Here’s why I love 30 Rock: Amid the show’s caricatures, cartoons and buffoons, they still manage to slip in a Temple Grandin porno pun.  They did go with the “rammed in” wordplay, and I would have riffed off “gangbang”… but each to their own poor taste.

 The point is, it served to remind me of HBO’s The Temple Grandin Story, about the austic animal behaviorist, and also of a fascinating blog I read on www.WrongPlanet.net about Aspberger’s Syndrome — one of many neurological hues on the autism spectrum — and how it relates to love addiction.

My research leads me to believe that, biochemically, love addiction is closer to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder than what most people would characterize as love.  If you read this blog, you already know that interaction of dopamine, oxcytocin and serotonin and what we think of as attraction, affection and attachment — or, for us slightly sicker souls, Lust, Limerence and Longing.  If the blog isn’t enough, I also have a book on the topic.

Turns out, the same neurochemicals play a role in Asperger’s Syndrome.  

“Research showed similarities between serotonin’s role in OCD and the role serotonin plays in neurochemical bonding, more commonly known as ‘love,’” wrote blogger Alexander Plank.  “You could say that the lovestruck couple going to prom together for the first time have actually fallen into OCD with each other.

“Serontonin is the chemical that plays a role in causing aspies to pursue their special interests, and similarly causes people with OCD to be obsessive or anxious. Certain levels of serotonin are also linked with the autistic tendency of ‘stimming.’” 

Plank continues by quoting the Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology,which published a study in 2003 entitled Oxytocin Infusion Reduces Repetitive Behaviors in Adults with Autistic and Asperger’s Disorders.  As the title indicates, researchers found that if you dose an autistic adult with oxytocin, he is less likely to do things like rocking, tapping, or counting,  This is what Plank calls stimming, and which I contend is hiding somewhere behind the love addict’s obsessive text messaging, drive-bys, or writing “Mrs. Davey Jones” 100 times in your notebook.

I think it also explains why I find Freecell computer solitaire so damn soothing.  All those lovely numbers piling up and floating off, mindless yet logical, click click click until that blessed mental dial tone… anyone with Asperger’s would recognize this as stimming behavior.  It’s no wonder that the most basic digital game outside of Pong still resident on Microsoft computers.  Observers have long surmised that Bill Gates has Asperger’s.  I have no idea whether he also has (and successfully controls) love addiction.

If he has, I would like some hints.  A research grant would also be nice; I’m dying to stick a bunch of  love addicts in an fMRI.  I would ask him for a new computer, as well, but I use a Mac.

Well, this has been interesting.  As you may know, I’ve been blogging on the subject of love addiction for the Huffington Post recently.  Usually, my columns are ghettoed in the Women’s Section, garner 40 or 50 comments apiece, and sink into happy obscurity.  Last week, I wrote a piece I called “Portrait of the Love Addict as a Young Woman,” detailing some colorful behavior dating back to my college years.  It was a different time, the Seventies; the worst thing you could get from sex was crab lice, and cocaine wasn’t even officially habit-forming.  Even non-addicts racked up some serious notches on their bedposts.

HuffPo, in their marketing wisdom, headlined the blog “Why Sleeping With 75 Men Didn’t Make Me Promiscuous.”  Overnight, it got picked up by the AOL portal and has amassed, as of this morning, 741 comments.  I stopped reading after about 200. 

 Mostly they fall into three categories.  The first category is variations on the theme of “You go, girl!!”  Women should own their sexuality, said the women.  Screw the double standard; no one would call a man promiscuous with the same track record, said the women.  Can I have your phone number? said the men.

Apparently, lots of men read the Women’s Section.  Who knew?

The second category is variations of “You are, too!”  You may not recognize a slut when you see one, but I do and you’re It, said the women.  You poor thing, you must have horribly low self-esteem, said the women.  I want to marry a virgin, said the men.  Also, can I have your phone number?

The third theme is variations of “You are me!”  You told my story, said the women.  I always thought I was alone, said the women.  Love addiction doesn’t only happen to women, said the men.  That’s the target I was aiming for.

