This interesting thought experiment and associated questions deserves a substantial response. Alas, for now, I can only suggest that you read Robert Nozick's discussion of happiness and the "pleasure machine" thought experiment, a nice discussion of which was offered in the New York Times by David Sosa here .

Yes, Buddhism suggests that we need to detach ourselves from our cravings and anxieties in order to escape from our suffering. The practice of meditation is designed to help with this process. By engaging in the focused breathing or other methods of meditation, you begin to learn to control the mind's tendency to wander and obsess. Instructions for a pretty simple type of meditation can be found here . But like any other practice, it is best learned from an expert and by repetition. One might also argue that the practice of philosophical thinking in general can help one overcome our transient worries and anxieties. By carefully reflecting on whether these worries are rational and on how one can best address them, one can reinterpret them in a way that should dampen the emotional reaction to them. Here, reading the Stoics might help. I also just read Ecclesiastes (from the Old Testament) for the first time, and enjoyed it. While it has a depressing edge to it, Solomon also argues that the...

As usual with such a philosophical question, much depends on how you define the key concept, happiness . One conception of happiness identifies it with a type (or types) of feeling(s), such as contentment, joy, excitement, and pleasure. These are the feelings a happiness pill would presumably supply. And some utilitarians pick out this sort of happiness as what should be maximized. Some then object along the lines you suggest: utilitarianism seems to entail that we should want to take a happiness pill (and if things would keep running smoothly, for everyone to take happiness pills)--or for us all to enter a Matrix that would keep us all happy--but there seems to be something wrong with living on such a pill (or entering such a Matrix), so there must be something wrong with utilitarianism. This objection works against egoism as well (the view that all we want is pleasure). Perhaps the intuition here is that only 'authentic' happiness is truly valuable, the sort of happiness that one derives...