The marshmallow experiment, experiment
The marshmallow experiment experiment goes like this. If you’re reading a self-help book and the author starts explaining any one of the following:
The kids eating marshmallows experiment
The Stanford Prison experiment
The Milgram shock experiment
The Pavlov and his dogs experiment
If simply seeing the name of the experiment mentioned in the book causes you to exclaim a loud sigh, angrily close the book and say, “oh for the love of god…”, you have officially read too many self-help books.
I was able to ‘pass’ the marshmallow experiment experiment a solid 10-15 years ago, yet from time to time I still manage to convince myself to read a new one. This time, it was Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, which yes, did refresh my memory on two of the four listed above (marshmallow and Pavlov).
I decided to read it because dopamine has been on my mind (but not in my brain) lately. I have officially been off of pot for over 100 days. I’ve been writing on this blog about retreating from a lot of media consumption. I’m walking around more. I am trying to find more joy in simple things.
The thing this book reminded me of that I thank it for is the relationship between pleasure and pain. Being off pot specifically means I’m not flooding my brain with feel-good chemicals throughout the day. But, pleasure and pain are two ends of a see-saw. Not in a metaphorical way, this is true in a fairly literal way. When your body experiences one of the two, it also produces the other to bring you into balance. Flooding my brain every day with pleasurable pot naturally produces pain to bring me into balance. Pain in the form of depression, anxiety, anhedonia, lower energy and so forth.
I feel like the beginning of this year has been about returning to neutral. It has been about getting used to the see-saw sitting still with no weight on either end. I’ve honestly been doing a lot of nothing. It’s been beneficial, but, you can do one better than sitting in neutral. You can put weight on the pain end of the see-saw, using your knowledge that pleasure follows.
Since quitting pot, I have been sitting in neutral. I haven’t been speedrunning (pain) or doing game development (pain). As revolutionary an experience as getting back into neutral has been - for being neutral implies being free of addictions and compulsions to constantly weigh down the ‘pleasure’ end of my see-saw - I can see the light at the end of the pain tunnel. Right now is the first time since I was probably ~16 years old that I have not had at least one non-caffeine addiction. I’ve been off pot for over 100 days, and today’s date is even 4/20. There’s something in the air telling me that my accomplishment of getting back into neutral is over, and a new beginning is ready to start.
free solo
I recently watched the 2018 documentary Free Solo. It chronicles the climber Alex Honnold’s attempt to climb the 3,000 foot (915m) rock El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park. “Free Solo” refers to the protections in place while he climbs, namely, that there aren’t any. He climbs the rock formation with no ropes, nets, or protective gear. This sets up a simple scenario: either he successfully completes the four-hour climb to the top, or he falls off and dies. I think it’s fair to say he’s a little insane.
No one in my life has ever accused me of being an adrenaline junky. I hate amusement parks and will staunchly refuse to go on ANY rides - kids rides included - if I am forced to go to one. At first glance, I assumed I would have nothing in common with this climber. After watching the movie and digging into his preparation and strategies, I noticed that there are a lot of similarities to his climbing project and my own speedrunning…risk of death aside.
The general structure of the project mirrors a speedrunning project. Let’s start with where the project ends. The goal is to get one successful ascent of the rock. Whether you spend days or months or years preparing, the goal is just one ascent. In the end, you will have footage of that one ascent as the proof. For all of the hundreds of hours I have spent speedrunning over many months, this playlist of personal best times is essentially that record that remains. Its entirety is under 4 hours long.
If all you watch is the proof - the video of the culmination of all the hard work and preparation - it seems impossible. Of course, hidden from view is how meticulously this project is planned. The climber, Alex, knows every single movement throughout his four hour climb.
Similar to a speedrun, first, a route is picked. That route is often something that predates you. The climbers / speedrunners who came before you have already explored the different ways this could be done. Each route eventually starts going by its own name.
In climbing, the macro route is then broken down into ‘pitches’ - smaller segments of the climb. In time, each pitch, too, will have its own name. At times, you see Alex writing in his climbing notebook. Here, he describes the micro-movements within each pitch - things too granular to have standalone, recognizable names. “Grab the rock that looks kind of like a loaf of bread and feels grainy, and then switch hands.” Every body movement examined. This is what my speedrunning notebook looks like. In time, every single button press and its eventual, corresponding release will be explicitly thought about. Different options will be tested. Eventually, one specific execution gets settled on.
At one point during the documentary, Alex decides he is ready for the final climb. He starts up the mountain with no protective gear, but a bit into the climb, reverses course and decides that today isn’t the day after all. He aborts the climb.
Back on the ground, Alex meets with a mentor he has. Alex is in his mid 30’s when the documentary is filmed, and he meets with someone in his late 50s who has done a lot of free soloing of his own over the years. I can’t remember the mentor’s name, probably in part because I immediately started referring to him as “Haymitch” in my head. Haymitch is the default mentor of Katniss in The Hunger Games, default because he is the only other person from Katniss’s sector who ever survived the Hunger Games. In the same vein, this climbing mentor seems to be one of the only people with comparable free solo experience to Alex who is actually still alive.
“Good for you. You made the perfect decision” the mentor assures Alex. He responds, “I know but, now it all has to drag on longer. I just need it to end.” I identified with this part a lot. If you are speedrunning with a challenging goal, you’re putting in a ton of work in pursuit of the one run. Until you get that run, depending on your personal mental framing, it can be as if you haven’t done anything yet. It has all just been preparing. Everything you have memorized needs to stay memorized. All of the feel you have developed that you know only came with hundreds of hours of practice, needs to stay rehearsed and warm. All of the people rooting for you to succeed are still nervously waiting to see if you’ll succeed. You imagine the relief that would come if tomorrow you could wake up and just let all of these things start fading into your past. At the same time, you’ve put in way, way too much work to walk away now.
If you have an ambitious goal, this is the way it has to be. The fact that you’re pushed to the point where you’re daydreaming about being done is a sign the goal is ambitious. I can’t help but remember the sense of relief that would wash over me when I finally met a speedrunning goal, and knew the current project had finally ended.
Eventually, Alex meets his goal. He free solo’s El Capitan. The footage of it is breathtaking. In consuming some other content about Alex after watching the movie, after meeting his goal, he spent a bunch of time feeling lost. Eventually he did what I always do after meeting a massive speedrunning goal - he picked another mountain to climb. As it always has, life goes on. Whether you choose to make more meaning of it is still up to you, regardless of what your resume looks like.
In the end, I don’t really know that I’d recommend that anyone read that book about dopamine. It wasn’t that great. But, at the same time, a few nuggets from it do feel like they will have a lasting impact on the rest of this year for me. I’d say the same of Free Solo. I don’t really consider it a must watch. I don’t even necessarily find it that inspirational; the way Alex callously and unambiguously treats his wife as secondary to his climbing is off-putting and sad, but you also can’t help but feel that perhaps it’s mandatory to achieve what he has been able to achieve. It’s not a life I envy. All the same, I do think a few nuggets from it will stick with me as I strive to start getting myself out of neutral more often.
May the see-saw be ever in your favor.
