Tag: love is a drug

Love’s Spell is Broken

You’ve fallen in love and have submitted to the overflow of love drugs which have overtaken the control of your physiology. You’ve obsessed about your partner, you have all the signs of being in love, you’ve gone forward as a couple, then one day you wake up out of the love fog, take a good (sober) look at your partner, and ask yourself, “Who is this?” as love’s spell is broken.

Love’s Spell is Broken

As love’s spell is broken, your brain chemistry is returning to normal and you’re starting to wonder, “How did I get here?” These free brain chemicals are the drug-gift humanity has been blessed with which has allowed us to grow to a population of over 7 billion.

Your logical, conscious brain has been clouded by increased levels of oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen, which after a while diminishes and you start to see your partner as he or she really is.

When these hormone levels are high, you project yourself, your hopes and dreams upon your partner, and you believe these things to be true. As the level returns to normal your projection fades and you start to see your partner more objectively, and you start to object, likely to think your partner has changed.

It is far more likely that your partner has not changed because people are pretty much who they are and are fairly transparent, showing you who they really are, but you fail to see it because you’ve fallen in love (or rather, gotten stoned on love’s drugs), and your desire to be in love interpreted this person as your dream come true.

When you’re under the influence of love’s chemistry, those little idiosyncrasies seem like cute little characteristics which endear you to your partner. Once love’s spell is broken, these very same characteristics become the annoying traits, which make you feel like love is lost, and you are not the harmonious partners you thought you were when you were stoned in love.

This is the critical phase of love which likely indicates that it may be time to leave, or least it feels that way, and in most cases, relationships end when it becomes apparent that things are not as they appeared not long ago.

From this drug-free perspective, you mightimaginethat you just cannot go on another day under these circumstances.

One or both partners begin to believe the entire relationship was built on a false premise and that there is a better person out there better suited for either one or both of you to pursue a relationship with. This is when it is thought that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

So, this is the end.

Or it is the beginning of a more mature type of love which is waiting for you to discover it on the other side of the breaking of love’s spell.

For the couples who are able to move past the breaking of love’s spell, there is a greater love which awaits, but it will take more concerted effort. While stoned-in-love little or no effort or attention need be exerted in the relationship, everything seems so simple and free but once you’ve decided to see what is on the other side of love’s rave, it will require more work to move into the next phase of love.

See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.

Love or Crack Cocaine Addiction

When you meet someone, who stimulates your brain chemistry and sends your biology into a euphoric celebration, there is little difference in what happens inside your body between this “falling in love” and getting high on crack cocaine.

This has been well-documented overtime, ever since humans have had the ability to document the intense power of love-longing in poetry, the arts, and philosophical thought. If you have a reverence for such art, including love songs on the radio, you understand that this reverence for the longing for love can be very powerful indeed.

People who are addicted to crack cocaine seek the high state of euphoria associated with using it to set their internal brain chemistry ablaze with a rush of an overwhelming feeling of pleasure, not unlike falling in love.

It is against the law to use crack cocaine, so there it takes a willingness to engage in illegal activity to have the experience at all. A definite deterrent if you have a fear of imprisonment. Also, it is well known that using crack cocaine over time can have serious ill effects on one’s mental health, physiological health, leads to seriously bad decision-making skills, and can ultimately lead to death. The statistics are well-known, prisons, hospitals, and cemeteries are full crack addicts.

Falling in love, on the other hand, is legal, and there are far more people in prisons, hospitals, and cemeteries due to love.

If you question the similarity, try this on for size:

Dr. Helen Fisher, who has had the pleasure of studying the neurological effects of love on the brain and the body discovered the identical brain chemistry overload of dopamine and norepinephrine of subjects deeply in love as those experiencing a high from using cocaine. (Lust, Attraction, Attachment: Biology and Evolution of the Three Primary Emotion Systems for Mating, Reproduction, and Parenting).

Just the same, only different.

Effecting your motivation and decision-making skills is clearly apparent. Whether you’re addicted to crack, or deeply in love, you will do the darndest things which would not make any sense to you if you weren’t under the influence.

When you’re high (on either love or crack) you have an incredible feeling of elation, everything appears to have increased clarity and your self-confidence surges as you feel almost invincible. You’d do almost anything to sustain this feeling.

On the other hand, if the effects of the drug in question (cocaine or love) starts to diminish, the addict looks for new ways to achieve the high they originally felt when first exposed to the original source (which may have varying degrees of success, but it is well known that the height of the original high will never be reached by increasing the dose, method, or frequency).

Still, we have a tendency to look elsewhere, as our resistance builds to the original drug.

There is nothing more devastating to the addict (whether addicted to love or crack) than suddenly not having access to the supply of their high. The withdrawal symptoms of losing one’s supply, having it cut off for any reason, has been routinely associated with the effects of withdrawal from heroin. Which can send the addict into an unimaginable tailspin leading to intense pain and suffering.

See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.