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.

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 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…

Some symptoms of sex and love addiction aren’t so bad - mainly, the sex and the love.  Some symptoms, however, suck suck suck.  This is the worst: Withdrawal. 

Ethlie Ann Vare will be taking questions live on the air this Sunday, January 15 at 8-9 pm (Pacific Time) on KLEAN Radio, KFWB News Radio 980 in Los Angeles and KFMB 760 in San Diego, streaming live web-wide at http://www.kleanradio.com/live-stream/

A lively debate is always welcome.  Please call and give her a hard time. 

I let two calls go to voicemail this evening.  The first was from Minnesota, so it was probably Senator Al Franken’s campaign office asking for money (dude, you already got elected; let it go) and the other was from one of those fake numbers that’s probably someone calling via Skype to sell me prescription drugs from India, which is a mean thing to do to a recovering drug addict.

     The point of the story, though, is not the insanity of our cash-mad political system or the lure of gray market Ambien.  The point is that I didn’t pick up the phone.  

     In the past, I might have convinced myself that the caller from Minnesota could have been that cute guy I met on that trip to St. Paul that time.  Or reminded myself that the Australian bodybuilder I once dated would call on Skype.  The love addict gremlin that lives in my reptile brain could always come up with some reason to grab for the phone and anticipate the mail. 

     My insanity is, if nothing else, optimistic.

     I think the quickest way to spot a sex and love addict is to see how easy he or she is to reach.  Sex and love addicts leave forwarding addresses.  We transfer our calls to our cell phones.  We leave word where we can be found at any hour of the day or night.  God forbid that our soulmate should try to contact us and not be able to!  Somewhere in the back of every love addict’s head is the fantasy that Prince Charming is out there somewhere, and you never know if today is the day he’s going to reach out and touch you.  Maybe this is the morning your unrequited crush will realize you were The One all along.  You never know. 

     Yes, people are more wired today than they were only a few years ago, and you can tell me you’re glued to your devices purely for business purposes.  But in your heart, you know what call you’re expecting.  And every time the caller isn’t your true love, but just another fundraiser from Minnesota or telemarketer from Bangalore, doesn’t your heart sink a little?  It fills every day with a parade of disappointment and unmet expectation.  No wonder love addicts get depressed.

     In my book, it’s a signpost of recovery for any sex and love addict to not pick up a phone.  Prince Charming can leave a damn message.