What do you folks think about this? Have I been a dopamine-addict my entire life, due to seeking all that short-term pleasure? Do I know pleasure, but no happiness?
I am not looking for advice. I was wondering if you folks think about the theory.
Robert Lustig: Exactly. So, if you go online right now and google pleasure and happiness, the definitions that you will see there will be almost identical because we have confused and conflated the two terms to mean virtually the same thing, but they’re not. They’re actually quite different. And I’ll give you the seven differences between pleasure and happiness right now.
Number one, pleasure is short-lived. Happiness is long-lived. Pleasure is visceral, you feel it in your body. Happiness is ethereal, you feel it above the neck. Number three, pleasure is taking. Happiness is giving. Number four, pleasure is achieved alone. Happiness is usually achieved in social groups. Number five, pleasure can be achieved with substances. Happiness can not be achieved with substances. Number six, the extremes of pleasure, whether it be substances or behaviors, so nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, sugar or behaviors, gambling, social media, Internet, video games, porn. All in the extreme lead to addiction, whereas there’s no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness. And finally number seven, pleasure is dopamine and happiness is serotonin.
So, two different neurotransmitters, two different areas of the brain, two different receptors, two different regulatory pathways. So you say to me, like who cares? Big deal. They both feel good. I want them both. Well, so pleasure is the feeling this feels good, I want more. And happiness is this feels good, I don’t want or need anymore. So they are not the same. And knowing the difference is super important.
Jeff Schechtman: What do you see as fundamentally different today with respect to the way this is being used to further addict us to things? You know, back in the late 1950s, there was a book by a guy named Vance Packard called The Hidden Persuaders that talked about the way that marketing was being used we would refer to it today, you would refer to it today, to sort of hack into our brains. What’s different in terms of the way it’s being done today beyond the fact that we understand the mechanism that’s at play?
Robert Lustig: Well, you’re putting up a very good question. What is the difference between marketing and propaganda? Marketing is using information to espouse your point of view. Propaganda is using disinformation to espouse your point of view. The difference is the truth. If you’re telling the truth, it’s marketing. If you’re telling a lie, it’s propaganda. Point is, propaganda does things to our brain because what it does is it gives us a dopamine boost. It makes you zealous. It increases your zealotry, whether it be for any specific political point of view, or any specific religious point of view or any specific material consumption point of view. Ultimately, those are all found in dopamine. And we know that because we’ve done the experiments.
Back in the 1970s we had a new drug at our disposal for patients with Parkinson’s Disease called L-dopa, which is a precursor to dopamine. And we would give L-dopa to patients with Parkinson’s. They have a dopamine deficiency in an area of the brain called the substantia nigra, which has to do with motor function. And we would give them this drug and they would get better and their motor function would improve. But what we also noted was that a sizable proportion of these patients became compulsive gamblers or religious zealots. And there’s a now wealth of literature on the role of dopamine precursors in driving these aberrant behaviors. So these are dopamine driven and propaganda is a great way to drive your dopamine.
Conversely, serotonin is the contentment neurotransmitter. Here’s the problem, dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter, so neurons want to be excited because after all that’s why they have receptors in the first place, but neurons are fragile. They like to be tickled, not bludgeoned. Dopamine over-stimulation causes neuron cell death. Now, you don’t want that. So neurons have a plan B. They have a self-defense mechanism. What they do is they down- regulate the number of receptors. So in human terms what this means is you get a hit, you get a rush, receptors go down, next time you need a bigger hit to get the same rush and then a bigger hit, and a bigger hit, and a bigger hit until finally you get a huge hit to get nothing. That’s called tolerance. And then when the neurons actually start to die, that’s called addiction.
But serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It doesn’t down-regulate its own receptor. It doesn’t need to. So you can’t overdose on too much happiness, but there’s one thing that down-regulates serotonin, dopamine. So the more pleasure you seek, the more unhappy you get. And when we are propagandized by industries for their purposes to activate our dopamine, we fall into the perpetualness of addiction and depression.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/29/propaganda-hacks-brains/
I am not looking for advice. I was wondering if you folks think about the theory.
