The Second Rule of the Balance

The same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain. They're co located and they work like opposite sides of a balance. When we do something pleasurable, which releases dopamine in our brain's reward pathway, our brain responds immediately by tipping our balance to the side of pain. But with repeated exposure to the same or similar reinforcing stimulus, that initial response to pleasure gets weaker and shorter. And eventually, what happens is that we get no release at all potentially, but we get a huge come down. We end up in this kind of chronic state where our balance is tilted chronically to the sideof pain.