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.

The well-meaning health professionals over at NPR are shocked — shocked, I tell you! — at the latest terrifying “trend” among young people they are calling The Choking Game.  The grown-ups have just discovered that kids too young to buy booze are getting a buzz off temporary oxygen deprivation.  I don’t know what Amish farm these folks live on; my friends and I were hyperventilating and asphyxiating ourselves for kicks back in the Sixties. 

According to a study in the journal Pediatrics, around 6 percent middle-schoolers in Portland, Ore., have tried this choking game, a quarter of them five times or more.  The docs are worried that kids will damage their brain cells, or fatally asphyxiate by accident.  One Centers for Disease Control study estimates that 82 young people died from choking (or what the S&M community calls “breath play”) between 1995 and 2007.  Of course, the study relied on media reports that couldn’t be verified independently.

What’s the point of scaring parents nationwide with yet another Your Child Can Die From This Everyday Activity! news story?  It’s not like NPR is trying to sell papers.  Supposedly, they want to help parents and teachers spot kids at risk and head them off at the pass.  We’re now supposed to look for red marks on kids’ necks, and scarves tied around their bedposts (or what the S&M community calls “bo-ring!”)

Here’s why this project is doomed to failure from the outset.  The 6% of pre-teens who are getting high off spinning in circles, holding their breath, or having a friend compress their chest real fast are the same 6% who would otherwise be getting high off inhaling gasoline fumes or White-Out.  That CDC survey stated flat out that “those participating in the game also engaged in other high-risk activities, such as drug and alcohol use.”

That’s because this 6% are addicts-in-training, if not addicts already.  They’re born that way.  How do I know?  Normal kids do not lose consciousness for shits and giggles.  At least, not more than once.  Trust me; if mom and dad are checking your bedroom for scarves on the bedpost when you’re 12, they’ll be checking your sock drawer for weed when you’re 16.

I wager that they will also — and this is where I eventually come around to the topic of love addiction — scratch their heads in wonder at how you got yourself into such a horrible relationship when you’re 21.  Because if it’s so dark and miserable and lonely in your skull that unconsciousness seems like a good alternative when you’re 12, imagine how desperate the need to get out of yourself is when you’re 18.  Or 30. 

The vast majority of people, when you tell them “that’s really bad for you” or “she’s really bad for you” will stop doing that or seeing her.  It may not be easy; it may require one of those pop-psych books about how to break bad habits or make better choices.  And then there are the 6%.  The ones who don’t have a choice.  The ones like me.  The ones for whom taking that drink or hearing that voice is as vital as breathing. 

Or, if your drug of choice is the choking game, not breathing.

Publicly exposing yourself the way I have — the unvarnished truth way, that is, as opposed to the Chat Roulette way — also exposes a gal to certain risks.  When my blog posts get picked up by AOL, for instance, six or seven hundred strangers leave angry comments accusing me of being an immoral, selfish slut.  And calling me “selfish” really wounds me. 

I just remind myself that these are the same women who cheered for the adulteress Carrie Bradshaw to get back together with the adulterous Big, and that they’re probably not mad at me in the first place.  They’re mad at the husband who betrayed them/ mother who abandoned them/ father who broke their heart.  I try not to take it personally.

Most of all, I remind myself that they’re not who I’m cracking my chest open for in the first place.  I’m doing it for people like Miss J of… let’s just say a popular Midwestern state, from whom I received the kind of letter that makes the ALL-CAPS SCREEDS on HuffPo worthwhile.

J. says: I felt compelled to write to tell you I just finished reading LOVE ADDICT from cover to cover for the third time.  It was — I guess you could say a relief to learn that there is a name and explanation for what has been my so-called “lovelife.” 

I am single again at 50.  I have had  four marriages plus countless engagements and exes in my past.  Although I’m not an athlete or rock star, my number of sex partners are closer to the four-digit number than the three digit.  I would never say I was a real beauty — I was just good looking (and sexy) enough to catch almost any eye I wanted, and catch I did.  I was a master at flirting and the high I got from it would match the best high from any drug around.  My friends compared me to Blanche on The Golden Girls and, more recently, Samantha on Sex and the City.  I never apologized for it.  

That was me.  I could tell you about the “love of my life” — he had a wife and three children.  Or the gorgeous lifeguard on St. Thomas, almost 30 years younger than me.  At least I sent that one away!  I have slowed down, a little, but it’s still there.  That never-ending quest for the feeling of infatuation, whether short-lived or not…. there was no name for it - until now.  

I am going to Alaska this summer.  Am I going to stare at Mt. McKinley?  Not so much.  I’m more excited at the prospects of saucy Alaskan men to flirt with, you betcha.  I know that might sound desperate, but I shouldn’t be desperate.  I have a job, many friends, a close family, and a beautiful daughter… even a grandson that my heart bursts with love for.  Yet the addiction for that feeling of infatuation, or as you say “limerence,” still consumes me.

Thank you again for a very enlightening, funny, and well written book.  Best to you - J.

Okay, maybe it isn’t as wholesome as the math teacher who does it for the excitement a kid feels when he finally understands long division.  Or as graceful as the ballet teacher who stumbles under the weight of two-dozen long-stemmed thank-you roses.  But when someone puts down my book and announces “My name is J. and, damn it, I’m a Love Addict…” well, my eyes just well up with tears.

What can I tell you?  I’m an immoral, sentimental slut.