Imagine for a moment that you went to a movie.  The movie was about an alcoholic who wanted a bottle of whiskey.

That’s it.  That’s the whole plot.

He gets close to his scotch, becomes thirsty, mishaps keep him from it, and he hurts other humans, damages them in his obsessive need to get to his scotch.  He encounters huge obstacles.  But through wit, charm, and deceit, he at last secures it, and drinks it down.

Is that a happy ending? 

That’s the beginning of a blog post on “Addiction and Relationships” at www.RiparianChurch.com by a fellow called Otter.  Yet, notes the Otter, isn’t that the plot of every romantic comedy every filmed?  And more than a few supernatural dramas, we might add.  Unlike any other form of intoxication, the giddy high of romance is never condemned, only celebrated.  Obtaining the object of obsession is the goal, and when that goal is reached —- “kissed and kissed often, by someone who knows how” (to use the G-rated Gone With the Wind wording) – bluebirds sing and the end credits roll.

Now imagine those soft-focus sunsets accompanying a scene of the ingénue shooting heroin.  The euphoric neurological response is identical, after all.  But no.  Leonardo diCaprio finding ecstasy with Kate Winslett in Titanic, we like.  Leonardo diCaprio finding ecstasy with smack in The Basketball Diaries, not so much.  Never mind it’s the romance that actually proved fatal.

Popular culture glorifies only one addiction, the addiction to love.  There are no feel-good movies about anorexia.  Drugstore cowboys and cocaine kings do not get any happy endings.  Even the shopaholics in Sex and the City knew their spending habits were dangerous, no matter how deep their denial about their romantic lives.  

I realize that I am powerless to be hold back the tide of songs and movies celebrating addictive love, so I’ve decided to do the next best thing:  I’m going to even the playing field.  Better yet, we’re going to even the playing field.  We’re going to come up with some titles praising the less-lauded addictions out there.  I’ll start.

“I Can’t Live, If Living is Without Booze”: a full-throated power ballad about an alcoholic and his Jack Daniels.

Speed: a documentary about the daring backyard chemists who mix up methamphetamine in the washtub.

“I Wanna Hold Your Hair”: a classic tune about a bulimic and the loyal friend who keeps her ponytail out of the toilet. 

Codependence Day: a big-budget special effects movie about siblings with mushy boundaries.

“The Gambler”: this time, the country ditty ends with the old guy winning the railroad in a card game.

We close with a musical medley to nicotine junkies everywhere: “Every Breath I Hack”/”When Smoke Gets in Your Lungs”/”You Light Up My Pipe”

Now it’s your turn.  Go!

THEY’RE ALREADY AT IT:

Britt suggests:  Along Came Xanax….My Best Friend’s Needle….The Wedding Drinker….When Heroin Met Sally….

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.

 Therapist and author Rob Weiss, who does some cutting-edge thinking about the intersection of technology and (mostly sex) addiction, tweeted an article from the NY Times today called The Brain on Love   An interesting piece.  It depressed the hell out of me.

Now, author Diane Ackerman didn’t mean for the article to be depressing.  In fact, as someone who recently helped her husband recover from the effects of a stroke, she meant for her story about the plasticity of the brain — its ability to make new connections, to rewire itself as we have new life experiences — to be a positive thing.  Her premise is that good relationships change our brains for the better.

And as someone with a broken brain (that’s not self-deprecating, by the way.  All addicts have short circuits in our brain wiring), I am always happy to know that my neural network can repair itself.

In fact, there’s no better news for a love addict than that, even if on a purely biomedical level, some knight in shining armor really can fix me. Isn’t that what we’ve all been holding out for, whether we admit it or not?

Here’s the problem.  “Thanks to advances in neuroimaging,” writes Ackerman, “we now have evidence that a baby’s first attachments imprint its brain.… The body remembers how that oneness with Mother felt, and longs for its adult equivalent.”

Brain scans of long-married couples show that “in the opiate rich sites linked to pleasure and pain relief, and those associated with maternal love, the home fires glowed brightly.  A happy marriage relieves stress and makes one feel as safe as an adored baby.”

