Joy vs Pleasure: The Battle in Your Brain

Written by Niall Davison

What happens when dopamine becomes your compass — and joy gets lost in the noise.

I consider myself a relatively intelligent man (no matter how many times my wife tells me otherwise), but for most of my adult life I couldn’t work out the difference between pleasure and joy — despite the answer staring me in the face.

I was a happy, sports-mad kid with loads of friends. Simple, joyful things like playing football for hours in the back garden, riding my BMX up and down the street, or playing hunt with my brothers and cousins in Killynether Forest Park or on Cloughey Beach brought an endless supply of joy.

Something changed in the summer of 1990 when I was nine. The five of us — Mum, Dad, and my two brothers — were on a ferry from Larne to Stranraer when I became transfixed by the “adults only” section of the boat. A smoke-filled corridor, flashing lights, men with pints and fags pumping endless pound coins into huge, noisy machines.

Every so often, the clatter of coins would echo through the air as someone collected their winnings. The machines all had different themes — Monopoly, Cops & Robbers, Snakes & Ladders, Cluedo. I was mesmerised. OK, I thought, this is what adults do for fun. Cool.

I grasped the concept quickly: get three or four fruits in a row and the machine spits out “free” money. What fun!

When we finally arrived at the Capital Hotel in Edinburgh, my eyes lit up when I spotted one of these machines in the hotel bar. I asked Mum and Dad if I could put my £1 pocket money in. Surprisingly, they agreed — even giving me a footie-up to reach the coin slot. I guess they thought it might teach me a lesson about gambling.

On my first spin, three cherries lined up in the middle. £1.00 was my reward, but I had the option to gamble to £2.00 or collect. Without thinking, I hit the flashing Gamble button — and when the £2.00 light blinked on, I whacked Collect. Out popped two shiny coins into the collection tray.

Mum and Dad looked both confused and oddly impressed.
‘How did you know how to do that?’ Mum asked.
I lied, like the seasoned gambler I’d later become: ‘Oh, it’s just beginner’s luck, Mum.’

I pocketed the £2.00 and didn’t touch another fruit machine the rest of the trip.

But I can still remember that buzz — watching those three cherries fall. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Pure euphoria. My whole body shook like a bottle of Coke just before the cap’s unscrewed and all the fizz rushes out. I’d never felt so alive.

Although I wouldn’t play another machine for a while, I couldn’t wait to feel that magic again. I was metaphorically off to the races — a wide-eyed kid in a sweet shop.

A few years later, when I started drinking regularly at 13, my brain lit up the same way. Alcohol made me feel unstoppable. From a shy kid terrified of reading out loud in class, I became cocky, funny, confident. I could finally chat to girls without treating them like distant objects.

The thing is, at nine and thirteen, my brain was already being rewired — chasing pleasure through instant gratification, mistaking fake highs for happiness. And without realising it, the quiet, natural joy of life was being stolen from me.

Truth be told, I probably hadn’t even started puberty by thirteen. We don’t become official adults until 18. The human brain isn’t fully developed until around twenty-five — so what chance did I really have? How could I have known those instant dopamine hits weren’t happiness at all, just the illusion of it?

From thirteen onwards, my brain was wired to think:

Gambling = fun, excitement, and a way to make money without working for it.
Drinking = fun, excitement, confidence to talk to girls.

Ding, ding, ding — dopamine, dopamine, dopamine.

This is where happiness resides. This is what makes me happy.

It took me thirty years to realise gambling and drinking were nothing more than fake highs — pleasure dressed up as joy. Pleasure is fleeting, alluring, even sexy. Joy is organic, steady, lasting, and fulfilling. Pleasure almost always comes with pain — it’s a trade-off. Joy gives without asking for anything in return.

Decades of conditioning led me to believe drinking and gambling were the two things that brought me the most happiness in life. Truth is, they were the two things holding me back the most. I hit a stage where I thought I needed a drink to enjoy any social occasion, and I needed a bet to properly enjoy any sporting event.

If my wife suggested going to the beach on holiday, my brain would instantly think: there better be a bar. If we booked a catamaran trip around the coast of Majorca or Cyprus, it wasn’t the coastline or the company I was excited about — it was whether it was an all-you-can-drink booze cruise.

During the Klopp era, I couldn’t just watch my beloved Liverpool tear teams apart. I needed to back us -1 on the half-time handicap. That wasn’t enhancing the experience — it was narrowing it. These moments should’ve been joyful on their own terms. But by cranking up the dopamine with fake highs, all I was really doing was shrinking my happiness window and diluting the natural joy.

I used to think my ideal summer holiday was lying by the pool, reading a book and necking copious amounts of alcohol all day. Turns out, my ideal summer holiday is still lying by the pool, still reading a book — I’ve just realised alcohol had nothing to do with it. I was addicted to a drug, fuelled by dopamine and withdrawal, that conned me into believing it was the cherry on top of the cake, when in reality it was a turd on top, doing nothing but ruin my perfect day.

Every time I came back from a weekend away with the boys with a four-day hangover — two days physical, two days mental — I’d tell myself the lie that it was worth it.

Worth what? Feeling like a 4 out of 10, dragging myself through life, convincing myself that happiness was on the other side of another drink or another win.

I think deep down, we all know this already. At forty-two, I started having random flashbacks to my childhood and found myself genuinely confused: why the fuck were you so happy back then? There was no drinking, no betting — so how could I have been this little bundle of joy without the two things I thought brought me the most happiness?

That’s when I realised my brain had been hijacked — conditioned into believing pleasure was joy.

The good news? We get to take it back, if we really want it.

Human beings are masters of habituation. Ever wondered how someone like Nelson Mandela could spend thirty years in a disgusting prison cell being fed revolting slop and still live with meaning and purpose? Or how Stephen Hawking, diagnosed with ALS at 21, managed to charm the world with science and wit for another fifty years? We adapt to whatever hand we’re dealt. It’s what we do.

An old football manager of mine used to say, “You can only piss with the penis you were given,” whenever half the squad was out injured. In other words, this is where we’re at — so let’s pull together and win the bloody match.

I’ve listened to podcasts where ex–bare-knuckle boxers, who’ve found sobriety, wax lyrical about the joy of hearing birdsong while walking the dog at 6 a.m. And they genuinely mean it. When you’re no longer a slave to your drug of choice, even the simplest things become little pockets of joy.

The human brain is an incredible bit of kit. Within weeks, it can rewire and reset your dopamine levels back to baseline. A day at the beach becomes epic again simply because it’s a day at the fucking beach, and not a day in the office. It doesn’t have to be an excuse to smash eight pints by 2 p.m. The empty calories of pleasure get swapped out for the nutritious fulfilment of joy.

Pleasure is the ugly, narcissistic sister of joy. Don’t fall for her charms.

Joy is waiting for you — you just need the balls to go and grab it.

*If you want to read more of these weekly blogs, you can find them on my completely free Substack newsletter, Half-Time Team Talk: Calling time on booze, bets and bad habits. For those curious about the path less chosen in the second half on life.