I don’t know about you, but when I feel fat, the first thing I want to do is eat.  When I feel poor I run out and spend money, and when I feel lonely, I lock myself in my room and isolate.  My brain is wired backwards.  I have what the professionals call a “paradoxical relationship” to everything from St. John’s Wort (it depresses me) to estrogen (it gives me pimples.)  

I think this backwards wiring is something addicts share.  For example: Drug addicts invariably get hooked on to what you’d think was exactly the wrong drug.  Alcohol is a depressant, but who drinks the most? Depressives!  That guy you saw crying into his beer was crying when gravitated to beer in the first place, and he’ll probably be whimpering in AA meetings if and when he sobers up.  The roommate who already eats more than his share of the pizza will end up as a pothead, and the one face-down in the carpet listening to jazz is the one who eventually graduates to heroin.  And me, the freaking Energizer bunny on the natch, immediately reached for the cocaine. 

There’s something going on here more than self-destructive behavior.  Some say that the addict’s head is only keeping the body below alive because it needs the transportation.  I think there’s a whole ‘nother thing going on.  You know that the preferred treatment for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is speed, right?  Ritalin is speed; Adderall is speed.  The current go-to drug for adult ADHD, Vyvanse, is Lisdexamfetamine dimesylate — as if spelling amphetamine with an “f” makes a difference.  It’s speed.

Why do they give uppers to people who are already hyperactive?  For the same reason I reached for cocaine.  For us, it has a paradoxical reaction.  It gives us focus.  It calms us down.  

The problem is, as often as not, an addict will usually overshoot the mark.  I’m trying to find the Lee Marvin-in-Cat Ballou moment, that perfect balance of Xanax, brandy and Dexamyl (or whatever), and somehow I end up in San Rafael with an unemployed bass player.  I never meant for that to happen; I overshot the mark.

None of us never meant to stay up until the lawn sprinklers went off and the damn birds started singing; we just overshot the mark.  We didn’t mean to get so drunk we barfed on the boss’s shoes, but we overshot the mark.  And as for the love addicts: We didn’t mean to sleep with him on the first date… we were kissing, and we overshot the mark.

I mention this because while an estimated 10,000-20,000 Americans die annually from the effects of illegal drugs, 100,000-200,000 die from physician-prescribed medication.  Some of them get prescribed to love addicts desperately trying to ease the twin agonies of obsession and withdrawal. If, like me, you have brain wiring that is maybe upside-down, keep that wacky mind in mind when you pop those pills.  

Death is a mark you just don’t want to overshoot.

And we’re back.  Still working my way through the pile of reader questions from JEZEBEL.  Hoping to have it completed before October, when I will be the Guest Expert of the Month at www.AddictionLand.com (“Easy to get in, but can you get out?”) and the floodgates will open once again.  

So far, the top contenders for my Dear Abby/Ann Landers’ Evil Other Twin name are: MISSED MANNERS, ANN BLUNDERS, DEAR ABBY-NORMAL and the one up there in the header, DOWNTOWN ABBY.  Feel free to add your own.

Minnesota 2012 asks:  Why do I continue to have sex with someone who doesn’t care about me? I know it’s a waste of time, I know I deserve so much better, blah, blah, blah - This doesn’t change that I still do it. Willingly. What is it about the sex act that makes a woman forego all logical self-respect?

It’s not the sex act; it’s the neurochemicals produced by the anticipation of sex (dopamine) and the cuddling afterwards (oxytocin) — not to mention the barrage of endorphins during the delightful bits in between.  And it’s not all women; it’s you.  Also me, and a bunch of us who are addicted to said feelgood brain chemicals.

So while the logical and rational front brain is saying “This guy doesn’t care about me, it’s a waste of time, I know I deserve better,” the lizard brain tucked way in the back is saying “Oh baby, oh baby. harder faster more.”  It’s a contest the lizard brain will always win… unless you stack the deck.  The process of  recovery is learning how to stack the deck: a supportive group, a counselor, contrary action, bottom lines/abstinence, blah blah blah.

You gain self-respect when you behave in a way that respects yourself.  I have to act myself into right thinking, because I can never think myself into right acting.  Stupid lizard brain always gets in the way.

Woman 23 asks: I would love to hear your thoughts on jealousy, open relationships, etc..

When I was in the throes of love addiction, I was pathologically jealous.  I was the kind of girl who would read his journals and freak out over women he was with before he ever met me.  When I was getting clean from cocaine, I gave up four months of sobriety because I saw the guy I liked dancing with another girl.  (I say “girl,” but I was 35 at the time and assume she was about the same.  This isn’t the junior prom we’re talking about, here.)  I never actually cut up anyone’s clothes or burned his car — I know women who have done both — but I have fantasized about it. 

