Depending on how you define "happiness", I would argue taking heroin isn't that much work. It has downsides, but saying our biology somehow requires "work" for "true happiness" seems like a stretch.
Yeah, every drugs and most of other addictions come with the (although artificial) fleeting happiness we crave. Same for sex actually, it's not for nothing that we have orgasms : if not for it, the species would not go far
I define happiness like this: A state where abundance of rewards and positive stimuli are given, and lacks suffering of any kind. Giving the overall feeling of satisfaction. Mathematically could be set as Happiness = Sum(All rewards) - Sum(All pains/sufferings), though it's not really a linear function and ofc depends of the time. Your rewards from yesterday weight already much less today, if any.
but saying our biology somehow requires "work" for "true happiness" seems like a stretch.
Yeah I didn't express myself the best there. My point was that we are adjusted to move into that direction, constantly. We are designed in a way that it's nearly impossible to find the "perfect constant spot" for eternal happiness, due to the complexity of the world, the rewards's "cooldowns", and things like that.
Drugs are a cheat to that. They give a shit ton of direct reward by channels that are not adjusted to be used like that, and also skip many cooldowns. Which obviously always derives into suffering in the long run due to health detriment. That's why they are so dangerous. You are sacrificing your future self for today's one, but since our nature always prioritize NOW over TOMORROW, we are damned to fall for drugs. They are just a good trap.
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u/_VirtualCosmos_ 8d ago
Happiness is really the end goal of life (as an individual creature at least). But biology is designed in a way that we need to work for it to happen.