The most successful human evolution is the brain.
With powerful brains, humans have reached the top of the food chain.
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In the human brain, there is an area called the parahippocampal gyrus, which is responsible for the secretion of dopamine, which helps the brain better command muscle movement and improve body coordination. Let humans do more refined sports, such as writing and making tools.
But dopamine also has another role – produces pleasure in the brain, so some people call it the pleasure hormone.
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Many things stimulate the production of dopamine, which gives the brain a sense of pleasure. For example, food cravings, sexual pleasure, extreme adventures, and success all boost dopamine production.
In some sense, the brain’s pursuit of pleasure drives the progress of human civilization.
In primitive society, the stimulating pleasure of sweet taste and meat on the brain prompted primitive people to look for foods rich in these elements, which are important for human beings to store energy, strengthen their physique, and promote the brain. Development plays a huge role.
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After satisfying the basic needs of the human body, the pursuit of pleasure in the brain begins to prompt humans to do things that animals cannot do, such as helping others, exploring the unknown, making tools…
These minor changes, after thousands of years, have gradually contributed to the social system and opened a new chapter of human civilization.
Many substances in nature can stimulate the brain to produce pleasure, such as pepper, honey, fruit, etc., which can make the brain easily obtain pleasure. Since no effort is required, the pleasure quickly becomes cheap in the brain.
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Stimulation that is easy to obtain will make the secretion of dopamine less and less, so people often do not cherish the things that are easily obtained. Likewise, repeated stimulation causes less and less dopamine to be released. Therefore, it is easy for humans to like the new and dislike the old.
The brain will be more and more demanding and stronger for the stimulation that produces pleasure, so humans have to look for more intense stimulation.
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While searching in nature, humans have also learned to craft more violent stimuli themselves. The ancients recited poems and wrote poems, and the modern people surfed the Internet and played games in the palm of their hands. The invention of wine, poetry, the Internet, games, etc., is the achievement of the brain’s constant search for pleasure.
The stimuli they produce make the brain experience more impactful pleasures, and motivate humans to never stop in finding and creating stimuli.
All stimuli that make the brain feel good are not necessarily good. Many stimulants are harmful to the human body. Human tissues and organs use pain or other sensations to remind the brain not to do so.
But in order to experience those pleasures, the brain ignores these reminders[1]. For example, the stimulation of tobacco and alcohol will bring pleasure to the brain, but tobacco will damage the respiratory tract, and alcohol will damage the digestive tract. Although the respiratory tract and digestive tract are on the alert, many people’s brains will choose tobacco and alcohol without hesitation.
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In addition, people are self-conscious. Everyone knows that smoking and drinking are bad for your health, but why do some people still smoke and drink constantly? The reason is also in the brain.
The brain controls the behavior of this part of the person. Smoking and drinking will not cause immediate harm, so “get the pleasure first, and wait until the harm really comes.”
As a result, these people indulge in the self-deception of the brain, indulge in binge drinking, and their human health gradually disintegrates in the immersion of tobacco and alcohol over the years.
Drugs are the substances that produce the most intense pleasure in the human brain.
Drugs stimulate the production of large amounts of dopamine, giving the brain an unparalleled high, a high that has never been experienced by any previous stimulation. This pleasure is strongly remembered by the brain, and this is the beginning of addiction.
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The brain loses interest in other stimuli after being baptized with drugs. As long as it is not stimulated by drugs, it refuses to produce dopamine, or produces only a small amount of dopamine [2].
Thus, this part of people can only repeatedly experience this ultimate pleasure through drugs. The brain is completely kidnapped by drugs.
However,drugs can damage the brain and other organs of the body while it provides high pleasure to the brain. Long-term drug addicts not only experience changes in personality, but their health also deteriorates.
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This ultimate pleasure also develops tolerance over time, as mentioned above, repeated stimulation causes less and less dopamine. It is necessary to continuously increase the amount of drugs in order to make the brain get the same pleasure, so the drug addicts will take more and more drugs.
Eventually, during the last overdose, the heart stopped beating, and the brain was starved of oxygen.
In the hallucinogenic state of hypoxia, the brain finally tasted the last tinge of pleasure. But this pleasure only lasted for a few seconds, and the brain was permanently plunged into darkness…
Some people go to death in pursuit of cerebral pleasure. But most people can still use reason to control their behavior.
The pleasure of the brain prompts human beings to solve basic physiological needs and then create various ideas, sciences, technologies, and cultures. So, we have philosophy, life sciences, networks, computers, landed on the moon, unlocked artificial intelligence…
It can be said that the pursuit of pleasure has greatly promoted the development of human technology and civilization, and this development is still escalating.
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But human beings need more and more mental stimulation and more and more desires. Today, we cannot understand that the ancients who did not have mobile phones hundreds of years ago were content with only a few volumes of poems. Similarly, the ancients hundreds of years ago cannot understand the primitive people who drank their blood and ate their hair millions of years ago. When it comes to the meat that is accidentally roasted by thunder fire, it will be ecstatic.
So in the future, what will we use to satisfy the mind’s endless pleasure-seeking?
Reviewer: Song Chongsheng| Deputy Chief Physician, Department of Psychiatry, Huilongguan Hospital, Beijing
References
[1]Di Chiara G. Role of dopamine in the behavioural actions of nicotine related to addiction. Eur J Pharmacol. 2000;393(1-3):295-314. doi:10.1016 /s0014-2999(00)00122-9
[2]Diana M. The dopamine hypothesis of drug addiction and its potential therapeutic value. Front Psychiatry. 2011;2:64. Published 2011 Nov 29. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2011.00064< /p>
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