The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity--and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

This book is what I want more nonfiction books to be like. A bunch of studies related to dopamine are explained. Each study's underlying scientific principles, original hypotheses, and possible interpretations are summarized, and each study is used to demonstrate how dopamine affects the many facets of humanity. I appreciated how the equipment used in the research or how the data is collected was always explained. The book is also written in a very accessible way and is a very pleasant read. The book goes over a broad range of topics, such as politics, culture, mental disorders, creativity, and achieving happiness. It slowly builds evidence that much of what we see in our lives is the result of dopamine or the lack thereof. I personally see the subjects brought up upon in the book through the lens the book is written in now, and I am glad that I have a more informed and nuanced interpretation. The book uncovers the hidden world of dopamine very well, and I am eager to try out the lessons taught in the book for myself.

I loved this book. It’s a quick read and it’s packed with so much useful information. Now I know why we all spend so much time chasing the next shiny object. But more importantly I know how to stop it.

Very informative, The book is about how our pursuit of dopamine influence our lives, both positively and negatively.. Dopamine is only future oriented it is about pursuit not enjoyment. What the author calls Here and Now brain chemicals allow us to experience life. The book is about the need to balance both dopamine and the here and now chemicals in order to develop a happy fulfilled life. The first 6 chapters are building a base of understanding. The last (7th) chapter is about action and developing a balance between the two classes of chemicals. Read the last chapter first then read the entire book. Very worthwhile reading.

This book review took me a full week to write. Every time I sat down to collect my thoughts my phone would ping with a message from a friend and I would get swept up in whatever their drama was. One of those days I got a message from a young woman on a dating app, and the idea of meeting her for dinner consumed my mind to the point where I wrote nothing at all. Although frustrating, now that I am on day five of attempting to write this review, I have come to find it precisely appropriate that the dopamine mechanism in my brain kept me distracted for a full week. But let’s get to it. Look at everything in your immediate vicinity. The chair you’re sitting on, the screen you’re reading this off of, the few other things you can smell and touch; this is your here and now. Everything else is inspired and manipulated by dopamine. Even an object that is across the room (one that you can see), the desire to go and pick it up is driven by dopamine, because dopamine is the molecule that allows us to imagine a potential future. It makes you believe that whatever you have at present is not as good as what you could potentially have later. Is the steak you’re eating for dinner right now really that good, or will the pizza you’ve got planned for tomorrow night be better? Have you finally found love, or is there a person even more suitable to you still out there waiting to be met and courted? Is this book review a good one, or will the next book be more interesting? One of the most intriguing lessons I learned from this book was the connection between dopamine and creativity. Dopamine is the all important chemical for planning things in the future, and creativity is literally the process of imagining something new and creating it, therefore it makes sense that creative people have been found to have larger (or more populous) dopamine receptors in their brains. The world of science is similar. Scientists ask questions, imagine potential futures, and go in search of answers. Scientists have similarly been found to have more dopamine in their brains than the average person. Sometimes this can be a scary thing; how many great artists and scientists from history do we know who have had addictions or compulsions they were perpetually unable to overcome? Picasso and Einstein, both geniuses in their respective fields, are known to have philandered about with a variety of women (despite both being married several times throughout their lives). The line between madness and genius can indeed be a thin one. Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and economics, and also lived with schizophrenia (he is portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind based on the book of the same name). There is a story about Nash in which he is asked how he can possibly believe that he is being contacted by aliens, to which he responds: “the ideas I have about supernatural beings come to me the same way that my mathematical ideas do.” Another interesting anecdote is the idea that almost anything can become addicting if it triggers your dopamine circuits. I experienced this myself one year when I went on four separate multi-day vacations each precisely one month apart. After returning home from the fourth trip, I spent an entire week planning number five until I eventually talked myself out of it. I have personally found it true that any repeated behavior that gives me a positive hit of dopamine can become something that I crave again and again. For some people it’s an injection of heroin, for others it’s getting on an airplane to a vacation destination. Here’s a question: Does Steven King still enjoy writing scary books? Or is he just chasing another dopamine hit? Do you think Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks still enjoy making movies, or are they simply looking for the rush of excitement they get from the next great script to be sent their way? Does Bob Dylan still get the same satisfaction from performing that he used to? Or is his dopamine drip firmly in control, always pushing him to play another show? Our authors mirror all of this research with a study done on happiness, in which they found that people were less happy when their mind was wandering. “It didn’t matter what the activity was. Whether they were eating, working, watching TV, or socializing, they were happier if they were paying attention to what they were doing.” Especially with the rise of social media platforms, a lot of time spent mentally wandering is time spent comparing yourself to others who probably have more of what you want (or what you think you want). These platforms, and our cell phones in general, are the most addicting things ever invented—every ping triggers our dopamine receptors. The researchers concluded that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” Living in the moment makes a human happy, as does appreciating what you already have and doing your best not to pine for more. Turns out all of those spiritual gurus really are on to something! On the one hand, dopamine has made us Homo Sapiens the dominate species on the planet by giving our ancestors “the ability to create tools, invent abstract sciences, and plan far into the future.” We have brought into being a world in which buildings scrape the skies, the internet unites communities across the oceans, and 8 billion humans coexist relatively peacefully. We have achieved wondrous accomplishments thanks to our internal desires for a better and more comfortable life. The question on the other hand, however, is where does it end? Our authors cautious us, noting that “in an environment of plenty in which we have mastered our world and developed sophisticated technology—in a time when more is no longer a matter of survival—dopamine continues to drive us forward, perhaps to our own destruction.” Obviously we cannot renounce all sensual pleasures and plans for the future, we are not Buddha. We want things in life for ourselves and our loved ones and we want to contribute to the betterment and advancement of society. But we can recognize our addictions and find balance. Personally, I have gotten into the habit of leaving my phone on silent. In the past it was only when I was watching a movie or at the Thanksgiving dinner table, but now I leave it silenced almost exclusively. I don’t want my phone to be in charge of telling me when some ‘important’ message comes my way; I check my phone when I want to, not the other way around. It’s one small step towards living in the moment. (Don’t worry Mom, I got all six of your voicemails and I will call you back.) Are there areas of your life that you keep going back to, despite the knowledge that it is unhealthy for your mind or body? Dopamine is the molecule of more, which means the most important question to answer is this: When is more a good thing, and when is it detrimental? That is stability.

