What is really making you unhappy?

Serotonin vs. dopamine explained by Dr. Robert Lustig author of "The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains".https://youtu.be/A3svaOilIis

Dopamine is the learning neurotransmitter. It is the positive reinforcement neurotransmitter. It is the transmitter that says, this feels good. I want more. Serotonin is the opposite. It's the neurotransmitter that says this feels good. I don't want or need anymore. Those are clearly two different things. And the problem is if you don't know the difference, then you are basically subject to continuing to try to reward yourself ad nauseam.

There is a third component to this pathway that is absolutely essential, and it's called cortisol. So cortisol is the stress hormone. And what cortisol does, which is particularly important in the story is it works on the part of your brain right behind your forehead, the part right above your eyes called the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that keeps you from doing stupid things. I call it the Jiminy Cricket part of your brain, like from Pinocchio. Bottom line if you have a dysfunctional prefrontal cortex, you can't see the future. You only live for the moment. Prefrontal cortical dysfunction is what turns a human into a lizard.

 Okay? Doesn't matter what happens in the future, I need my reward now. And so there's no ability to cognitively inhibit that feeling of reward. And that then drives the dopamine even faster. And ultimately, that's what leads to neuronal cell death.

So it's the combination of dopamine and cortisol that leads to addiction. So reward is good. Reward plus stress is not. And that's what we all are now, is chronically stressed. So chronic stress makes you want reward because of this lizard brain. And so it sets you up for addiction.

Now on the other side, the serotonin side, chronic stress and cortisol has an effect as well. So serotonin does bind to its receptor to inhibit the next neuron. The problem is that the serotonin receptor is down regulated by cortisol.

So less serotonin, fewer receptors, that's depression. So addiction and depression both occur. One due to dopamine and one due to lack of serotonin. But in the presence of cortisol in the presence of chronic stress. So chronic stress is what belies both of these two major afflictions of the human condition.

There is one reward system. One. That rewards system is pretty darn important. If you don't receive reward, you don't get out of bed, you actually lie in bed and die, is what happens.

And that's been done in transgenic animals. They've basically knocked out the reward system, and those animals have no will to live. You need reward to be able to get up in the morning go to work. make a living, bring home a paycheck, eat food et cetera. So reward is survival of the species. You cannot do it without reward.

However, reward and contentment, are not the same thing. Reward and pleasure are synonymous. Contentment and happiness are synonymous.

So people in our society have confused and conflated these two concepts, pleasure and happiness. There are seven differences between the two.

People need to understand these differences in order to be able to make head or tail of;

1 - the world.

And - 2

how they're being manipulated by the world in order to make them miserable. So, those seven things, the seven differences.

1. Pleasure is short term, like a meal – Happiness is long-term, like a lifetime

2. Pleasure is visceral you feel it in your body - happiness is ethereal you feel it sense it
3. Pleasure is taking like from a casino - happiness is giving (like Habitat for Humanity).
4. Pleasure is achieved alone. Like a chocolate cake – happiness is achieved in social groups, like a birthday party.
5. Pleasure is achievable with substances like for instance, cocaine, heroin - happiness is not achievable with substances.
6. The extremes of pleasure, whether it be substances or behaviors, substances like cocaine, heroin, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or behaviors. like shopping, gambling, social media, internet gaming, pornography, in the extreme, are addictive. There is in an aholic after everyone of those, Shopaholic, sexaholics, alcoholic, etc. But there's no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness.

7 , and perhaps the most important for this conversation. Pleasure is dopamine and happiness is serotonin.

So, two different neurotransmitters, two different areas of the brain, two different regulatory pathways, two different mechanisms of action. Two different drivers.

So you say, why do we care? Here's why we care.

Dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter. Dopamine binds to its receptor the next neuron gets excited, postsynaptic receptor activation. Now, neurons like to be excited, neurons like to be tickled.

They don't like to be bludgeoned. Chronic over stimulation of any neuron in the body leads to neuronal cell death.

And the reason is because neurons are so metabolically active, and neurotransmission is so metabolically taxing.

That if you just keep it up and keep it up and keep it up, that neuron is basically going to exhaust and die.

And so, the postsynaptic neuron that has the dopamine receptors on it, it has a fail safe, it has a protective mechanism in order not to be overwhelmed. What it does, is, it down regulates the dopamine receptors.

So now even though you have lots of ligands lots of dopamine molecules, you have fewer receptors, which means there's less chance that any molecule will find the receptor. And what that means in human terms is, you need more and more to get less and less. And that's the phenomenon we call tolerance. So dopamine leads to tolerance.

And then when those neurons actually do start to die, that's called addiction.

Serotonin this other neurotransmitter, it is not excitable, it's inhibitory.

Now if you are inhibitory and if you're inhibiting the next neuron, do you need to down regulate the receptor? No! Because the neuron is not going to die because there's nothing overexcited. Its being if anything over inhibited.

So there's no such thing as overdosing 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 if you don't know the difference between reward and contentment, if you don't know the difference between pleasure and happiness, and you are led astray by say, Coca Cola open happiness, or you know, it's five o'clock somewhere or you know, any of these other you know, sort of means and mantras that have entered our collective lexicon about the fact that you want to, quote, get happy. By taking this substance.

You are sadly mistaken. And ultimately, it will do a number on you. that's been doing a number on hundreds of millions of people in particular over the last 50 years as public relations and now the internet has come to the fore.