According to a study mentioned in Wired magazine, love is an addiction. I laughed to myself as I read this because that's always been my experience with love. The utter surprise of hitting it off with someone becomes an endorphin stoker, pushing my happy hormones to excited levels. And then comes the anxiety that is attached to happiness; to get so happy means that should it not work out, the disappointment is crushing, so the anxiety acts as a preemptive downer.
Then comes the inability to sleep, the difficulty in concentrating, my mind jumping to the love high at any given moment, savoring it, remembering it, feeling it. My mind becomes ever so excitable, so it's hard to stand still and my thirst to keep moving increases.
When I get the text message or the phone call, the high is refueled, my heart jumping into my throat or my stomach and I crave more and more. I crave more dates, more physical contact, more glances, more kisses, more emotion from him.
And then, when it doesn't work out, even if it's for the best, I jones for it. Like a junkie who is dope sick and thinks one more dose is going to fix everything, I jones for his voice, his mouth, his smell, his words.
According to the Wired study, when the subjects, people who were still in love with their exes, looked at photos of the exes, a part of their brains lit up on a neural scan. That same part of the brain also lights up when an addict indulges or is craving another fix. On a positive note, the study showed that time does heal all wounds; those subjects who had been broken up longer than others had the weakest reaction to their exes' photos than those who had just broken up. The more the time, the lesser the reaction, the lessening of the addiction.
Addiction is a funny thing, and one I hope to kick one day.
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