What We Gain by Giving Things Up
Fasting, Dry January, and "Type 2 Fun"
If you or someone you love is outdoorsy, you’ve probably come across the pernicious idea of “Type 2 Fun.” This term is often used to describe some arduous trek up a mountain or popping a bike tire in the middle of nowhere or playing soccer in a typhoon (as a rec league once forced my nine-year-old to do.) Type 2 fun is an experience that is entirely unpleasant but that makes a good story later. In short, it is something that is not fun at all, which is why I, a word nerd, hate this phrase. The English language is vast and always growing; why describe something not fun as “fun” unless we’re trying to deceive ourselves?
Getting caught in an unexpected blizzard while climbing a mountain might be challenging, rewarding, punishing, engrossing, meaningful, or invigorating, but it’s not fun. Fun, like joy, is not something you need to talk yourself into. A theme park is fun. Blisters, in any context, are not.
Growing up in conservative Christianity, fun could feel dangerous. Certainly, we could have fun at youth group playing gross out games (chubby bunny, anyone?) but not by indulging in any of the “worldly” things our classmates were doing. Secular media was frowned upon, as were adolescent experimentations with drugs, alcohol, or sexuality. Thanks to Josh Harrison’s terrible I Kissed Dating Goodbye, even casual dating was viewed with suspicion at my Christian college. “Christians don’t” could’ve been the motto for everything from watching PG-13 movies to wearing spaghetti straps to sitting in a hammock with a member of the opposite sex.
When I left that world behind, I felt determined to have as much fun and pleasure as possible. I smoked pot for the first time, I hosted a Ouija board party, I tried to catch up on all the pop culture I’d missed. When I encountered people who did things like training for marathons in their spare time, my response was always why? Wasn’t life hard enough without inviting more suffering into your life?
The problem, I’ve since discovered, is habituation. When I started treating myself to a piece of chocolate or a glass of wine, it felt magical. But over time, I became habituated to these substances. It took more of whatever treat I was indulging in to achieve that same level of euphoria.
This is basic brain chemistry. Substances like alcohol, sugar, or drugs, and activities like gambling, shopping, or sex trigger the brain’s reward centers, leading to the release of feel-good chemicals like dopamine. But the brain is built for stasis—it’s not going to leave all that dopamine just hanging around forever, it wants to get back to baseline. So the more we indulge in a reward behavior, the less dopamine is released, and the more quickly it’s reabsorbed.
This is “chasing the dragon.” It’s the snake eating its own tail. It’s the hungry wolf inside us that is never satisfied. In Buddhism, these sorts of self-focused cravings are called Tanha, and overcoming them is a major step towards the path to enlightenment.
Perhaps this is one reason that so many religions include fasting traditions: Judaism has Yom Kippur, Islam has a month of Ramadan, Christianity has Lent, though complete fasting is not widely practiced in modern Christianity. Jesus fasted and Buddha fasted—which is enough to make me wonder if there isn’t something to be learned from intentionally giving something up for a period of time.
So I’ve undertaken the arduous decision to deny myself some of my usual pleasures this month. I’m participating in Dry January and I’m going to also experiment with some short fasts and breaks from other things that I’ve become habituated to—maybe shopping on Amazon? TV? Driving instead of taking transit?
Will all this fasting lead to enlightenment, or just crankiness? Stay tuned!
What do you think I should try giving up? Let me know in the comments. Also tell me if you’re doing Dry January. Do you believe in “Type 2 fun”? Or is the idea of voluntary suffering as nuts as it sounds?
BONUS MATERIALS:
-Interested in more brain science? Check out Anna Lembke’s great book, Dopamine Nation.
I love type 2 fun!!
--From, a marathon runner :)
You know, I think I have a different perspective on Type2Fun, and not just because that’s the name of the trail running team that we assembled to compete at several Ragnar Trail relays and some other trail running relays. For us, Type2Fun IS fun while you’re doing it, but it’s a fun that’s mixed with fear and exhaustion and maybe hunger and risk. For example, getting out of your tent at 3AM, taking a chairlift to the top of a mountain, and running down the mountain in the darkness, the trail lit only by a headlamp ... insane, exhilarating, occasionally frightening, but an experience I would not trade for anything. That’s Type2Fun. I want more of it.