The exchange about the drugs reminds me of a conversation I had once with a neurologist about anti-depressants. The gist of it was that we know what anti-depressants do in the body, and we know that one of the effects of taking them in to relieve depression, but we don’t know what the connection is between the two. He agreed with me that “anti-depressant” was kind of an unfortunate name for them, because it implied a condition that carried a stigma—the person we were trying to convince to take them kept insisting she wasn’t depressed (and, in fact, that wasn’t what they were being prescribed for). I started calling them “neurotransmitter supplements” in order to remove the stigma.
(This was all a while back—they may know more now.)
Usually, from what I remember, they target the enzyme that breaks down the “happy molecules” that your brain secretes; leading to the happy stuff persisting longer in the brain.
Our brains have an intricate punishment/reward system to keep us doing the actions that the brain thinks it likes, like eating chocolate - even if the ‘happy’ person eating that chocolate is already 300 lbs..