The Addict’s Curse
What a hellish condition. The addict desires something more, but gets less pleasure from it. And this leads to never being satisfied, always wanting more of this addiction that doesn’t even give pleasure anymore.
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another post.
Today’s post is something different. If you’re a longtime Reader of my blog, you know I love reading books. And that while I most often read Christian books, I make sure to insert some variety. The latest book I read, The Compass of Pleasure by David Linden, was something new for me. It was in a genre I don’t normally read (Psychology), and unlike any other book I’ve read so far. Good book.
As you may have guessed from the title, the book deals with the topic of pleasure. And pleasure can be addictive, as we all know. But the more I read, the more I grew disturbed at a brain phenomenon the book talks about. And that would be a hellish condition I can only call The Addict’s Curse. It’s a condition no one would ever want to be in, and yet countless people are. So read on, and learn more about the hellish reality of The Addict’s Curse.
How Does Pleasure “Work?”
This book is about brain chemistry and the science of the brain. Specifically, it deals with the brain science of pleasure-how pleasure “works” in the brain. Why do we find things pleasurable, what happens in our brain when we indulge in pleasure, and so on.
Although the back cover says the book makes this science easy to understand … well … the book is still pretty tough to understand in parts. The brain and how it works is insanely complex. Linden tries to make it clearer, but doesn’t always succeed. But that’s alright. I understood the important parts, and learned about pleasure and the brain. And this book really got me thinking about some things.
I won’t explain all the brain chemistry of pleasure this book talks about. But I will mention one fundamental part that is key to how humans experience all kinds of pleasure. Pleasure is (more or less) regulated by a small region of the brain called the medial forebrain pleasure circuit ( MFPC, from now on). When we experience…
