At 23, I was at rock bottom… until one small habit saved me via /r/gratitude

At 23, my prime years. When all my peers were living to be their best self, I was falling apart. I struggled daily with depression, anxiety, and I didn’t think I’d make it to 25. I’d game for hours on Monday, smoke just to feel something, then spiral into YouTube or TikTok until my eyes burned. My room looked like a landfill, my bank account was a joke, and my brain was in this constant low-grade panic.

The porn, the weed, and the mid day nauseous feeling, it all messed with my head more than I realized. I’d try to start projects and just abandon them. I avoided people because they would think of me as a loser. I was caught in a loop of depression → chasing dopamine hits → feeling regret → sinking even deeper.

One night, it was 3am and I found myself googling “what’s wrong with me.” Most of the results were depressing as hell. But then I saw this random Reddit comment: “Read 10 pages a day. Not to be smart, just to get your brain back.” It sounded stupidly simple, but I had nothing to lose.

So I swapped the TikTok icon on my phone for my reading app. Picked a short, easy mental health book. Told myself I’d do 10 minutes before bed, no matter how fried I felt. The first two weeks were rough, my brain wanted that quick dopamine hit so badly. Reading felt like running uphill. But somewhere around week four, I noticed I was… calmer. My thoughts felt less tangled. I could sit still without checking my phone every two minutes. I was actually remembering things I read, and connecting them to my own life.

I didn’t just stop there. I started pairing reading with workouts, meditation, journaling. It was like stacking bricks to rebuild my mind. After nine months, I wasn’t “fixed”, but I was definitely steering my own ship again. I’m fitter, my relationships are healthier, I found a freelance time job, and my mornings aren’t a fight with my brain anymore.

And look, I’m not saying reading is some magic cure. But for me, it’s been the thing that rewired my brain from “react” mode into “respond” mode. Fiction gave me empathy; non-fiction gave me perspective. I started rereading books months later and realizing how much I’d grown just from how I interpreted them differently.

Along the way, I stumbled into books that shifted my whole perspective: The Untethered Soul, which made me realize I’m not my thoughts; Lost Connections, which blew up everything I thought I knew about depression; Atomic Habits, the best breakdown of habit-building I’ve ever seen; The Body Keeps the Score, which made me understand how much trauma lives in the body; Deep Work, which made me delete half my social media; The Power of Now, which was like mental first aid for anxiety; Man’s Search for Meaning, which made me cry in public; Dopamine Nation, which finally explained why my brain kept chasing instant gratification; Can’t Hurt Me, which murdered all my excuses; and Why We Sleep, which made me go to bed at 10pm for the first time in my life.

I also found tools that made it way easier to stick with. My friend at Stanford put me on this app called BeFreed. It’s basically a smart reading and book summary tool, and it gets through the whole book for me without having to read page by page. You can pick 10-min skims, 40-min deep dives, or these fun storytelling versions of dense books. I usually go for the fun versions while walking or at the gym, and if a book clicks, I’ll switch to the deep dive. There’s even a flashcard feature that helps me actually remember what I read. I tested it on a book I’d already finished and was shocked, it covered like 90% of the content. Honestly, for most non-fiction, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to reading 300 pages front to back.

Insight Timer, one of my favorite free meditation apps with guided sessions from psychologists, monks, and trauma specialists. Perfect to pair with evening reading for mental reset.

For podcasts, I love listening to the Huberman Lab Podcast. Dr. Huberman did a great job explaining brain science in a way you can apply to daily life. You really have to listen to his episodes on dopamine and focus, you will thank me later.

It’s not like I stopped having bad days. I still get anxious, I still mess up. But reading gave me a mental anchor, something to come back to when my brain feels like it’s spinning out. And the wild thing? Big tech literally spends billions making sure you never have the focus for this. Infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications timed to pull you back, all of it designed to hijack your dopamine system. Over time, it kills your ability to enjoy deep things. Reading is the opposite. It’s slow dopamine. It retrains your attention span, helps you think in full sentences again, and forces you to process instead of just react.

I always look back in gratitude in how far I've come If you’re in that place I was, foggy, anxious, stuck – just start with ten minutes a day. Not because you’re trying to be well-read and smarter than others, but because your brain needs a different diet. Treat it well, give it stories, ideas, perspectives. You’re not broken. You’re just one good habit away from finding your way back. And reading? That was mine.