Themes 1,2 and 3 got into some lively debates with one another online.  So far, I have stayed out of the fray.  I was tempted to point out that, come on, it was a long time ago and that I am hardly  promoting this behavior; I equated it with lung cancer, fergawdsakes   But nothing I say is going to change anyone’s mind, after all, and what other people think of me is really none of my business.

So I say to Group 1, thank you for your support but the wheels fell off that toy a while ago.  What it was doing to me overpowered what it was doing for me.  

To Group 2, since you seem so darn worried about my health, my father’s feelings, and the example I’m setting for my daughters — I have never had an unwanted pregnancy or STD; my father is dead; and, my son doesn’t read my blogs. 

To Group #3: Welcome.  You are not alone.  There are resources like Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Patrick Carnes’ sex addiction website, Susan Peabody’s love addiction bulletin board, and more, to give you the nonjudgmental support and encouragement we all need to heal.

By the way: If you’re a guy who reads the AOL Women’s Section looking for sexy stories, then comes on to total strangers online — welcome, you’re not alone.  There are resources, like…

            Here’s an old AA story for you: A man falls in a well (I told you it was old; who gets water from a well any more?). He’s trapped down there in the cold and dark.  He calls out for help.  A priest passes by, hears his cries, leans over into the well and asks, “What’s the matter, son?”  Imagine a dramatic boomy echo on the dialog. “I’m stuck in this damn well!” yells the man.  “That’s no call for bad language,” says the priest, “but I’ll pray for you.”  And off he goes. The guy is getting steamed.

            Next, a social worker passes by.  “What’s the matter, friend?” “What does it look like?  I’m at the bottom of this well.”  “Aha!  I’ve got just what you need,” says the social worker.  She tosses a blanket and a length of rope down the well, and walks off with a smile.  The guy is really pissed off now.

            Along comes a doctor.  “Do you have a problem, sir?”  “Fucking A I have a problem!  I’m stuck in a well.”  “Are you anxious? Worried? Can’t relax?”  ”Whadda you think?”  “This should fix you up,” says the doc, and tosses a prescription for tranquilizers into the hole.

            It’s getting darker.  It’s getting colder.  The man considers hanging himself with the stupid rope, but there’s nothing to attach it to.  Finally, a new face appears at the rim of the well.  It’s a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.  “Looks like you’re stuck in a well,”  he calls down to the man.  “Brilliant deduction,” says the trapped man, now thoroughly disillusioned and angry at the world.  Unexpectedly, the AA member jumps down into the well.

            “Are you insane?  Now we’re both at the bottom of a goddam well!” shouts the man.  “Maybe so,” says the sober alcoholic.  “But I’ve been down this well before.  And I know the way out.”

            The point of the story — and I’m sure you’re a step ahead of me on this — is that no one can help you the way someone can who’s been where you’ve been.  Professionalism and expertise are great, but there’s nothing that compares to the deep identification you feel with someone’s who’s struggled your struggle.  It’s so easy not to take advice from someone, even good advice, when you can get up in their grill yelling “You don’t know what it’s like!”… and be correct.  

            This is one reason 12-steps programs have no leaders, no facilitators, no administrators, and millions of success stories.  It’s why Weight Watchers counselors have lost a lot of weight, and why the best treatment centers are started by former addicts and alcoholics, even if they do have lousy credit. 

            Which brings me to Broken Heart RX, from whom I recently received a press release.  According to the publicist, “Broken Heart RX is the first ever break-up, love addiction and emotional trauma support system that includes a proprietary blend nutraceutical supplement, a 30-day email support program and a referral network of experts created to help guide people to recovery. No one wants to feel crippled by a broken heart and now they don’t have to.”

            Indeed, in shades of the Schick-Schadel weekend recovery program for alcoholics, Broken Heart RX will, for the low low price of $34.95, provide you with a 30-day supply of their vitamin supplement, a month of “inspirational emails,” a 10-mninute phone consultation and a referral to a local therapist “if desired.”

            Ten minutes?  Have you ever talked anyone out of their fetal position on the floor in ten minutes?

            To be fair, 35 bucks isn’t going to break anyone’s piggy-bank and the nutritional supplement — full of St. John’s Wort, magnesium and amino acids — won’t hurt you and might even help stabilize your mood.  But the only way a 10-minute phone call is going to anything towards curing love addiction is using the time to recommend my book, Susan Peabody’s Addiction to Love bulletin board, and few years in 12-step meetings.

