Our legal systems, our religions, our educational systems are all deeply concerned with controlling pleasure. We have created detailed rules and customs surrounding sex, drugs, food, alcohol, and even gambling. Jails are bursting with people who have violated laws that proscribe certain forms of pleasure or who profit by encouraging others to do so.

Most experiences in our lives that we find transcendent - whether illicit vices or socially sanctioned ritual and social practices as diverse as exercise, meditative prayer, dancing 'til you drop, and playing on the internet: They all evoke neural signals that converge on a small group of interconnected brain areas called the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. Evolution has, in effect, hardwired us to catch a pleasure buzz from a wide variety of experiences from crack to cannabis, from meditation to masturbation, from Bordeau to beef.