Pleasure is an interesting concept for the sheer fact that we crave it as humans.
What I have found in my life experiences, especially living in a city like Las Vegas, is that pleasure can oftentimes ruin somebody's life if it is all somebody seeks out of their life.
It doesn't matter whether it is drugs, gambling, sex, traveling, drinking - anything that creates a pleasure spike will eventually need more stimulus to provide the same result as the initial stimulus.
If you are one that likes to to drink alcohol because you like the feeling of being drunk, the more alcohol you will eventually have to consume to chase the same feeling.
If you like to have a lot of emotionless sex, you will eventually need to have more sex with more people to fill a void in which you cannot fill on your own.
Pleasure seeking plays a role in the human psyche that suppresses ones ability to act in a way that genuinely suits the human spirit.
Pleasure seekers oftentimes do not have pure intentions with anything they do because they are only thinking about the result in which they themselves feel good for the short-term.
That is what pleasure does, it forces one to only value short-term gratification than actually think about how it can effect them in the long run.
People that drink and have a lot of sex with random people know that it is bad for them, but they do it anyway because they would rather seek that short-term spike than the long-term glory of having a real purpose in life.
One thing that I genuinely believe is that there will always be a new mountain to climb if you are a man that wishes to live a life of achievement.
Oftentimes, you will see people reach their goals and then start chasing pleasure as if there wasn't another mountain to climb.
You see it a lot in bodybuilding - competitors will diet and kill themselves to be shredded and jacked on stage and then after the show, they rebound and get fat because all they can think about is eating a shit ton of food. So, people did all of that work for one day just to let themselves go because they would rather chase the short-term pleasure spike of over-eating shitty food.
You see it many times with people that reach a level of fame or financial freedom - once they make their money, they start looking for anything and everything to buy until it eventually means nothing. You can only buy so many cars, trips, or women until you eventually feel nothing from it at all.
It is like the steak house analogy I have used before - if you go to a five-star steak house every night of the week, you eventually become desensitized to the fact you're eating there because you are used to it. Whereas, if you ate at a five-star steak house once a month or once every couple of months, it gives you something to actually look forward to.
In a place like Las Vegas, everyone is addicted to seeking pleasure.
People go to that city to blow their money and only seek out things that will make them feel good for a couple of hours out of their entire lives.
Extremely successful men go to Vegas, spend all of their money on girls, drugs, and alcohol, and then return home to their wives and families as if nothing ever happened.
Women will go to Vegas on one of their "girls trips" just so they can get wasted with their friends, sleep with some men, and then return home to their husbands and families like nothing ever happened.
The point that I am trying to make is that seeking pleasure can have long-term consequences for only a short-term gain.
I have personally sought out pleasure before as just about anyone has at one point in their lives, but I have never been one to let chasing pleasure define me.
When I was bodybuilding, I experimented with anabolic steroids knowing the long-term consequences just so that I could look a certain way for a short period of time.
Some steroids made me feel like I was Superman whenever I walked into the gym and some made me feel like a complete piece of shit.
One day I woke up and realized that feeling like shit was not worth it in the long-term and that is when I quit bodybuilding and quit experimenting with performance enhancing drugs.
I am back to being all natural now, I look great and feel even better. While I am not lifting the same weight I used to or look as big and jacked as I used to, I have to work much harder now to maintain the look that I have. This to me is worth more in the long-term than sacrificing my mental and physical health for a short-term gain.
To me, I think sex is the the one form of pleasure that people today seek out the most simply because everything has become so sexualized with social media and the internet.
People are being programmed in real time to only value things like sex by having all access to things like porn and tons of beautiful women showing off their bodies online.
It doesn't go without mentioning that men do the same as women in terms of showing themselves off online, but the sexual marketplace for men compared to women is extremely small on a macro scale.
People that value the pleasure spikes they get from sex with random people oftentimes are emotionally unavailable, lack conviction, lack commitment, and are genuinely not confident people.
Confidence is built through ones ability to commit to things and when people can't commit to being particular with who they choose to share their bodies with, their self-esteem goes down with them.
There are studies now that show that men who have more sexual partners in their lifetime either end up alone or divorced in the long-term.
With women, it is slightly different but often ends with the same outcome, either divorced or alone.
Sex for men is different than it is for women.
Women preserve their femininity through their ability to be exclusive from having access to a lot of men.
Sex is also more of an emotional connection for women than it is for men. So, the more a woman shares her body with other men, the more emotionally unstable she becomes and the more she diminishes her value as a woman.
Men who are confident and driven will not take a woman who has had many sexual partners seriously and women inherently know this.
Men are more interested in a woman's past the same way women are more interested in a man's future. Many times if a woman has been with a bunch of men in her past, she wont even try and bother mentioning it to her partner because of this fact.
Women inherently know that promiscuity closes them off from being desirable in the long-term by men because promiscuity is only a short-term desirable quality.
The point that I am making is, having many sexual partners whether you're a man or a woman is not worth it in the long-term just so you can have ten minutes of gratification in your life.
Having self-respect is worth it in the long-term.
Having discipline is worth it in the long-term.
Being a person of commitment is worth it in the long-term.
I have seen first-hand what having money and chasing pleasure does to people in the long-term and what I can tell you is that whether you are a man or a woman, it isn't worth it.
You can only travel to so many places before showing up to the airport becomes more of a nuisance than it does a vacation.
You can only have so many clothes until you realize you have a closet full of shit that you don't even wear.
You can only have sex with so many people until you realize that one person was more than enough and you have been wasting all of your time trying to feel a connection that doesn't exist.
No amount of money, trips, clothes, drugs, sex, or alcohol is ever going to be able to replace these core tenants of being a confident human being who has self-respect.