The Molecule of More

There’s no partying there. There’s no enjoyment. This is about relieving 
the pain. People have this mistaken notion that you get high. What you’re 
really getting is relief from the low.
This is why, even if an addict uses so much cocaine (or heroin or alcohol 
or marijuana) that it no longer leads to feeling high, he will continue to 
use it.
Remember the happy surprise of the bakery with the delicious crois-
sants and coffee? You were walking along expecting nothing, something 
good appeared, and your dopamine system leaped into action—hence 
your “prediction” was wrong, and you experienced the burst of dopa-
mine from reward prediction error. You started going to that bakery 
every day. Now imagine that you’re waiting in line for your morning 
coffee and croissant, and all of a sudden your phone rings. It’s your 
boss. There’s a crisis at work. Drop whatever you’re doing, she says, and 
get to the office right away. Assuming you’re a conscientious person, 
you’ll leave the bakery empty-handed, feeling resentful and deprived. 
Now let’s say it’s Saturday night, and an addict’s brain is expecting 
the usual Saturday-night “treat,” cocaine, but it doesn’t come. Just like 
the croissant-deprived office worker, the drug-deprived addict will feel 
resentful and deprived. 
When an expected reward fails to materialize, the dopamine system 
shuts down. In scientific terms, when the dopamine system is at rest, 
it fires at a leisurely three to five times per second. When it’s excited, 
it zooms up to twenty to thirty times per second. When an expected 

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DRUGS
reward fails to materialize, the dopamine firing rate drops to zero, and 
that feels terrible.
That’s why a dopamine shutdown makes you feel resentful and 
deprived. It’s how a recovering drug addict feels every day as he strug-
gles to get clean and sober. It takes an enormous amount of strength, 
determination, and support to overcome addiction. Don’t mess with 
dopamine. It hits back hard.
DESIRE IS PERSISTENT, BUT HAPPINESS IS FLEETING
Giving in to craving doesn’t necessarily lead to pleasure because want-
ing is different from liking. Dopamine makes promises that it is in no 
position to keep. “If you buy these shoes, your life will change,” says 
the desire circuit, and it just might happen, but not because dopamine 
made you feel it. 
Dr. Kent Berridge, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at 
the University of Michigan, is a pioneering figure in the process of
disentangling dopamine desire circuits from here-and-now liking cir-
cuits. He found that when a rat tastes a sugar solution, it signals liking 
by licking its lips. In contrast, it expresses wanting by consuming more 
of the sweet liquid. When he injected a chemical into a rat’s brain that 
boosted dopamine, it consumed more sugar water, but didn’t show any 
increased signs of liking. On the other hand, when he injected an H&N 
booster, he was able to triple the lip-smacking liking response. All of a 
sudden the sugar water became far more delicious. 
In an interview with The Economist, Dr. Berridge noted that the 
dopamine desire system is powerful and highly influential in the brain, 
whereas the liking circuit is tiny, fragile, and much harder to trigger. 
The difference between the two is the reason that “life’s intense plea-
sures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desire.”
Liking involves different circuits in the brain, and uses the H&N 
chemicals, not dopamine, to send messages. In particular, liking relies 
on the same chemicals that promote the long-term satisfaction of com-
panionate love: endorphins and endocannabinoids. Because opioid 