Robert Lustig: Exactly. So, if you go online right now and google pleasure and happiness, the definitions that you will see there will be almost identical because we have confused and conflated the two terms to mean virtually the same thing, but they’re not. They’re actually quite different. And I’ll give you the seven differences between pleasure and happiness right now.
Number one, pleasure is short-lived. Happiness is long-lived. Pleasure is visceral, you feel it in your body. Happiness is ethereal, you feel it above the neck. Number three, pleasure is taking. Happiness is giving. Number four, pleasure is achieved alone. Happiness is usually achieved in social groups. Number five, pleasure can be achieved with substances. Happiness can not be achieved with substances. Number six, the extremes of pleasure, whether it be substances or behaviors, so nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, sugar or behaviors, gambling, social media, Internet, video games, porn. All in the extreme lead to addiction, whereas there’s no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness. And finally number seven, pleasure is dopamine and happiness is serotonin.
So, two different neurotransmitters, two different areas of the brain, two different receptors, two different regulatory pathways. So you say to me, like who cares? Big deal. They both feel good. I want them both. Well, so pleasure is the feeling this feels good, I want more. And happiness is this feels good, I don’t want or need anymore. So they are not the same. And knowing the difference is super important.
Jeff Schechtman: What do you see as fundamentally different today with respect to the way this is being used to further addict us to things? You know, back in the late 1950s, there was a book by a guy named Vance Packard called The Hidden Persuaders that talked about the way that marketing was being used we would refer to it today, you would refer to it today, to sort of hack into our brains. What’s different in terms of the way it’s being done today beyond the fact that we understand the mechanism that’s at play?
Robert Lustig: Well, you’re putting up a very good question. What is the difference between marketing and propaganda? Marketing is using information to espouse your point of view. Propaganda is using disinformation to espouse your point of view. The difference is the truth. If you’re telling the truth, it’s marketing. If you’re telling a lie, it’s propaganda. Point is, propaganda does things to our brain because what it does is it gives us a dopamine boost. It makes you zealous. It increases your zealotry, whether it be for any specific political point of view, or any specific religious point of view or any specific material consumption point of view. Ultimately, those are all found in dopamine. And we know that because we’ve done the experiments.
Back in the 1970s we had a new drug at our disposal for patients with Parkinson’s Disease called L-dopa, which is a precursor to dopamine. And we would give L-dopa to patients with Parkinson’s. They have a dopamine deficiency in an area of the brain called the substantia nigra, which has to do with motor function. And we would give them this drug and they would get better and their motor function would improve. But what we also noted was that a sizable proportion of these patients became compulsive gamblers or religious zealots. And there’s a now wealth of literature on the role of dopamine precursors in driving these aberrant behaviors. So these are dopamine driven and propaganda is a great way to drive your dopamine.
Conversely, serotonin is the contentment neurotransmitter. Here’s the problem, dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter, so neurons want to be excited because after all that’s why they have receptors in the first place, but neurons are fragile. They like to be tickled, not bludgeoned. Dopamine over-stimulation causes neuron cell death. Now, you don’t want that. So neurons have a plan B. They have a self-defense mechanism. What they do is they down- regulate the number of receptors. So in human terms what this means is you get a hit, you get a rush, receptors go down, next time you need a bigger hit to get the same rush and then a bigger hit, and a bigger hit, and a bigger hit until finally you get a huge hit to get nothing. That’s called tolerance. And then when the neurons actually start to die, that’s called addiction.
But serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It doesn’t down-regulate its own receptor. It doesn’t need to. So you can’t overdose on too much happiness, but there’s one thing that down-regulates serotonin, dopamine. So the more pleasure you seek, the more unhappy you get. And when we are propagandized by industries for their purposes to activate our dopamine, we fall into the perpetualness of addiction and depression.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/29/propaganda-hacks-brains/