Aww.  That’s sweet.  But what if you weren’t an adored baby?  What if  your body had no oneness with Mother in the first place?  What are you going to recreate then?  You might have been unwanted, adopted, or abused.  Premature, underweight, or incubated… the no-heartbeat beat goes on.  We’re longing for something we have never felt.  How pathetic is that?

Me, I was born in an auditorium before an audience of medical school students.  Apparently, I was an usual breech presentation.  Apparently, too, I have been seeking a fresh audience ever since.  Mother had rheumatic fever, then post-partum depression, then bipolar disorder, then a colorful series of suicide attempts.  Adoration was not part of the picture, and it was rarely what you’d call safe.

This is where the now-popular “biopsychosocial” model of addiction becomes important.  Love addiction, nictotine addiction, alcohol addiction — I’m not picky.  Yes, addiction starts out as a brain disease, whereby the nerve endings don’t pump the joy juice properly and the white matter isn’t firing on all cylinders.  But, as the NY Times points out, the brain (biological) can rewire itself… if it has a supportive emotional framework (psychological) to build on.  Like, for instance, healthy family and friends (social). 

It’s complicated.  I hate complicated.  I would prefer that PrinceCharming.com wave a magic algorithm and make us all feel like adored babies overnight.

Las Vegas is a counterintuitive place to hold a conference of substance abuse counselors in the first place.  Choosing St. Patrick’s Day weekend to do it is total cognitive dissonance.  Still, if it weren’t for the lingering pall of cigarette smoke — the entire state smells like a stale ashtray — and the lingering sting of nasty comments directed toward me on the Huffington Post, I’d say the trip was a hoot and a half.

            There was a lot of interest in my workshop on love addiction, if only because there’s a big mushy overlap between people in the “helping professions” and people in the “codependency addictions.”  Plenty of card-carrying (or, in this case, badge-wearing) therapists are themselves romance junkies.  There were also plenty of attendees interested in the workshops on sex addiction, because so many more people are being identified as sex addicts these days… and not all of them self-identified, either.  Parents nationwide are throwing their hands in the air and throwing their teenage boys into sex rehab.   

            From the Fall of Rome until the Rise of the Internet, anyone desirous of a sexual encounter had to first raise cash money, then leave the house, and risk embarrassment, exposure and even arrest to meet his or her fleshly needs.  Those barriers to entry no longer exist.  In the digital age, all anyone needs is a smartphone and, voila, hot and cold running sexual fantasies 24/7.   For many teenage boys, this often translate as, well, hot and cold running sexual fantasies 24/7.

            You can’t fault the parents for freaking out.  In their workaday world, someone who spends all day every day beating off to porn probably would be a sex addict.  In their kids’ virtual world, there’s a 94% chance it’s just a combination of curiosity, hormones, and habit.   It’s the 6% with the genetically addictive brains that I deal with, and those brains don’t usually even resolve themselves until about the age of 25.

            Here’s an example.  One of the things that traditional mental health centers do that drives me crazy is what they call “harm reduction.” Get the patient to do less of the bad behavior.  But anyone from the 12-step recovery world knows that telling an alcoholic to drink less, or a cocaine addict to just use on weekends, is useless.  Addiction is, sorry to report, an all-or-nothing proposition.  

            And yet the counselors at the conference did have some success getting kids to cut down their hours of internet porn.  My favorite story was about the kid who was persuaded to switch from porn sites to Angry Birds.  He really just wanted to zone out on the internet; the digital content was less an issue than the digital delivery.

             Harm reduction works great if you’ve picked up a bad habit.  Therapy works great if you’ve developed self-destructive behavior patterns.  But if you’re an addict, one of the lucky 6% with a chronic and relapsing brain disease characterized by the compulsive use of a mind-altering substance or behavior with negative life consequences, the most you can hope for is that you’ll switch to a different addiction and get your parents off your back.  

            Hardly anyone ever nags an exercise addict.

In her usual modest and discreet manner, Ethlie responds to Dr. David Ley’s “8 Reasons Sex Is Not Addictive.”  That’ll teach him to post a huff (huff a post?) next to hers….

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.

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…