DRUGSBut even if the name seems committed to memory, it almost always
fades quickly. Important names—those of people who can affect our
lives—are easier. The name of the person who flirted with you at the
party will stay in your memory longer than the name of the person
who ignored you. So will the name of the man who told you to set up
an appointment to see him because he wants to give you a job—and
his name will stick with you even more reliably if you’re unemployed.
Similarly, male rats remember the correct route through a maze more
easily if there is a sexually receptive female at the other end. Sometimes
the intensity of focus can be so great that your attention will get stuck
on things that don’t matter at the expense of things that do. A man who
had a Beretta 9mm handgun pointed at his face during a robbery was
asked to describe his assailant. He said, “I don’t remember his face, but
I can describe the gun.”
Under more normal conditions, though, dopamine activation in
the desire circuit triggers energy, enthusiasm, and hope. It feels good.
In fact, some people spend the majority of their lives pursuing this
feeling—a feeling of anticipation, a feeling that life is about to get bet-
ter. You’re about to eat a delicious dinner, see an old friend, make a big
sale, or receive a prestigious award. Dopamine turns on the imagina-
tion, producing visions of a rosy future.
What happens when the future becomes the present—when the
dinner is in your mouth or your lover is in your arms? The feelings
of excitement, enthusiasm, and energy dissipate. Dopamine has shut
down. Dopamine circuits don’t process experience in the real world,
only imaginary future possibilities. For many people it’s a letdown.
They’re so attached to dopaminergic stimulation that they flee the pres-
ent and take refuge in the comfortable world of their own imagination.
“What will we do tomorrow?” they ask themselves as they chew their
food, oblivious to the fact that they’re not even noticing this meal they
had so eagerly anticipated. To travel hopefully is better than to arrive is the
motto of the dopamine enthusiast.
The future isn’t real. It’s made up of a bundle of possibilities that
exist only in our minds. Those possibilities tend to be idealized—we usu-
ally don’t imagine a mediocre outcome. We tend to think about the best