You’re Not Tired—You’re Just Addicted to Dopamine

(And Other Thoughts I Had Instead of Sleeping)

I keep telling myself I’m just not tired yet, which is funny, because my body feels like it’s been through five rounds of psychological dodgeball, and my eyes are dry in that way that means they’ve given up on blinking. But my brain? My brain is doing cartwheels in a burning library.

I’ve opened and closed Instagram five times in the past thirty minutes. Watched a series of K-pop videos on YouTube, landing on UNIS, a group of 14 to 23-year-olds singing about dopamine. “You’re not tired, you’re addicted to dopamine,” explains 14-year-old Seowon as the other X members dance in ever-shifting patterns and make aegyo faces.

(Wait. I’m not even sure if she sang it or if my brain hallucinated it. At this point, YouTube and Twitter are one long fever dream.)

And goddamn if that didn’t hit a little too clean anyway.

Because the truth is, I don’t even want to be awake right now.
My body is staging a full revolt.

But the thought of actually shutting down? Of lying there in the dark with nothing but my thoughts for company, like some kind of medieval torture? That—that feels harder than exhaustion.

Rest feels like punishment.
Rest means my brain gets to ask annoying questions like “So, how's that whole 'having your life together' thing going?”

And honestly? I'd rather scroll myself into a coma than deal with that conversation.

---

You know what’s messed up? Dopamine isn’t even the “pleasure” chemical. It’s the anticipation chemical. It doesn’t reward you for getting what you want—it dangles the idea that you might. It’s a slot machine with better UX.

And if you have ADHD (hi, yes, this is my confessional booth now), your brain doesn’t regulate dopamine the way neurotypical ones do. Which means you’re not just chasing novelty for fun—you’re doing it because your baseline motivation is basically running on fumes unless you add chaos to it. So you scroll. You snack. You switch tabs 47 times in a row. Not because it feels good, but because it feels like something.

Rest, on the other hand? Rest is boring. Rest has no bells. No push notifications. No instant feedback loops. It doesn’t even make a sound when you complete it. And when your nervous system is used to being lit up like the last day of Burning Man, silence feels like death.

---

When I still lived in Miami, my ex-boyfriend used to mix me this DIY bedtime cocktail—NyQuil, edibles, and whatever sleepytime supplements we had lying around. A ritual designed not just to knock me out, but to convince my body that it was safe to rest. Eight hours of sleep. That was the goal. He had good intentions. And when I still had a normal-ish job, sometimes it worked.

He was a fixer. And if he was the fixer, that made me the broken thing. A project. A problem to solve with pills and tinctures and gentle nudges like, “Maybe you just need to go to bed earlier.”

(I did need to go to bed earlier. That wasn’t the point.)

No shade—he meant well. We both did. But here's what they don't tell you about those fixer-fixee dynamics: the dysfunction doesn't just disappear when you remove the fixer. It just sits there, patient as a therapist, waiting for the right conditions to flourish like mold in a damp basement.

And the perfect conditions, it turns out, are: a nationwide Vyvanse shortage, zero health insurance, and a welcome-home parade of unresolved issues waiting patiently in a Bay Area condo—arms wide open like, remember us?

Untrained puppies don't become well-behaved dogs when you remove the leash. They just become feral.
And in my case?

Yeah, we went full feral pretty quick.

---

What I’m doing now isn’t healthier. Let’s be clear.

I didn't replace the pharmaceutical sleep cocktails with, like, a balanced circadian rhythm and chamomile tea. I just stopped pretending I had a bedtime. Now I’m basically a vampire, but instead of blood, I live on TikTok and the vague hope that the next scroll will finally scratch whatever neurological itch I’ve got going.

There’s no fixer now. Just me, careening through the internet like a shopping cart with one busted wheel, collecting dopamine hits like they’re Pokémon cards.

And maybe the worst part?
I know it’s not working.
I just don’t know what would.

It's chaos, but it's personalized chaos, curated just for me by an algorithm that knows me better than I know myself.

And it works—barely. Because right now, I don’t have a job that requires me to clock in at 9 a.m. sharp. I don’t have morning meetings. I don’t have to pass for functional in front of coworkers. But I know, deep in my overstimulated soul, that the second I land something more permanent—some full-time job, some new life structure—this system will turn on me. Hard.

Because this isn’t rest.
This is avoidance with better graphics.
And when the real world comes knocking again, I'll have to deal with a nervous system I've been ignoring—one that thinks silence is the enemy and boredom is basically death.

⸻

I used to think rest was something you earned—like PTO or forgiveness.

Then I thought it was something you had to hack, with melatonin gummies and blackout curtains and enough self-help podcasts to lull a small cult to sleep.

Now I think maybe I never learned how to rest at all.

I learned how to pause (badly).
I learned how to distract (expertly).
I learned how to chemically sedate myself (with varying degrees of success).

But actual rest? That’s something else entirely.

The kind that doesn't come with guilt or withdrawal symptoms or the nagging feeling that you're wasting time. That's still a foreign language, and apparently, I skipped all the classes.

And maybe that’s the work now.
Not fixing it.

Just listening long enough to notice what silence sounds like.

Even when it makes me flinch.