The Doom Loop

All right, so the doom loop.

What on earth is the doom loop? The doom loop is a little bit of a catch-22 type of circuit, as it were.

And a catch-22 being something you're doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.

A doom loop in many ways.

Catch-22, just an aside, is one of the greatest books ever written, by the way.

Joseph Hellyer.

If you want something that is, I think, genius in every page, catch-22, I think.

arguably is is the greatest book satirical dark humor loosely around the second world war it's just a beautiful story and that's where catch 22 comes from it comes from that book the saying and the saying in that book was very much that the uh the the the hero or the anti-hero in the story wants to try and get out of um flying a plane a bomber because he just knows that it's madness in a moment he's definitely going to get shot down so he concocts a plan to get out of his flying raids because he's done lots of these raids and that is to say that he's mad because if you say you're mad then you don't have to fly a plane clearly right you're not fit to fly a plane so he concocts this wonderful idea but then one of the doctors he's working with says oh yeah but there's a problem with your plan this is the catch-22 if you say you're mad only a sane person would say they were mad in order to get out of The flying, because only a mad person would want to fly.

Therefore, you're sane.

You have to keep flying.

The catch-22.

So basically, you can't get out of it.

Whatever you say, you're doomed.

You've got to keep flying.

So that reminds me a bit of the doom loop.

It's like a catch-22, right? So the catch-22 doom loop, you might see things like...

caffeine oh my god he's going after caffeine he's going after coffee this could get dangerous but it's the same sort of thing right we drink caffeine to feel a bit more awake but what we know is caffeine often disrupts our sleep for example right so we can't get to sleep therefore we wake up tired because caffeine's disrupted our sleep so we drink caffeine to feel a bit more awake bit of a doom loop doom scrolling right you've heard of that same thing doom loop right how many people get stuck in their phones through that sense of boredom and lack of fulfillment and while scrolling through those phones they are actually creating more boredom and less fulfillment in their life And the only thing then that seems to soothe that pain away is the very thing that causes it.

Doom loops.

So alcohol, for me, is one of the greatest doom loops ever invented.

Arguably the best.

It's the greatest catch-22 on our planet.

And it works a little bit like this.