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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
drugs such as heroin and OxyContin scramble both the desire circuit 
and the liking circuit (where dopamine acts and where endorphin acts), 
they are among the most addictive drugs there are. Marijuana is similar. 
It also interacts with both circuits, stimulating dopamine as well as the 
endocannabinoid system. This dual effect leads to unusual results. 
Boosting dopamine can lead to enthusiastic engagement with things 
that would otherwise be perceived as unimportant. For example, mari-
juana users have been known to stand in front of a sink, watching water 
drip from the faucet, captivated by the otherwise mundane sight of the 
drops falling over and over again. The dopamine-boosting effect is also 
evident when marijuana smokers get lost in their own thoughts, floating 
aimlessly through imaginary worlds of their own creation. On the other 
hand, in some situations marijuana suppresses dopamine, mimicking 
what H&N molecules tend to do. In that case, activities that would typi-
cally be associated with wanting and motivation, such as going to work, 
studying, or taking a shower, seem less important.
IMPULSIVENESS AND THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL
Many of the decisions that addicts make, particularly the harmful deci-
sions, are impulsive. Impulsive behavior occurs when too much value 
is placed on immediate pleasure and not enough on long-term conse-
quences. Desire dopamine overpowers the more rational parts of the 
brain. We make choices that we know are not in our best interest, but 
we feel powerless to resist. It’s as if our free will has been compromised 
by an overwhelming urge for immediate pleasure; perhaps it’s a bag of
potato chips when we’re on a diet, or splurging on an expensive night 
out that we can’t really afford.
Drugs that boost dopamine can also boost impulsive behavior. A 
cocaine addict once said, “When I do a line of cocaine, I feel like a new 
man. And the first thing that new man wants is another line of cocaine.” 
When the addict stimulates his dopamine system, his dopamine system 
responds by demanding more stimulation. That’s why most cocaine 
addicts smoke cigarettes when they use cocaine. Like cocaine, nicotine 

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DRUGS
stimulates additional dopamine release, but it’s cheaper and easier to 
get.
Nicotine, in fact, is an unusual drug because it does very little except 
trigger compulsive use. According to researcher Roland R. Griffiths, 
PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hop-
kins University School of Medicine, “When you give people nicotine 
for the first time, most people don’t like it. It’s different from many 
other addictive drugs, for which most people say they enjoy the first 
experience and would try it again.” Nicotine doesn’t make you high 
like marijuana or intoxicated like alcohol or wired up like speed. Some 
people say it makes them feel more relaxed or more alert, but really, the 
main thing it does is relieve cravings for itself. It’s the perfect circle. The 
only point of smoking cigarettes is to get addicted so one can experi-
ence the pleasure of relieving the unpleasant feeling of craving, like a 
man who carries around a rock all day because it feels so good when he 
puts it down.
Addiction arises from the chemical cultivation of desire. The deli-
cate system that tells us what we like or dislike is no match for the raw 
power of dopaminergic compulsion. The feeling of wanting becomes 
overwhelming and utterly detached from whether the object of desire is 
anything we really care for, is good for us, or might kill us. Addiction is 
not a sign of weak character or a lack of willpower. It occurs when the 
desire circuits get thrown into a pathological state by overstimulation. 
Prod dopamine too hard and too long, and its power comes roaring 
out. Once it has taken charge of a life, it is difficult to tame. 
THE PARKINSON’S PATIENT WHO LOST 
HIS HOME TO VIDEO POKER
Recreational drugs aren’t the only ones that stimulate dopamine. There 
are prescription drugs that do it as well, and when they hit the desire 
circuit too hard, strange things can happen. Parkinson’s disease is 
an illness of dopamine deficiency in a pathway that’s responsible for 
controlling muscle movements. Or, to put it more simply, it’s how we 

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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
translate our inner world of ideas into action, the way we impose our 
will upon the world. When there is not enough dopamine in this circuit, 
people become stiff and shaky, and they move slowly. The treatment is 
to prescribe drugs that boost dopamine.
Most people who take these drugs do just fine, but about one in 
six patients gets into trouble with high-risk, pleasure-seeking behavior. 
Pathological gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive shopping are 
the most common ways the excessive dopamine stimulation is seen. To 
explore this risk, British researchers gave a drug called L-dopa to fifteen 
healthy volunteers. L-dopa is made into dopamine inside the brain, 
and can be used to treat Parkinson’s disease. They gave another fifteen 
volunteers a placebo. Nobody knew who got the drug and who got the 
fake pill.
After they took the pills, the volunteers were given the opportu-
nity to gamble. The researchers found that the participants who took 
the dopamine-boosting pill placed larger and riskier bets than those 
who took the placebo. The effect was more pronounced in men than 
in women. The researchers periodically asked the participants to rate 
how happy they were. There was no difference between the two groups. 
The enhanced dopamine circuit boosted impulsive behavior, but not 
satisfaction—it boosted the wanting, but not the liking.
When the scientists used powerful magnetic fields to look inside their