            I say this as someone who has tried every prayer, every prescription, every rope and blanket.  There’s no shortcut out of the well.

Craving is a hunger so deep no amount of ANYTHING will truly fill it.  But we love addicts keep trying, and trying, and trying…

The main criteria for labeling something an addiction are the phenomena of Craving, Tolerance and Withdrawal. Some find it hard to get their heads around the concept of tolerance in sex and love addiction. I don’t.

I used to made a living writing record and concert reviews and bios for rock bands.  It wasn’t much of a living, which is why I stopped doing it.  But when the Hollywood Reporter asked me to review Etta James at the House of Blues in 2001, I couldn’t say no.  I’d been watching Etta incinerate the Sunset Strip HOB since the place opened.  And when RCA Records asked me to write her bio for the 2002 live album of that very performance… hell, I would have paid them.  (Don’t tell them I said that.)  A chance to talk to Jamesetta Hawkins, the love addict’s official spokeswoman?  Yes, please!

This is a woman who never knew her father, and whose teenaged mother was used and abused by men as a profession.  Her drunken choir director used to beat her to make her sing for his friends.  She became B.B. “Blues Boy” King’s girlfriend when she was 16 and he was 30.  Her husband, Artis Mills, went to prison for heroin possession; they were still married when she died.

How do you not become a sex and love addict with a pedigree like that? 

Etta James was the alpha and the omega of affection deficit disorder.  Her first single (“Roll With Me, Henry”) was so overtly sexual in its day that disc jockeys couldn’t say the title out loud.  When I last saw her onstage, she was 62 years old and so fat she could barely stand up.  She was still sexy.  “With that big voice and that little smirk, James manages to sell sexuality with nothing more than gesture,” read the review.  “When she sings ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You,’ you believe her.”

But the flip side of the cool, sexy Etta (“I used to ride a motorcycle to work on the Harbor Freeway, nothing but a kerchief on my head,” she told me proudly.  “I was born to be wild.”) was the “I Would Rather Go Blind” Etta.  She wrote that song, although for a long time she wasn’t able to take legal credit — or get legal royalties — for it.  Sing it with me now: “Something told me it was over/When I saw you and her talking… I would rather, I would rather go blind/than see you walk away from me.”  

The clutch-his-ankle Etta, though, never sucked the joy out of the hopeless romantic Etta.  The Etta who could sing “At last/My love has come along/My lonely days are over/And life is like a song” with such conviction that it has watched over the first dance of half the newly marrieds in North America.

“Everybody who gets married wants that song,” she sighed.  “First dance, ‘At Last.’  Cutting the cake, ‘At Last.’  Last dance….”  When we spoke, the tune was all over the television as the soundtrack of a car commercial.  “I thought I was finally going to get me a Jaguar!  I didn’t get no Jaguar.  But I tell you something, my manager turned up in a bad green convertible Jag!”

That’s Etta all over.  She pours her heart into a microphone, and some man drives off in a bad green convertible.  I  wanted to hug her.

Etta James tacked a picture of me up on her bulletin board back in 2002.  She was impressed that I had learned to scuba dive, and wanted a snapshot of me underwater to use as inspiration for her new fitness program; her doctor told her she had to lose weight or lose a leg to diabetes.  She was quite thin when she died, but that was just the leukemia.

I wish I had sent her a copy of LOVE ADDICT; she would have related.  But then, she had already summed up the whole book in the first couplet of her first composition:  “Hey baby, what do I have to do/To make you love me too.”

Exactly what hole are you trying to fill? I mean that in the most existential sense, I promise. 

Diablo Cody and I have much in common. We are both writers, although she won an Oscar for Juno and and Emmy for The United States of Tara, where I won a Maggie for ROCK Magazine and a Remi for Swamp Devil. We both worked as strippers in our youth, although I’m sure she did it more ironically than I did. We both had musician boyfriends named John Hunt, although hers was spelled “Jon,” which is cooler. We were both married, divorced and remarried by the age of 32. We are both insecure about our appearance, prone to ill-considered snarkiness, and fond of intoxicants, although I eventually quit intoxicating myself and that calmed down the snark some. It made the insecurity worse, though.