I’m not like that any more, thank God.  I wouldn’t be with a guy I didn’t trust, for one, and I also know that having a man’s attention 100% of the time is not the stairway to heaven.  That being said, open relationships are not for me.  I don’t poke sleeping dogs with sharp sticks, and love addiction is a very large, very dangerous dog.  I could pretend I had no problem with polyamory, either out of sheer denial or in vain hopes of converting the guy to monogamy, but for me that’s just a heartache looking for a place to happen.

And Precious Little of That asks: How do you convince a stubborn Baby Boomer to get into therapy when they don’t want to see a “head-shrinker?” I’m asking for…um…the child of a friend.

You’re singing my song, sister!  I tried to get my hypercontrolling, manic-depressive, gambling addict mother into therapy, into Gamblers Anonymous, into Alanon, into anything that might help her heal.  For probably 20 years.  Not only didn’t she go, but she resented that I judged and criticized her all the time and kept wanting her to change.

Kind of like I resented her all my life for judging and criticizing me, and forever wanting me to change.  Go figure. 

In the end, we can never change anything but our own actions and our own attitude.  The weird thing is, that changes everyone around us.

In your… um, friend’s case, I recommend being as happy as possible and, if asked, credit your tiny, shrunken head.

Erin Gloria asks:I once read that your romantic sophistication/development as a person ends when a long period of never being single begins — say, if a woman spent ages 20-3o hopping from boyfriend to boyfriend and suddenly finds herself single, when she tries to go out and date, she’ll approach it like a 20-year-old would.

What would your experience say to that? Do you believe that constant relationships impede personal development? Did it impede yours?

For most people, I credit this more to acculturation than personality development.  Dating  habits are formed when you were last dating, so you’ll revert to that until you learn new habits.  Other than creating some awkwardness that will make cute dinnertable chit-chat on your next internet date, I don’t see it as a big issue.

In the world of addicts (AdditionLand!  Easy to get in, but can you get out?), however, it’s a different story.  An addict’s personality development and life coping skills stop when they start using.  For most of us, this is smack dab in mid-adolescence because, after all,  there’s nothing to make you need a drink like puberty.  So we begin our “sober dating” life at 30 or 40 or 50… with all the romantic sophistication of a 15-year-old. 

This is past awkward to the point of potentially lethal, like underage driving.  We should all get learner’s permits. 

This weekend, March 15-17, I present two workshops on sex and love addiction at the Counseling Advances Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.  It seems an odd location for a conference of addiction professionals: Las Vegas, ground zero for all manner of behavioral and substance abuse.  Maybe they want easy access to field research.

            My MacBook and I will give a slideshow on THE TOXIC TRIO: LOVE, LUST AND LIMERENCE, followed immediately by ADVANCES IN NEUROSCIENCE: THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON LOVE.  My throat and I will be talking almost non-stop from 1:45 to 5pm.  That’s not the part that scares me.  The part that scares me is that my audience knows what I’m talking about.

            These aren’t the readers from, say, the Huffington Post, still convinced that calling snorting cocaine an addiction is just a get-out-of-jail-free card for willful misbehavior.  No, I will be speaking alongside the very people who schooled me in my own recovery.  John Bradshaw, the dean of the codependency movement, will be there.  Remember the ‘80s?  Remember your inner child?  I still have the teddy bear.  Dr. Patrick Carnes, the man who wrote that first daring book about sex addiction, OUT OF THE SHADOWS, will be there.  I quote him extensively in LOVE ADDICT: SEX, ROMANCE AND OTHER DANGEROUS DRUGS, not because I’m lazy, but because he’s the man with the research.  I’ve got what you call empirical data — a.k.a., been there, done that.

            And that, it was pointed out to me, is my strength.  It’s exactly what I do have to offer this audience of professionals, who may have all the data in the world but no idea what it feels like to look at a guy who looks like the guy you like and feel your brain boil, expand and burst through your skull.  I was in therapy for years, jumping from one hopeless affair to the next, wrapping my arms around my knees and rocking my self to sleep night after night before the shrink finally said “I think you may be a love addict.”  The minute I read the characteristics of love addiction I snarked, “No duh!  Why didn’t you tell me this before?”  “I only just found out about it myself,” he replied.

            The workshop is for him.  Okay, not him specifically.  But for those like him with a client or patient or victim with a weird mental twist when it comes to sex and love affairs.  Otherwise smart, capable, successful, even-self-aware people who have a massive blind spot in this one area.  These therapists can’t help if they have a similar blind spot.  My job is to point out the red flags.  I will bring pictures.  Here’s a photo of My Big Gay Boyfriend - that should have been a clue.  Here’s a photo of Younger Man Number One, and Younger Man Number Two, followed by Married Man, followed by Guy Living Overseas, followed by Married Man Living Overseas,  followed by Younger Man Number Three… stop me any time.

