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By Root 1203 0

frustration of trying is part of what happiness requires, and the agony of real growth is necessary to a good life. Here are some of the things long-term happiness requires in the short term: studying for exams; caring for children who are going through unpleasant phases; being responsible at work; forgiving friends and spouses who have hurt you terribly; keeping the promises of marriage; maintaining your home; going to the doctor and dentist; saving money; finding something nice to eat; taking a walk; visiting your extended family. Drugs can provide true euphoria, and they can provide good-day happiness. They cannot provide the goods of good-life happiness. Good-life happiness absolutely requires putting in a variety of tiring efforts, many of which are better done sober. The rewards are not merely the result of the struggle; they are the struggle, seen from a different angle, from a different vantage point in time.

So, no pill can touch overall good-life happiness, because that is an intellectual and emotional assessment, not a bodily mood. When people worry over what would become of us if we had a true happiness pill, they are asking about good-day happiness. The reason I dismiss the question as it might pertain to euphoria is that there are euphoria happiness pills already, and most of humanity does not sustain interest in them. For the great majority of people who try them, nonaddictive euphoria drugs (psychedelic mushrooms, for example) do not become a lifelong or frequent habit. Euphoria lacks the anchors of our common existence. That is part of what makes it euphoria. But the absence of these anchors can be scary and keeps you from your common doings and pleasures. Also, of course, these drugs are illegal. And, since they are illegal, people worry about the lack of safety controls. But even if they were legal and relatively safe, it seems likely that euphoric hallucinogenic drug use would be rare for most people. So what is left to worry about is good-day happiness pills. Modern psychopharmaceuticals are not supposed to make you joyous or even happy. Doses start low, and when the subject reports that his or her symptoms have abated, that is the dose that is maintained. Why do we treat drug euphoria as a problematic side effect? We do not even have a word that would indicate a high level of regular happiness. I’ll use rapture. We fear that rapture leads to addiction. Addiction can be unpleasant. It can also be pleasant, of course (you probably enjoy needing coffee), but when it is bad, it is awful. Also, people fear that rapture would diminish our willpower to do the chores required for life happiness (though it does not always have this effect). I agree that both points are a matter of concern, but the dismissal of rapture in response to these two threats seems extreme.

Shouldn’t we be nicer to ourselves? Drugs are a historically consistent part of how we manage the emotions of being a mammal who can think, and remember, and ask why the world is not otherwise. Even if you are healthy and shrewd, the world can break your heart. Woody Allen and Schopenhauer both memorably lamented that nature was essentially “one enormous restaurant,” plants eating other plants, big fish eating little fish, indeed, everyone hounding everyone else, offering “only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on…until once again the crust of the planet breaks.”7 It is hard to be such a clever mammal that we notice this. Of course you need a drink. Or something.

The legal antidepressants that we use today will change meaning. I don’t know whether they will prove unhealthful, or will be found to extend life and be put in the water for everyone; whether feminists will reject them or demand them; whether children raised on them will someday denounce today’s doctors or thank them. We may feel we missed all the fun of original cocaine-laden Coca-Cola,