It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. You’ve done it once. You can do it again. Yep. Pleasure and pain. That’s what I’m talking about tonight. So what do I mean by that? The hair. Think I might need a hairdresser. When we’re trying to find pleasure from something through something, it’s usually from an external source. And we get this … and I talked about it last year at a TEDx night, there’s some clip from a pleasurable activities or from pleasurable substances.
There’s endorphin rushes, there’s dopamine hits, there’s all these funky kind of stuff that goes on inside your body that makes you feel good, hence the term pleasure. So you get this, you feel good. It’s feel good hormones and feel good mood enhancers and that’s what kind of happens. So the things I’m talking about here are food, sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling for some people, those kind of things that you think you’re going to get pleasure out of them.
So you’d go for it and you have that chocolate biscuit or you have that bottle of champagne, or you have the wild hookup and it’s pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure and you want more, you want more, you want more and soon the one chocolate biscuit’s not enough for the pleasure.
It’s a tub of ice cream and it goes over to that line of pain and what I want everyone to think about and what I’ve certainly been thinking about recently, is trying to find that pleasure in other ways and try and satiate those desires and that feel good stuff, but being able to do it internally and just for yourself. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly believe that there is nothing wrong with any of those pleasurable activities or things I’ve spoken about. Hell, I’ve done them all. Absolutely done them all.
I believe, chances are most people try recreational drugs at some point, most people use alcohol at some point. I think everyone needs to work on having a great sex life. Food can be really pleasurable and a social activity and tastes and flavors and the people you’re with. I think the problem is and the problem we get into problems, is when we’re trying to gain pleasure from it because we’re not getting that pleasure from somewhere else. I think that’s where the issues start. So next time you reach for something to get that instant pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, hit me pleasure hit me pleasure, hit.
Think about it, is that instant fix going to actually help you long term? Is that instant fix going to make you feel better in an hour? Like if you are at home and you’re feeling miserable and you go, okay, I’m going to eat that tub of ice cream, you might be feeling it’s going to make you feel better because you’ve got the sugar and you’ve got the coldness and the comfort, whatever it is for you.
But then there’s guilt, shame, anxiety, depression, sugar come-down, ice cream headache, all those other … and it hits over to that pain thing. With sex, if it’s a pleasurable activity for you, but you’re doing it too often with too many random people, the pain hits in a, why can’t I be loved? Why can’t I find a partner? I’m not a tramp or a hussy, whatever the terminology you want to use is, why can’t someone love me for me? And the pain hits, all very different if you’re going into any of these things with your eyes wide open and you know what the end result is going to be, and it is actually what you want.
I’m talking about those times when you reach for something for that pleasure rush and it dissipates and you’re left with the pain. When we learn to control that. Awesome. Absolutely awesome. So in the great words of Chrissy Amphlett, it’s a fine, fine line between pleasure and pain. Okay. That’s it. Think about it next time. Think about what you reach for, the next time you want to have that sense of pleasure. Maybe try picking up a phone to a friend. Try something different. Okay. It could be good. Mwah, night night.