A Pleasure Primer: How Dopamine Drives Us

This week, I’m building on last week’s Waking theme. If you missed it, go back and read from the beginning. Today, I’m sharing an excerpt from my forthcoming book, which builds on yesterday’s piece “The Ways we Cope: Sex and Chocolate and Alcohol (Oh My!).”

When we experience the pleasure of sex, chocolate, alcohol, or any potentially habit-forming thing, we feel a rush of whizz-bang chemicals. Among those chemicals is the driver of desire: dopamine.

If Dopamine Could Speak

Dopamine—it’s the neurotransmitter f...dopamine.

Ifof whizz-bang