Happiness Is Just a Neurochemical Spurt

Happiness is just a neurochemical spurt. Different happy chemicals produce different ways to experience happiness.

Endorphin happiness is triggered by physical pain. The body's natural morphine masks pain, which allowed our ancestors to run from predators when injured. Humans experience endorphin as euphoria, but it obviously did not evolve to trigger a constant feeling of joy. You would touch hot stoves and run on a broken leg if your brain were always releasing endorphins. Nature saves them for moments when they help you do what's necessary to survive.

Dopamine happiness is triggered when you get a new reward. When you see a finish line, your brain releases dopamine. It's nature's reserve tank of energy. Dopamine keeps you going until you catch the prey you've been stalking, even when the chase is long and frustrating. If you surged with dopamine all the time, your energy would be depleted when you really needed it. We evolved to save dopamine for those moments when an important goal is within reach.

Oxytocin happiness is triggered when we trust those around us. It promotes bonding between mother and child, and between sex partners. It's stimulated when you're with a group of like-minded people, or when you get a massage. But we did not evolve to feel oxytocin happiness all the time because there's no survival value in trusting people who are not trustworthy.

Serotonin happiness is triggered when you feel important. Animals release serotonin when they dominate a resource. Their serotonin falls when they cede a resource to avoid conflict. Being one-up feels good, but conflict can cause painful injuries. The brain is constantly analyzing information to balance the risk of pain against the satisfaction of winning.

Each of the happy chemicals evolved to do a job. They work by making you feel good, which motivates you to go after whatever triggered them. You have inherited a brain that motivates you to go toward anything that promotes the survival of your DNA.

Sometimes you stumble on happiness. When an ape accidentally stumbles on a luscious fruit tree, its brain surges with dopamine. That creates memory, which helps the ape find the tree in the future. New rewards trigger dopamine whether the rewards came by accident or with sustained effort.

The happy chemicals feel so good that we use our big cortex to figure out how to get more. Apes negotiate groomings with each other, and it stimulates their oxytocin. Apes dominate their troop-mates when they think they can get away with it, which stimulates their serotonin. Apes invest time teasing termites out of a mound, and it stimulates their dopamine. Apes are not known to hurt themselves in order to get an endorphin high. People do all kinds of things once they find that it stimulates their endorphins, or their dopamine, or their oxytocin, or their serotonin.

Sometimes it works.

But the brain only releases happy chemicals in limited bursts for specific aims. It did not evolve to release them all the time. If happy chemicals flowed all the time, they could not do their jobs.

When your happy chemicals dip, however, you notice. Something feels wrong.

Nothing is wrong. Your happy chemicals evolved to ebb and flow. But if you attend to this feeling that something is wrong, it can preoccupy you. Your cortex will scan the environment for evidence that something is, in fact, wrong. And it will find evidence to confirm that feeling.

If you expect all the happy chemicals all the time, you're going to be disappointed. And if you focus on that disappointment, you wire your brain to see the world through that lens.

Try as you might, you can't control your environment in a way that ensures a steady flow of happy chemicals.

You could instead accept the fact that happy chemicals evolved to promote survival behaviors, and just appreciate them as they come and go.

Loretta Breuning is author of ‘I, Mammal – Why Your Brain Links Status And Happiness’.  For more details visit her website at: www.imammalthebook.com . 

Happy Day Image: Pavel Sevela / Wikimedia Commons 

Comments

[Paul]

This artical deals with changes in chemistry, when we feel happy. What it also does though, is makes the assumption that dopamine, oxytocin, and seratonin, are the actual CAUSES of happiness. As if the presence of these chemicals contribute to triggering feelings of happiness.

The causes of happiness, lie within the mind. The mind is bit a product of chemical makeup, neurological functionality, or any other physical process. It is actually the reverse. Our mind creates the appearance of our world, our universe, our bodies, our enjoyments and problems. The Buddha said that everything depends on the mind, in order for it to appear.

For those interested, look up 'emptiness', 'lack of inherent existence of phenomena', or 'shunyata'. This concept, of how things exist, challenges the assumption that everything we are seeing, actually exists 'out there', with no dependence on our mind.

So, I disagree with this article. Happiness is not merely a chemical spurt. The chemical spurts, happen, in dependence of our state of mind, of happiness.

Try closing your eyes, and wishing everyone around you to be happy. Note how happy it makes you feel.

[Joseph]

Interesting. I like the idea that we can't control our environment 'in a way that ensures a steady flow of happy chemicals' - it's a way of wording the old prison of the senses. But I think there's a potential for transcendence of that heritage, a deeper going in which our chemical reactions to a phenomenological controlling aspiration are quieted.

[Jon]

Awesome, so all I need is some smack, some coke, and some nasal spray, and I have Loretta's perfect recipe for 'happiness'. Its just a chemical spurt, isn't it, so why shouldn't we artificially engineer it? What does Loretta mean by 'real life' anyway? Is that the name of a new drug? Where can I get it?

[Jonatas Müller]

Oxytocin comes in intranasal spray form.

I believe that hapiness is not "just" a neurochemical spurt, however, since it is necessary to have a specific neural system to receive these neurotransmitters and to transform their signals into happy conscious experience. The neurotransmitters themselves are just keys to unlock types of happiness. They couldn't, for example, be thrown into the cerebellum and be expected to produce happiness there. However, as keys they do serve in the causal chain and have specific subjective effects, which you explained well.

[Loretta G Breuning]

Unfortunately, heroin is basically endorphin and cocaine is basically dopamine, so the answer is yes, they're for sale and probably home delivered.
Serotonin is stimulated by anti-depressants, so that leaves oxytocin. No well-known way to get that.
So that leaves us with....real life!

[Jules]

Hi, are you selling these drugs? How much? Do you deliver?

[emma]

absolutely brilliant.