Love Is A Drug

Love is a drug according to researchers who have been looking at the brain scans of the broken-hearted. Scientists found that recovering from a break-up is like a kicking an addiction to a drug. It's the chemistry of love! Love, like a drug, can make a person obsess, and crave. Our poets, our songs, our novels, our sitcoms, our operas, our plays, have been discussing it forever.

You turn into a menace or a pest when you've been rejected. That's when people stalk or commit suicide. There's a very powerful brain system that has a dramatic effect on your entire life. This system evolved to focus your energy on an individual and start the mating process.

Fifteen college-age, heterosexual men and women still raw and reeling from a recent break-up were recruited for a study. On average, the participants had been rejected about two months prior and said they were still in love. As the participants looked at images of their ex lovers, researchers looked at images of the participants' brains. The parts of the brain that lit up were the same ones associated with cocaine and nicotine addiction, physical pain and distress and attachment. Just as a person would while fighting a drug addiction, a lovelorn person obsesses, craves and distorts reality. This makes love addiction a legitimate form of mental illness like all addictions.

When it comes to trying to stay friends for exchange letters and e-mails, "Just say no". It's like trying to give up cigarettes and having one every afternoon. It's just not going to happen. As soon as you can say this is a chemical reaction in the brain, then they're less likely to stay in bed, to berate themselves, and "moon over"...because there is an explanation."

"The danger is that people don't take responsibility. "Let me blame the chemical in my brain and not take responsibility for the fact that I can't cope ... and take responsibility by examining your own participation and defining what your choices are". However, for most people it can be very helpful because they can say, "I have this problem. I can get over it. I know it will pass." As time goes on, the pain fades away. Researchers indeed found that "time heals". As more time passed, activity in the parts of the brain associated with attachment and addiction decreased.