The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

by Daniel Z. Lieberman

From that, a new hypothesis arose: dopamine activity is not a marker of pleasure. It is a reaction to the unexpected—to possibility and anticipation.

That happy error is what launches dopamine into action. It’s not the extra time or the extra money themselves. It’s the thrill of the unexpected good news.

It’s the pleasure of anticipation—the possibility of something unfamiliar and better.

Pettigrew found that the brain manages the external world by dividing it into separate regions, the peripersonal and the extrapersonal—basically, near and far. Peripersonal space includes whatever is in arm’s reach; things you can control right now by using your hands. This is the world of what’s real, right now. Extrapersonal space refers to everything else—whatever

you can’t touch unless you move beyond your arm’s reach, whether it’s three feet or three million miles away. This is the realm of possibility.

But when the brain is engaged with the extrapersonal space, one chemical exercises more control than all the others, the chemical associated with anticipation and possibility: dopamine. Things in the distance, things we don’t have yet, cannot be used or consumed, only desired. Dopamine has a very specific job: maximizing resources that will be available to us in the future; the pursuit of better things.

Glamour creates desires that cannot be fulfilled because they are desires for things that exist only in the imagination.

His idea of satisfaction is not satisfaction at all. It’s pursuit, which is driven by dopamine, the molecule that cultivates perpetual dissatisfaction.

We revel in the passion, the focus, the excitement, the thrill of finding new love. The difference is that most of us figure out at some point that dopamine lies to us.

Dopamine has no standard for good, and seeks no finish line.

Most people have heard of the H&Ns. They include serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins (your brain’s version of morphine), and a class of chemicals called endocannabinoids (your brain’s version of marijuana).

According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, early or “passionate” love lasts only twelve to eighteen months.

Their behavior is characterized by cooperative territory defense and nest building. The bonded pair feed each other, groom each other, and share parental chores. Most of all, they stay close to each other and display expressions of anxiety when separated.

When H&N circuits are activated, we are prompted to experience the real world around us, and dopamine is suppressed; when dopamine circuits are activated, we move into a future of possibilities, and H&Ns are suppressed.

It’s not easy to say farewell to the dopaminergic thrill of new partners and passionate longing, but the ability to do so is a sign of maturity, and a step toward long-lasting happiness.

personality is primarily dopaminergic: he enjoys anticipation and planning more than doing.

testosterone. In a similar way, testosterone suppresses the release of oxytocin and vasopressin, which helps explain why men with naturally high quantities of testosterone in their blood are less likely to marry. Similarly, single men have more testosterone than married men. And if a man’s marriage becomes unstable, his vasopressin falls, and his testosterone goes up.

That’s why falling in love doesn’t last forever. When we fall in love, we look to a future made perfect by the presence of our beloved. It’s a future built on a fevered imagination that falls to pieces when reality reasserts itself twelve to eighteen months later. Then what? In many cases it’s over. The relationship comes to an end, and the search for a dopaminergic thrill begins all over again. Alternatively, the passionate love can be transformed into something more enduring. It can become companionate love, which may not thrill the way dopamine does, but has the power to deliver happiness—long-term happiness based on H&N neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, vasopressin, and endorphin.

It’s like our favorite old haunts—restaurants, shops, even cities. Our affection for them comes from taking pleasure in the familiar ambience: the real, physical nature of the place. We enjoy the familiar not for what it could become, but for what it is. That is the only stable basis for a long-term, satisfying relationship.

Where does it end? Is there anything we seek for itself only, not because it leads to something else? Aristotle decided there was. He decided there was a single thing that lay at the end of every string of Whys, and its name was Happiness. Everything we do, ultimately, is for the sake of happiness.

Wanting, or desire, flows from an evolutionarily old part of the brain deep inside the skull called the ventral tegmental area. It is rich in dopamine; in fact, it is one of the two main dopamine-producing regions.

When these long-tailed cells are activated, they release dopamine into the nucleus accumbens, driving the feeling we know as motivation.

This dopamine circuit evolved to promote behaviors that lead to survival and reproduction, or, to put it more plainly, to help us get food and sex, and to win competitions.

That is, at the moment such a thing is seen, the circuit is activated whether or not you’re hungry. That’s the nature of dopamine. It’s always focused on acquiring more of everything with an eye toward providing for the future. Hunger is something that happens here and now, in the present. But dopamine says, “Go ahead and eat the donut, even if you’re not hungry. It will increase your chance of staying alive in the future. Who knows when food will be available next?” That made sense for our evolutionary ancestors, who lived most of their lives on the brink of starvation.

the dopamine system is more or less obsessed with keeping us alive. It constantly scans the environment for new sources of food, shelter, mating opportunities, and other resources that will keep our DNA replicating.

It sends this message by creating the feeling of desire, and often excitement. The sensation of wanting is not a choice you make. It is a reaction to the things you encounter.

The future isn’t real. It’s made up of a bundle of possibilities that exist only in our minds. Those possibilities tend to be idealized—we usually don’t imagine a mediocre outcome. We tend to think about the best of all possible worlds, and that makes the future more attractive. On the other hand, the present is real. It’s concrete. It’s experienced, not imagined, and that requires a different set of brain chemicals—the H&Ns, the here-and-now neurotransmitters.

