Snippets - Our mammalian limbic brains - Happiness and survival are intertwingled

Our mammalian limbic brains - Happiness and survival are intertwingled

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 Graziano Breuning

NOTES

Ahaa…so that’s why drugs such as pot, heroin, cocaine, speed have less inherent value, as they are being used for the purpose of recreation, rather than survival. They are stimulating our neurotransmitters for the wrong reasons (wrong is probably not the right word, but anyway…). I suppose we do all sorts of distracting things which don’t have much to do with evolutionary advantage. eg. when it says “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.”

But that’s not to discount taking stimulants for growth and learning eg. in a shamanic way.

So let’s try and re-purpose recreational drugs:

- If we take oxytocin without an evolutionary purpose, it would work against us trusting people we shouldn’t

- Take cocaine to show your one-upness (just like apes)…we can boost serotonin other ways as well, like being smart and clever (socially constructive ways)…this gives it more ownership as we created it (more than just adding water), and besides we get addicted and there’s no evolutionary advantage in being coked up all the time.

- I guess actually pursuing the drug itself is on the road to a release of dopamine…but if you are having a bad day in not being able to find any, then in kicks in cortisol (the unhappiness side of things)

- Take heroin to release endorphins without the need to mask pain means we would feel drowsy all the time, which has no evolutionary advantage

Oh apparently cocaine induces dopamine, and anti-depressants induce serotonin, so I may have things a little sideways here

From an evolutionary perspective, drugs for recreation don’t make sense…I’m sure every now and again is ok, but then there’s the addiction factor. There’s a middle ground here, drugs not used for survival or recreational, but instead for insight eg. ayahausca, peyote, mushrooms, datura…but the addiction factor may also play here.

Just to take a breathe, we have to remember we are different to our mammal cousins…we can sit and get high day after day in our dwellings and not really fear that other animals, of our own kind or others, are going to compromise our survival.

I like this comment by Jonatas Müller

I believe that happiness 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.

Here’s another version of the same article

Happy chemicals evolved to alert us to survival-relevant information around us. If you surged with happy chemicals all the time they’d have no power to alert you to important information.

Yet it’s natural to desire more happy chemicals and to do everything possible to stimulate them. They evolved to motivate us to go toward things that promote survival. Natural selection created a brain that motivates you to promote your survival with happy chemicals. A brain that was happy all the time would not need to take survival action to feel good. Survival prospects would fall. Natural selection would weed out a brain that was happy all the time!

Endorphin

-You would not be better off because pain holds survival information

Dopamine

- If your dopamine flowed all the time, you would invest energy in everything, rewarding or not.

Oxytocin

- If it flowed all the time, you’d trust people you shouldn’t oughta trust

Serotonin

- If your serotonin were high all the time, you’d constantly one-up others and make yourself a big pain in the neck

- Loretta Graziano Breuning

When you feel on top, serotonin is released in your brain. Serotonin feels calming because being on top brings security in the state of nature. We look for ways to feel on top because the serotonin feels good. That’s not nice, you may think, but there are so many healthy ways to feel on top. Putting yourself below others leaves you in a low-serotonin funk.

- Loretta Graziano Breuning

COMMENT by Candice - Seratonin uptake inhibitors

I am wondering how Zoloft and other drugs like it that are “seratonin uptake inhibitors” can be anti-depressives if seratonin is a “feel good” neurochemical. Can you explain this a bit?

COMMENT by Loretta Graziano Breuning