I think the answer is that the chemicals are there as a result of processes: interactions, thoughts, the food we eat, and so on. In short, our daily lives and the choices we make are where the chemicals come from in the first place. A case can easily be made for this too.
Yes, but why not use shortcuts? Why not just throw some of the right chemicals in and make everyone happy? Don't we all want happiness?
In other words, rather than trying to feed our hunger, we could just dope ourselves up until we don't care. Or we could take soporifics and immerse ourselves in a virtual reality that resembles heaven. Or any other variation on chemically induced happiness that you care to think up.
The fact is that this happens all the time. The most common daily example is drug use, especially those drugs that cause psychological dependence. They are showing us a better time than we could get in the non-drugged-up world.
You could also say that a great portion of our online activity is another form of escape from reality, even though these examples beg the question of what reality is. If we play the game and define reality as 'natural human experiences, interactions, and the physical world' then I suppose we might be speaking of the Amish or other societies that minimize technology and stress physical presence and personal interaction.
In a more mainstream sense, we might say that reality consists of waking up and for most of us going to work and doing some sort of interaction with others to make our daily bread, having and raising children, getting old and dying. Even though none of us, hardly, do this without sometimes escaping reality, through daydreams, liquor, movies and other technological distractions, or drugs.
If we jump through all these definitional hoops, we've pretty much defined any chemical shortcut to happiness as bogus. In effect we're saying that it doesn't all come down to chemicals, negating the title of this article.
So it comes down to reality and how you define it. Mathematicians have the same metaphysical problem when dealing with paradoxes that arise because of infinities. All in all, discussions of this nature are a great escape from reality, don't you think? Say, pass me that bottle.