The desire circuit often breaks its promises—which is bound to happen, because it plays no role in generating feelings of satisfaction. It is in no position to make dreams come true. The desire circuit is, so to speak, just a salesman.

Thus we see three possible solutions to buyer’s remorse: (1) chase the dopamine high by buying more, (2) avoid the dopamine crash by buying less, or (3) strengthen the ability to transition from dopamine desire to H&N liking.

Drugs destroy the delicate balance that the brain needs to function normally. Drugs stimulate dopamine release no matter what kind of situation the user is in. That confuses the brain, and it begins to connect drug use to everything. After a while, the brain becomes convinced that drugs are the answer to all aspects of life. Feel like celebrating? Use drugs. Feeling sad? Use drugs. Hanging out with a friend? Use drugs. Feeling stressed, bored, relaxed, tense, angry, powerful, resentful, tired, energetic? Use drugs. People in twelve-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous say that addicts need to watch out for three things that might trigger craving and topple them into relapse: people, places, and things.

An evening of drinking feels best at the start. The level of alcohol is rising rapidly, and that feels good—it’s dopaminergic euphoria, directly related to how fast the alcohol gets into the brain.

Inexperienced drinkers get the two confused. They start drinking, push their blood alcohol level up, and experience the pleasures of dopamine release, then mistakenly believe that the pleasure is the pleasure of intoxication. So they keep drinking more and more, trying in vain to get the rush back. It ends badly, often bent over a toilet.

A mixed drink is more concentrated, and it’s usually sweetened with sugar, so people tend to drink it faster. Mixed drinks usually contain more alcohol than beer or wine.

sober. It takes an enormous amount of strength, determination, and support to overcome addiction. Don’t mess with dopamine. It hits back hard.

In an interview with The Economist, Dr. Berridge noted that the dopamine desire system is powerful and highly influential in the brain, whereas the liking circuit is tiny, fragile, and much harder to trigger. The difference between the two is the reason that “life’s

intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desire.”

Boosting dopamine can lead to enthusiastic engagement with things that would otherwise be perceived as unimportant. For example, marijuana users have been known to stand in front of a sink, watching water drip from the faucet, captivated by the otherwise mundane sight of the drops falling over and over again. The dopamine-boosting effect is also evident when marijuana smokers get lost in their own thoughts, floating aimlessly through imaginary worlds of their own creation.

On the other hand, in some situations marijuana suppresses dopamine, mimicking what H&N molecules

tend to do. In that case, activities that would typically be associated with wanting and motivation, such as going to work, studying, or...

We make choices that we know are not in our best interest, but we feel powerless to resist. It’s as if our free will has been compromised by an overwhelming urge for immediate pleasure; perhaps it’s a bag of potato chips when we’re on a diet, or splurging on an expensive night out that we can’t really afford.

Nicotine, in fact, is an unusual drug because it does very little except trigger compulsive use.

The feeling of wanting becomes overwhelming and utterly detached from whether the object of desire is anything we really care for, is good for us, or might kill us. Addiction is not a sign of weak character or a lack of willpower. It occurs when the desire circuits get thrown into a pathological state by overstimulation.

The pleasure we get when we socialize for no other reason than the enjoyment of the company of others is an H&N experience. On the other hand, when we get together to accomplish a shared goal, it’s dopaminergic because we’re working toward a better future

Many video games are also beautiful, another way of stimulating H&N delight.

It’s natural to confuse wanting and liking. It seems obvious that we would want the things that we will like having. That’s how it would work if we were rational creatures, and despite all evidence to the contrary, we persist in thinking that we are rational creatures. But we’re not. Frequently we want things that we don’t like. Our desires can lead us toward things that may destroy our lives, such as drugs, gambling, and other out-of-control behaviors.

The dopamine desire circuit is powerful. It focuses attention, motivates, and thrills. It has a profound influence over the choices we make. Yet it isn’t all-powerful. Addicts get clean. Dieters lose weight. Sometimes we switch off the TV, get off the couch, and go for a run. What kind of circuit in the brain is powerful enough to oppose dopamine? Dopamine is. Dopamine opposing dopamine. The circuit that opposes the desire circuit might be called the dopamine control circuit.

Not surprisingly, the dopamine control circuit involves the frontal lobes, the part of the brain that is sometimes called the neocortex because it evolved most recently. It’s what makes human beings unique. It gives us the imagination to project ourselves further into the future than the desire circuit can take us, so we can make long-term plans. It’s also the part that allows us to maximize resources in that future by creating new tools and using abstract concepts; concepts that rise above the here-and-now experience of the senses, like language, mathematics, and science.

It’s intensely

rational. It doesn’t feel, because emotion is an H&N phenomenon. As we will see in the next chapter, it’s cold, calculating, and ruthless, do...

dopamine moving through different brain circuits yields different functions, too, and toward a common end: a relentless focus on enhancing the future.