            Please stop me any time.

Dr. Nora Volkow is the Director of NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse.  She’s also the granddaughter of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, which is weird.  Plus, when she talks she sounds like an outtake from a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon (“Boris, Natasha and Nora”), which is not what you usually find at websites ending in dot-gov.

     Anyhow, Dr. Volkow has been making headlines lately (http://bit.ly/sKEfhp) with a scientific breakthrough that anyone in a 12-step program could have told her 50 years ago.  I told you myself in a recent column (http://bit.ly/rB3Cf4). But now they have brain imaging studies, so that makes it official.

     Says Dr. Volkow, “Originally we postulated that people who are addicted are so because drugs were more rewarding to them, more pleasurable. Thus, their brains would have a greater release of dopamine in the limbic area when they took drugs.”

     Dopamine is what I call the brain’s woo-hoo juice and Dr. Volkow calls “the message through which you not just feel pleasure, but also the motivation to do behaviors.”  The limbic area is the reptile brain, the knee-jerk part that makes us seek food and water and sex.  And, she continues, “in three independent imaging studies, we find exactly the opposite.  Contrary to what everyone thought, the sensitivity of the reward center of the brain, the part that motivates pleasure, is markedly decreased in people that are addictive. Which is fascinating.

     “What we are observing is that in people who are addicted to cocaine or addicted to alcohol, the ability of the drugs to increase dopamine is markedly attenuated.  Their subjective experience of the drug is decreased.”

     In other words, people who get addicted to, say, cocaine — me, for example, back in the day — are getting less of a charge out of the stuff than those folks who can take it or leave it.  Dr. Volkow finds this fascinating.  I find it sucky on every level.  It’s cosmically unfair that we who forfeit our money, our integrity, our career, our family and even our freedom for drugs (or alcohol, or poker, or hookers) are getting shortchanged by the very altar at which we sacrifice.

     It’s like the Spider Robinson short story, “God is an Iron.”  As in, “if a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.  The story was about a future in which people directly stimulated their brain’s reward centers until they pleasured themselves to death.  He wrote it in 1977.  I guess NIDA didn’t talk to him, either.

A friend and colleague of mine is what we addict types call a “normie,” or “civilian,”  She doesn’t have an obsessive-compulsive bone in her body — or, if she does, she manages to keep it well hidden.  There’s a lot of that going around.

Anyway, she doesn’t know if she should feel sorry for addicts and alcoholics, or if she should be jealous.  Drugs and alcohol (or gambling, or shopping, or sex, or overeating, or whatever is it that turns your particular crank) obviously do something for the people who get addicted to them, or we wouldn’t get addicted to them.  Something spectacular.   Something they don’t do for my friend.  Can it be that, rather than having dodged a bullet, she’s actually missing something wonderful?

Now, I’m not going to tell her that the intoxication of infatuation — my personal drug of choice — isn’t spectacular.  It has been.  Often.  Too often.  I will tell her that, scientifically speaking, she’s the enviable one.  It isn’t so much that sex and love addicts get a bigger bang (pun semi-intended) out of sex and love than anyone else.  It’s that the rest of life is all a little… little, until something jabs you in the ass with a cattle prod.  Something like a line of cocaine, or a dozen roses from a secret admirer.

What I jokingly call affection deficit disorder, some serious researchers call “reward deficiency syndrome.”  The addict brain is stubbornly resistant to the neurotransmitters that activate what’s known as the reward cascade, a fireworks display of brain cells high-fiving one another in a joyful exchange of dopamine, serotonin, and a handful of other jolly juices.  For us, it takes a mega-dose of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll to get the party started.  My friend can pull it off with some nice French bread dipped in quality olive oil.

So it isn’t that mind-altering substances and behaviors feel so damn good to us.  It’s that we can feel them at all.  As Dr. Reef Karim says in my new book (insert a plug for the Sept. 1 book release here; you know the drill), “What happens if you’re an addict and you’re not getting enough dopamine is, you feel like ‘Eh, life’s a blah.’  Then you snort coke or have a drink or have sex and all of a sudden…..  How many times have I heard ‘Hey, Doc, for the first time in my life I felt normal!’” 

 And then, of course, we spend the next 20 years desperately chasing that feeling — which, by the way, can never be recreated because the more dopamine that surges through our brains, the more resistant we become to the stuff.  Oh, the irony.

You see, dear normie civilian, it isn’t that we get to feel so much better than you when we get high.  It’s that we finally get to feel like you.  We aren’t going from zero to 60, even if it looks like that from the outside.  We’re going from minus 60 to zero.