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Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

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Anna Lembke

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“The phylogenetically uber-ancient neurological machinery for processing pleasure and pain has remained largely intact throughout evolution and across species. It is perfectly adapted for a world of scarcity. Without pleasure we wouldn’t eat, drink, or reproduce. Without pain we wouldn’t protect ourselves from injury and death. By raising our neural set point with repeated pleasures, we become endless strivers, never satisfied with what we have, always looking for more.”

PainPleasureNeuroscienceScarcityPain And PleasureDopamine
Book:Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
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“Between the pleasure of a kiss and of what a man and woman do in bed seems to me only a gradation. A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what's the use debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football gamme--or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I'll leave that to the philosophers. But their attitude was that I must be somehow demented or blind (plus a kind of regret, I thought, at the fact that a fairly attractive woman is presumably unavailable to men). [...] The most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone--that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women. It was said or at least implied yesterday that my present course would bring me to the depths of human vice and degeneration. Yes, I have sunk a good deal since they took you from me. It is true, if I were to go on like this and be spied upon, attacked, never possessing one person long enough so that knowledge of a person is a superficial thing--that is degeneration. Or to live against one's grain, that is degeneration by definition.”

PleasureAttitudeViceRapportDementedDegenerationPhilosophers
Book:The Price of Salt
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“I thought of fleeting satisfaction, of happiness, of romance, of perfect silver screen moments shared with a companion, and of perfect blue movie moments too. Yet I had never stopped to wonder whether that one companion might satisfy me completely, having assumed always that there would be another to follow who would touch a different chord in me, who would bring me a different pleasure, and that with all of them taken together I would create for myself a mosaic of experiences that gave me everything that I wanted to experience in the course of my life; everything that I wanted to feel, to enjoy.”

PleasureLoversExperienceSatisfaction
Book:The Erotic Notebooks
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“Yet the thought of how it might be to be with a lover who knew me, who glimpsed all of the desires that lie within me, even the darkest ones, and accepted them and wanted to fulfil them, is something I have never allowed myself to imagine. And to know, truly know all that my lover wanted, and to feel that I gave it to them. There is something wonderful, and dangerous, and powerful, and exciting in that. Perhaps that is the way to make the excitement endure, not fade a little more with every sunrise.”

DesireSexPleasureFantasyExcitement Of Love
Book:The Erotic Notebooks
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