How I "Bricked" My Phone Without Spending $60 Dollars

I am currently re-reading Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke.

For those who haven’t read it, the book explores the neuroscience of addiction and the delicate balance between pleasure and pain. The book explains that dopamine isn’t just a “happy” chemical; it is the chemical of wanting. It is the biological itch that says, “Do it again.”

While the book covers everything from drug abuse to gambling, it sheds a terrifying light on why we can’t put our phones down. Our devices are engineered to trigger that reward loop 24/7, making them biologically indistinguishable from a drug.

When I first read this book five years ago, I didn’t think it applied to me.

I was newly pregnant. It was the peak of the pandemic. I nodded along at the science of the reward pathway, thinking, This is important work. But I assumed my own habits were just “modern life,” not a pathology. I thought addiction was a word for other people.

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Flash forward to today. I have two kids. The pandemic is over. And I can say without a doubt that I am addicted to my phone.

I suspect many of you are, too.

One of the core concepts Dr. Lembke discusses is the idea of “Self-Binding.” (stay with me here).

In the context of addiction, self-binding is the act of creating physical or temporal barriers between yourself and the drug. It is admitting that in a hot state (when you are craving the hit), your willpower is offline. You cannot rely on your brain to stop you, because your brain is the thing demanding the dopamine. You need a physical barrier to stop you.

It has become clear to me that if I want to stop the doomscrolling cycle, I need to physically bind myself. I need to make my phone less “smart.”

I am not the first person to realize this. There is an entire cottage industry springing up to solve this problem. There are companies selling beautiful, minimalist physical devices that “brick” your phone for you. They work great.

Here is the deal, though: They cost about $60.

And I am cheap. I am unwilling to spend $60 on a piece of plastic to tell me not to use the device I already paid $1,000 for. (Spoken like a true addict: I want to quit, but I don’t want to pay to quit.)

Luckily, I am industrious. I am also fairly competent at deep-diving into the dark corners of Reddit to find workarounds (one positive by-product of my addiction).

And so I reverse-engineered it. I realized I could replicate that same physical barrier without the $60 markup, using tools that cost less than a latte. It requires just two things. Here’s how…