Persson, who famously outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for a Beverly Hills megamansion - paying $US70 million - is on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. ​He's rocking out with the rich and fabulous but says he's "never felt more isolated". It's apparently not much better for Persson when he's in his homeland, either.

Persson's tweets are a very public reminder of an oft-ignored fact - a person's brain chemistry is the defining factor in their happiness. You can be rich, famous, beautiful, talented, intelligent, revered, adored, in love and accomplished but if you're not getting enough serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin zapping around your head, life can seem pretty ... blah. Israeli professor Yuval Noah Harari, in his fantastic book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, says as much when he writes: "Nobody is ever made happy by winning the lottery, buying a house, getting a promotion or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only - pleasant sensations in their bodies. "A person who just won the lottery or found new love and jumps from joy is not really reacting to the money or the lover. She is reacting to various hormones coursing through her bloodstream, and to the storm of electric signals flashing between different parts of her brain," writes Harari. This is one of the most confronting, yet liberating, revelations visited upon people who suffer from major depression - that the human experience of the world is a construction of our emotional system and psychophysiology.

It can be a pretty scary door to walk through because even when you get "better", you're left with the knowledge that whatever happiness you're experiencing in your life is determined by the interactions of chemicals and a vastly complex system of nerves, neurons and synapses. Yes, you can do things to improve what's going on up there - by exercising, eating well, avoiding alcohol and drugs, as well as destructive or dysfunctional people - but whatever your brain chemistry is, is what it is (hello, antidepressants!) Thomas Ligotti (inspiration for much of the ethos of HBO's True Detective) puts it thus: "This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really 'out there' cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. "Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live," writes Ligotti. This is one of benefits of living alone: your mood is how happy you are. When you live with someone else, however, you're only as happy as the least happy person in the household.

"Not knowing this ground-level truth of human existence is the equivalent of knowing nothing at all," writes Ligotti. And, just think, Persson had to earn $US1.3 billion to learn this. That should cheer anyone up. ❏ Support is available for those who may be distressed by phoning Lifeline 13 11 14; Mensline 1300 789 978; Kids Helpline 1800 551 800. You can follow Sam on Twitter here. His email address is here.