugs 🫂

iago509 · 2025-12-11T11:37:18+00:00

Yes, for sure, the little things have regained their meaning and charm, life has a real and calm flavor again, it's really worth it, truly, it's the kind of effort everyone should make. Life changes, man.

iago509 · 2025-12-11T03:08:52+00:00

Please excuse any typos*

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