I just finished this book and it’s very helpful understanding that the power of dopamine isn’t so much as about “pleasure “ but the pursuit of it. It’s like look under the hood of your own psychology and understanding which wires tend to get crossed. There’s also developmental psychology in here as well!

Such a great and easy read! Definitely would recommend if you’re interested in understanding human behavior.

The book was listed as used, but it arrived in excellent condition and looked almost new. The pages were clean, the cover was in great shape, and everything matched the description perfectly. Shipping was very fast—it arrived before I even returned home from vacation. Overall, this was a smooth and reliable transaction. I would definitely buy from this seller again.

A very readable book which gives fascinating insights into how the human mind works and just how much of our behaviour is influenced by biology. Here's a scientific basis for why we often feel unsatisfied and keep chasing more - more things, more thrills, more success. The authors also give some very straightforward and practical ideas for achieving balance, with the potential to improve our individual happiness as well as the health of the planet. My only complaint was that I wanted more details about how dopamine circuits actually work; the book glossed over the technical details to focus on the practical effects. Having said that, they give lots of recommendations for further reading should you want to delve deeper into the technicalities.

Absolut lesenswert! Mir hilft es im Alltag zu bemerken, wo ich von Dopamin beeinflusst werde und gar keinen freien Willen an den Tag lege. Nun kann ich dem Einhalt gebieten und bewusstere Entscheidungen fällen. Gleichzeitig hilft es mir zu verstehen, was die Menschen bewegt. Der Einfluss von Dopamin (und natürlich vielem Anderen) unter den Menschen ist gewaltig. Zum Inhalt: The Molecule of More, ein 238-Seiten starkes Werk von Lieberman und Long beschreibt in einfacher zugänglicher Sprache die Wirkweise, den evolutionären Nutzen und die Problematik des Botenstoffs Dopamin. Kurze narrative Abschnitte zu realen und typischen Fällen helfen die Materie im Alltag zu verorten. Als Kapitel sind die Themen "Up versus Down" (quasi das Verfügbare, das, was wir in der Hand haben im Unterschied zu dem, das wir von Dopamin angeregt in die Hände kriegen sollen), Love, Drugs, Domination, Creativity and Madness, Politics, Progress, Harmony. Die einzelnen Kapitel gehen auf weitere Themen, darunter auch auf Alltagsdrogen wie Alkohol und Nikotin, Neurodivergenzen wie ADS/ADHS usw. ein. Zahlreiche Metaphern bringen in bildreicher Sprache auf den Punkt, was es mit Dopamin auf sich hat. Darüberhinaus: Das Werk animiert mich dazu weiter zu denken, weiter zu fragen. Ich sehe klare Zusammenhänge zu Ethik, Wirtschaft, Konsum, Kapitalismus, Religion u. v. m. So kann man die Vier edlen Wahrheiten des Buddhismus etwa auf Dopamin hin neu lesen und im "Leiden" bzw. "Durst" als Conditio Humana die Wirkmacht von Dopamin sehen, im edlen achtfachen Pfad dagegen ein Mittel zur Hemmung des nicht konstruktiven Dopamins und eine Förderung des ausgewogenen Dopamins und den übrigen Hormonen (im Text als H&N's bezeichnet). Zum Buch: Das Taschenbuch ist sauber gedruckt in gut leserlicher eleganter Antiquaschrift. Das Papier riecht nur schwach, der Umschlag ist schön gestaltet. Ein echter Handschmeichler. Weitere Leseempfehlungen: Wer sich damit auseinandersetzen will, was uns als Menschen im Alltag beeinflusst, mag bestimmt Bücher zu Sozialpsychologie, Evolution, Neurobiologie, zur inneren Uhr, Hormonen, Körpersprache und Rhetorik. Als leichte Lektüre empfehle ich hier z. B. "how to be animal - what it means to be human" von Melanie Challenger als ein nächster Schritt. Hier wird die Ethik in den Fokus gerückt, die ganz anders aussähe, wenn wir uns als biologische Wesen und nicht als Krone der Schöpfung, Ebenbild Gottes, absolut vernunftbegabt etw. sehen.

Très bon livre

Fantastic read , really informative about how dopamine effects everything we do.

It explains dopamine activity in your brain in easy to understand terms. It covers a range of ways in which it affects your life. I recommend it to anyone interested in mental well being and those struggling with mood disorders like manic depression.

Excelente