The Human Addictions

What is pleasure? You certainly know what pleasure is, since pleasure means everything to everybody. You know what hormones and neurotransmitters induce pleasure, and you know how to get pleasure whenever you desire. Pleasure relates to drugs, social encounters, fulfillment and desire, and it relates to entertainment too. What we want throughout this book is to model pleasure and addictions entirely, in order to prepare you in case that you ever have difficulties with… pleasure. …As suffering of lack of pleasure and happiness for example, or being addicted, or seeking to help others with their addiction, or seeking to learn more about yourself from your most important cognitive perspectives, or seeking ways to withdraw, etc. Pleasure, among all your feelings, along with your entire punishment-reward mechanism, does not only feel good, but it helps you understand yourself, your needs and reasoning, your behavior, and your entire meaning in the inner and outer world.
Humans seek pleasure indeed, humans venerate pleasure, but are humans sentient by nature, the way Science depicts them? …Because if humans are defined as feelers and if they are expected to behave as feelers in the world, then this is their meaning in the world, to feel everything, to feel good always, and to live life feeling the best, even addicted. …Yet as you know, humans excel at reasoning among everything else, and not necessarily at feeling, which describes more the animal kingdom. Pleasure is very good and it is better than pain, yet it is a great difference between feeling and reasoning. Reasoning is more about coping and understanding life and the world, while feeling is more about celebrating life and the world. …Yet even this statement is not entirely true, because feelings are not even abilities within your cognitive system, but feelings are only meant to signal needs, and to reward and punish you, depending on circumstances. …While reasoning is your main cognitive ability, and should be treasured the most. …And this makes a great difference, because if you happen to live your life valuing feelings including your good feelings more than your actual abilities including your cognitive abilities, then feelings and pleasure in special become your focus in life. …And with the multitude of artificial sources of pleasure that Society can offer, it is only a matter of time before you too become addicted. …And as we will see throughout the book, becoming addicted is not even an error of judgment that you make while trying to feel good in life as everyone else, but addiction is an integral part of the normal natural process of your cognitive system, and it is even used by your subconscious intelligence in various circumstances, in order to render you disposed only to specific highly important activities in life, and to neglect the rest, as it is the case with your need for reproduction, for example.
Throughout this book, we study what causes addictions in the world, from all perspectives: cognitive, empiric, behavioral, social, scientific, and ideological. We also study each type of drug along with all addictive activities, in order to understand them and be able to find ways to withdraw and to avoid them in all circumstances. …And since your life in this world along with your entire behavior have higher meanings, we are going to integrate drugs, pleasure, and addictions within the human behavior, and also within the human higher meanings in the world. This book is not only about drugs and addictions, but this book helps you understand your mind, needs, feelings, intelligence, society, behavior, development, rewards, punishments, health, stress, and relaxation, all leading to a better understanding of who you are, how you reason, how you feel, and how you interconnect with those around throughout life.