Yeah. I think it's a pseudoscience too. Even though 5HTP and St. John's Wort produce a 'happy feeling' to me and many others. It doesn't last. Even with modern day SSRIs and other depression meds, pill holidays are recommended. Pill holidays shows me that they are an imperfect solution. I would tell a person in a wheelchair to 'try and walk it off' for a few days/weeks. That's unfair to their illness, yet psych does that with their meds.
> but the reality is way more complex and nuanced.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Hopefully, we'll have a medical breakthrough in psych in the next 20 years. With all the investment, I'm optimistic.
It's obviously more complex than just being "the happy neurotransmitter", but it is tied to general mood.
I would actually say that there's a more obvious link between dopamine and mood than serotonin. Dopamine releasers (amphetamines, meth, ritalin, cocaine) produce an immediate uplifting and confidence-boosting effect. MDMA doesn't just release serotonin, it also releases dopamine. The serotonin release from MDMA is responsible for its powerful anti-anxiety effect. It's believed that the "loved up" feeling from that drug is due to an indirect action of serotonin which eventually produce oxytocin release.
Dopamine is very complex and acts on different receptors to achieve varying effects, but a sudden spike in dopamine concentration in many parts of the brain, like the nucleus accumbens, will usually result in a pleasurable feeling. This can be seen in people with dopamine-related disorders, like bipolar, and dopamine-releasing substances like amphetamine.
This drives me crazy. It's pure pseudoscience, and I hear it from people who should know better. Scientifically, we have very little idea what chemicals are actually behind different subjective feelings/moods/whatever. Everyone would love to believe that the brain operates in a simple, intuitive fashion, with one chemical for joy, one chemical for sadness, one chemical for anger, etc., but the reality is way more complex and nuanced.
For example, even something well-studied like dopamine, which has been strongly linked with the brain's addiction circuitry, doesn't necessarily stimulate any sort of direct pleasurable feeling as people often infer. It seems to work in a much subtler way, modulating learning, attention, and goal-seeking behavior. A recent study found that it doesn't even necessarily spike when good things happen, but tends to increase in response to unexpected events, good or bad.