What is one thing which you cannot stop however hard you try?

I am not only speaking for myself but also for people around me as after observations and interactions have gathered enough intelligence to say that people can’t seem to stop chasing dopamine no matter how hard they try.

In my experience (which isn’t particularly wide ranging and needs more curating) I’d say chasing dopamine.

Be it cigarettes, marijuana, Netflix n chill, binging on snacks, sugary desserts, masturbation, porn, casual hook-ups, social media, reels, alcohol, fast drives or whatever quick pleasure that we can take. Apparently people now can’t go through their day without accessing dopamine of some kind.

Hello, I have a question about astral projection. I started to get interested in this a little while after my mum passed in april. I thought I may be able to see her and speak with her if I managed to achieve astral projection. Since this interest, every time i sleep on my back I go into sleep paralysis. However, I cant progress into astral projection because it is very scary for me as I feel like I'm suffocating when this happens. I panic and force myself to wake up. This only ever happened about once a year before this. It sometimes lasts a long time. This has happened about 3 times per week since my mum died, as mentioned on a previous post. I no longer try to go into it anymore(due to the suffocating feeling), but it still happens. I read that sleep paralysis is the pathway to astral projection. Why has this started to happen so frequently since simply taking an interest in it? Is this connected to the afterlife? I am concerned about it as I now cannot seem to stop this happening. Could it be my mum trying to communicate? Im asking due to more knowledge around this in this group.

Dopamine in simple words I’ll try to explain is a neurotransmitter that works by sending signals between the nerves of our brains. It makes us feel good, happy, excited and is essentially linked to the reward system part of our brain. It is released in our brain in the midst of activities that are pleasure-inducing to our senses.

The modern cultural shifts that we have experienced in the past 2 decades or so have definitely depleted our healthy dopamine levels and since there is so much easy access to everything and life has just become so instant, fast and convenient that in all aspects we are chasing various forms of cheap dopamine multiple times a day. It has also become a coping or escape mechanism of sorts to deal with things that throw us a little of our balance or things that we in general find difficult to deal with(some problem or the other does crop up every now and then).

TLDR: We have overworked our sensory system that processes the feelings of pleasure and reward and the quick short term dopamine is actually hacking our receptors and making us prone to feeling glum, depressed etc because our brains weren’t designed for such short term pleasures. I myself am guilty of such cheap dopamine fixes, from the moment I wake up to the time I go to bed in between I compulsively and unwittingly exploit my dopamine and reward system by seeking social media content, playing app store games, watching some quick reel, binging on some healthy snack and furthermore. It’s a huge waste of money and potential. It’s a circle from which escape doesn’t come easy. I hope for our sakes that sometime in future we get to see renaissances of some kind where we at minimum try to hold back ourselves from quick rewards, instant pleasure and practice the skill of delaying our gratification.

Blue Origin performs 12th crewed New Shepard suborbital flight - SpaceNews