I note all this because Cody’s new movie, Young Adult, is about a love addict, and I identify as a love addict. Diablo Cody does not. Neither does the titular character of Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), an underachieving writer of teen novels who drinks to excess, suffers from stress-induced trichotillomania (look it up), sleeps with strangers because she can’t bear to be alone, and pursues her happily married love object because she’s convinced they are destined to be together. 

It’s a classic scenario of love addiction, but Mavis is in such deep denial about her problems that I wonder if her creator is, too. Cody seems to lay all of Mavis’s bad behavior on her immaturity. Mavis is, indeed, a young adult: a grown woman who still operates like a teenager. See says things like “His kiss was transformative” and “Haven’t you seen The Graduate?” She acts like a  spoiled teenager and your basic love addict certainly acts (and feels) like a sixteen-year-old with a crush. But love addiction also includes physiological phenomena like obsession, repetition compulsion and craving — all of which Mavis exhibits, none of which anyone seems to notice. Especially not her creator.

I heard a recent interview where Diablo Cody — nee Brook Busey — said she was shocked when her husband commented that Mavis is more like the real Brook than any of her other characters. Cody called it an insult. I call it a clue.

Now, I’m not saying Diablo Cody is a current or a potential love addict. I never get to decide that for anyone. Not out loud, at any rate. I’m just saying that with all the fuss people are making about Shame, the new release starring Michael Fassbender as a sex addict, there should be at least a nod to the fact that there’s a movie out about a love addict, too 

Oh, and it’s not a bad flick if you like dark humor. I just find it frustrating to sit through two hours of someone else’s denial.

This is my mom.  Yes, we did look alike.  When I was a kid, she boasted that she could walk into any parent-teacher conference and immediately be told “You’re Ethlie’s mother.”  That this was a point of pride for her is a result of either my grade point average (generally high) or her narcissism (equally high).

     Shirley Marder Berman Herman Riley Kelley married four times — two Jews and then two Irishmen, presumably under the “if at first you don’t succeed” rule.  My sister and I were the result of Jew Number Two.  When I referred to my parents in a recent essay as “the classic pairing of a love addict and sex addict,” my editor assumed that dear old dad screwed around.  It’s the traditional family dynamic.  But it was not the case here.

     My late mother screwed around like a rock band on tour.  I was too young to notice, and my dad was too possessive to leave her.  I do not, however, believe she was actually what psychiatrists call hypersexual and the tabloids call a sex addict.  I think she was, in fact, a love addict of about the same variety as me.  Unfortunately for my father, he was a love addict of another stripe.

     Gee.  You think addiction could be genetic?

     There is a societal and certainly a subjective tendency to label love addicts as emotionally fragile (female) victims of love avoidant (male) sex addicts, those lying manipulative pieces of shit.  This victim/perpetrator paradigm is neat and easy and misses the entire pathology of love addiction.  Love addicts are lying, manipulative pieces of shit, too.  I’m amazed that so many of you put up with me.

     In my opinion, love addiction breaks down into three subspecies. There’s your basic Sexaholic: if it moves, jump on it. Hearts and flowers not only not required, but discouraged. In fact, moving pictures will do about as well as live partners. Then there’s the Relationship Junkie, the punchline of the joke: “What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?  Nothing; you already told her twice.” This is the person who will do anything to stay in a relationship, no matter how hard it sucks. This was my father.

     Then there’s me, and my mom, and maybe you.  We’re addicted to romance, to fantasy, to the champagne euphoria of infatuation.  Addicted to the thrilling thought that this time… this person… this is It.  This is the One.  We love falling in love and all the delicious anticipation that comes along with it.

     This kind of love addict may have more sex than is considered polite, but it’s not the sex that’s addictive.  It’s the promise it holds.  Sex is instant connection, a shortcut to intimacy.  Sex is the price of admission to love.  Sure, it feels good on its own.  But as actor Justinian Carroll put it when he told his story for my book, “Sex is a 10K arc light.  Remarkable.  But love… love is the sun.”

     Well, love may be the sun, but I’m a redhead.  Sometimes, I just have to find myself a nice safe piece of shade.