Throughout the ages, people have often compared love to drugs, and now it seems the science is backing them up.
For many years, pop songs and movies have chronicled the rush of emotion and feeling that accompanies meeting and falling in love with somebody. In fact, one could argue that understanding love is the main preoccupation of art. Take the Huey Lewis and the News hit “I Want a New Drug:” “I want a new drug. One that won’t go away. One that won’t keep me up all night.”Or the seminal song by Robert Palmer, “Addicted To Love:” “Whoa, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff, oh yeah It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough You know you’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to love” Recently, I’ve been facing the fact that, when it comes to love, I’m as much of an addict as everyone else. I’m a rational and logical human most of the time, but when it comes to love, I can act just as crazy as the next person. Saying love is like a drug is pretty ambiguous, though. What drug experience is closest to that of love? I never considered this question until recently, but a little bit of research came up with a scientific consensus of sorts. According to recent research, falling love with someone has a very similar effect on our brains to using crack cocaine. Yep, that’s right. Crack cocaine.As many of us have never used crack cocaine, we’ll just have to take their word for it. Considering the roller coaster of highs and lows that infatuation and love often send me on, I can’t help but agree with them. That’s why I wanted to look more into the experiences that connect these two “drugs” and make them affect the brain in similar ways. Let’s take a look at some of the core elements of crack cocaine and love, and see what they really have in common. The Ecstasy According to addictionresource.org, smoking crack cocaine leads to states of wild euphoria, accompanied by a sense of liberation and possibility. If that sounds suspiciously like the madness of love to you, I would totally agree. This ecstatic state that crack cocaine induces also causes the user to seek out another high is as soon as possible. Those who have experienced the euphoria of crack cocaine, even one time, suddenly become intent on reliving that experience again and again. Similarly, the person who has fallen into feelings of love or infatuation experiences similar cravings to relive that experience. One great date, one encounter, one kiss is never enough. We just want more and more. Just take a look at some more of Palmer’s lyrics to “Addicted to Love:” “ Your lights are on, but you’re not home Your mind is not your own Your heart sweats, your body shakes Another kiss is what it takes” Once we experience the ecstasy of the love drug, we want it again and again. We can’t eat, we can’t sleep — states that are eerily similar between infatuation and crack use. We’ll stop at nothing to get one more kiss, one more message from our crush, or just one more hit. The problem is that we often make some pretty critical life decisions based off of this initial high. Is falling for someone like smoking crack cocaine and then recklessly committing yourself to emotional and sexual union with that person? Doesn’t that sound sort of ill-conceived? The Withdrawal Eventually there comes a time when you can’t have your drug of choice anymore. It’s destroying your life and making you act in ways unbecoming to your reputation. Yes, I’m talking about both love, and crack cocaine. Personally, love has made me participate in reckless behavior, mostly including getting drunk on cheap beer and saying things I regret, but that’s another story. So if you have to quit your drug, the next part is the withdrawal. This might happen right after getting rejected by your romantic interest, or having someone turn away from your kiss. Remember that song “Mr. Brightside?” “It started out with a kiss How did it end up like this?” The obsession, the sick feeling, the agony, all come to visit the person experiencing withdrawals. We experience symptoms of love withdrawal that often mirror the withdrawal from drugs like crack cocaine. The withdrawal sucks. For both love and crack cocaine. Addiction to love and crack cocaine both make your brain release high amounts of dopamine into your system. When you suddenly stop getting your high, your body and mind crave the substance to experience the same levels of euphoria. When you don’t get your high anymore, the symptoms set in: depression, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, and strong cravings. The Relapse Many people who are addicted to drugs relapse. This goes for crack cocaine and love. Our brains seem to be still seeking those feel-good hits of dopamine that our drug of choice gives us. It’s not surprising that I have relapsed on love many, many times. Each time I think I’ve recovered from love’s touch, it comes back to bite me. The next time I get close enough to taste its pleasures, I find I will stop at nothing to get that high that love gives me. Just recently, I went through a full month of highs and lows related to falling in love with someone I know. Her attention became my drug. When we didn’t talk for a week and a half, I finally got some release from the cycle of euphoria and depression I had fallen into. I thought that soon the addiction would release me. When I heard from her again, it was like I had taken another blissful hit of love. Before I even knew what was happening, I had relapsed on love. Relapsing on crack cocaine, like love, can take over our whole life. All of a sudden, every other part of life seems to pale in comparison to the importance of the drug. My theory is that love is just a socially acceptable form of insanity. It mirrors addiction in the human brain, which I think says a lot about how we form and make social bonds with each other. Does that make addiction, in some way, an integral part of a human life? If getting high and ecstatic on another person bonds us to them, then should we do anything about it? The fact that love seems so integral to our lives is also what makes it so contentious to categorize it as an addiction. If the attachment to love is harming our lives and making us participate in behavior that is unbecoming to us, then maybe it’s a problem. The question is, how do break the cycle? At least with love, we’re all in this together.
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Wesley OwensI write about love, life, and all the things in between. Archives
April 2022
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