Chapter 2: Running from Pain

By protecting our children from adversity, have we made them deathly afraid of it? By bolstering their self-esteem with false praise and a lack of real-world consequences, have we made them less tolerant, more entitled, and ignorant of their own character defects? By giving in to their every desire, have we encouraged a new age of hedonism?
We’ll do almost anything to distract ourselves from ourselves. Yet all this trying to insulate ourselves from pain seems only to have made our pain worse.
we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable

Chapter 3: The Pleasure-Pain Balance

Dopamine may play a bigger role in the motivation to get a reward than the pleasure of the reward itself.
heavy, prolonged consumption of high-dopamine substances eventually leads to a dopamine deficit state
The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind
If we wait long enough, our brains (usually) readapt to the absence of the drug and we reestablish our baseline homeostasis: a level balance. Once our balance is level, we are again able to take pleasure in everyday, simple rewards. Going for a walk. Watching the sun rise. Enjoying a meal with friends.
people who struggle with severe addiction slipping right back into compulsive use with a single exposure, even after years of abstinence
With prolonged and repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity to tolerate pain decreases, and our threshold for experiencing pleasure increases.

High-dopamine goods mess with our ability to delay gratification, a phenomenon called delay discounting (the fact that the value of a reward goes down the longer we have to wait for it)
When one chose immediate rewards, emotion and reward-processing parts of the brain lit up. When we delayed our reward, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain involved in planning and abstract thinking—became active.

In humans, high levels of physical activity in junior high, high school, and early adulthood predict lower levels of drug use. Exercise has also been shown to help those already addicted to stop or cut back.
By 2002, the top-paid 20 percent were twice as likely to work long hours as the lowest-paid 20 percent, and that trend continues. Economists speculate that this change is due to higher rewards for those at the top of the economic food chain.
The “flow” of deep concentration is a drug in itself, releasing dopamine and creating its own high. This kind of single-minded focus, although heavily rewarded in modern rich nations, can be a trap when it keeps us from the intimate connections with friends and family in the rest of our lives.

Telling the truth draws people in, especially when we’re willing to expose our own vulnerabilities. They see in our brokenness their own vulnerability and humanity.
“We must suffer, suffer into truth.” - Aeschylus
Having too much material wealth can be as bad as having too little. Dopamine overload impairs our ability to delay gratification.
honesty enhances awareness, creates more satisfying relationships, holds us accountable to a more authentic narrative, and strengthens our ability to delay gratification. It may even prevent the future development of addiction.

Shame makes us feel bad about ourselves as people, whereas guilt makes us feel bad about our actions while preserving a positive sense of self.
we can’t be good at everything, and it’s important to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, so you can make wise decisions.

The relentless pursuit of pleasure (and avoidance of pain) leads to pain.
Recovery begins with abstinence.
Abstinence resets the brain’s reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy in simpler pleasures.
Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine-overloaded world.
Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.
Pressing on the pain side resets our balance to the side of pleasure.
Beware of getting addicted to pain.
Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy, and fosters a plenty mindset.
Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.
Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing ourselves in it.