Dr. Lustig: lust, pleasure, craving, addiction

Party on, Mom. Here's my husband. Get your dopamine! | Are you sure, Dear? | I guess.

There's a corporate scheme to sell us pleasure, driving an epidemic of addiction, depression, and chronic diseases like obesity and more.

While researching the toxic and addictive properties of white sugar for his New York Times bestseller Fat Chance, Dr. Robert Lustig, MD, made an alarming discovery:

Our pursuit of happiness is being subverted by a culture of addiction and depression from which we may never recover.

If I can't have what I want, I'll kill myself.

Dopamine is the “reward” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we want more.

Yet, every substance or behavior that releases dopamine in the extreme leads to addiction.

Serotonin is the “contentment” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don’t need any more.

Yet, its deficiency leads to depression.

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Ideally, both are in optimal supply. But dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin — because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated — with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction.

In the last 40 years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (white sugar, illegal drugs, toxic social media, overwhelming porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of:

• addiction
• anxiety
• depression
• chronic disease.

And with the advent of "neuro-marketing," corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire (craving, yearning, feeling incomplete) and consumption from which there is no obvious escape. More

• Serotonin vs. Dopamine: similarities and differences (insider.com)