In addition, it can even induce—at least in rats—a withdrawal syndrome as strong as that induced by heroin Avena et al. Process addiction—as opposed to substance addiction—typically refers to an obsession with certain activities such as sex, spending money, eating, or gambling.
When a person in love repeatedly seeks contact with another individual—for physical intimacy, attention, or merely to be in the same room—it is often to secure momentary feelings of intense pleasure and to relieve obsessive thought patterns about the object of her passion. A further distinction has been drawn by Sussman , following Curtis , between mature love and immature love.
Sussman suggests that only the latter may be considered a form of addiction. To summarize, a lover might be suffering from a type of addiction on this narrow view if she expresses one of a number of abnormal sexual or attachment behaviors—perhaps underwritten by similarly abnormal brain processes—such that her quest for love 1 interferes with her ability to participate in the ordinary functions of everyday life, 2 disables her from experiencing healthy relationships, or 3 carries other clear negative consequences for herself or others.
In the case of more ordinary examples of love—i. The narrow view of love addiction is narrow , then, in the sense that it sees only extreme, radical brain processes, attachment behaviors, or manifestations of love as being potentially indicative of addiction—and hence it is thought to be quite rare. S population. Such love is said to have evolved, for example, for adaptive and still-useful ends, such as the promotion of procreative behaviors and the facilitation of cognitive and social learning.
Reynaud et al. There is a broader understanding of addiction that has been gaining steam in recent years. As two of us have argued, addiction should be considered to be a spectrum of motivation that emerges from the repeated application of any type of reward, including drug rewards, gambling rewards, food rewards, and sexual rewards Foddy and Savulescu , ; Foddy These appetite-motivations arise in response to reward conditioning, and are, indeed, the evolved mechanism by which we humans and other animals learn to behave in survival- and reproduction-enhancing ways.
Our appetite for food, for example, is not strictly genetically controlled: we are weaned onto it during gestation, and it can wax and wane over the course of our lives, often in ways that run contrary to our real nutritive needs Foddy By the same token, we may develop appetites for any rewarding behavior, and these appetites may exceed or fall beneath a level that suits our biological needs, our conscious values, or our personal preferences.
On a broad view, then, addictions are simply appetites: they are felt needs that can be temporarily satisfied, but which become urgent and distracting if one abstains from fulfilling them for too long.
Conversely, and perhaps counterintuitively, appetites are simply weak addictions. A similar broad approach can be applied to the concept of love addiction.
This approach would claim that to love someone is literally to be addicted to them, though perhaps only weakly. To prime the reader for their thesis, they open their seminal paper on this subject with the following vignette:. At first, each encounter was accompanied by a rush of euphoria—new experiences, new pleasures, each more exciting than the last. Every detail became associated with those intense feelings: places, times, objects, faces.
Other interests suddenly became less important as more time was spent pursuing the next joyful encounter. Gradually, the euphoria during these encounters waned, replaced imperceptibly by feelings of contentment, calm, and happiness. The moments between encounters seemed to grow longer, even as they stayed the same, and separation came to be filled with painful longing and desire.
When everything was brought to an abrupt end, desperation and grief followed, leading slowly into depression. Burkett and Young , 1. Does this story describe falling in love or becoming addicted to a drug? In other words, substance dependence and everyday romantic bonding have much more in common than their outward psychological profiles. At the level of the brain, the mechanisms underlying pair-bonding in socially monogamous or quasi-monogamous species such as humans overlap quite substantially with those involved in reward learning and addiction see, e.
The greatest overlap occurs in neurochemical regions involved in the processing of dopamine Kelley and Berridge ; Burkett and Young oxytocin Insel ; McGregor, Callagham and Hunt , and other neurotransmitters such as serotonin.
With respect to dopamine, both mating and addictions elicit very similar neurochemical activity, concentrated in the reward circuitry of the brain: sex, orgasm, and all known drugs of abuse stimulate high levels dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens see Burkett and Young , Kirsch et al.
In fact, the role of dopamine extends far beyond addiction and is linked to a wide range of other processes associated with reward-learning—including eating, drinking, having sexual intercourse, and love see Burkett and Young , for a review. Some scientists have suggested that this dopaminergic overlap may explain why experiencing love or engaging in sexual activity can feel like a cocaine rush Blum, Wernel, et al.
Finally, neuroimaging support for an overlap between love-addiction and drug-addiction comes from studies in which participants have been exposed to images of their romantic partners during scanning. There are many others as well. But what about differences between love and addiction? As we will see, however, these differences are less significant—in terms of establishing a distinction in kind between love-based and drug-based addiction—than they may seem at first glance.
One such difference, at the level of the brain, concerns the duration of the effects of the stimulus. The release of signalling molecules in case of love-related experiences—such as sexual intercourse—may not be as long lasting as the analogous release stimulated by the use of addictive drugs Esch and Stefano For example, the building-up of sexual desire often precedes a sexual act e. Addictive stimulants, on the other hand, often rebuild high levels of desire immediately after drug consumption e.
When these same individuals binge on sugary food, they can experience a level of neurological reward that surpasses a dose of a drug such as cocaine Lenoir et al. The evidence, therefore, suggesting that drugs of abuse are inherently better-suited to causing addiction than are other types of reward is mixed at best. For one thing, while drug addiction is a circumscribed problem, affecting a mere fraction of the global population, romantic love is a universal phenomenon, emerging from basic, evolved sub-systems that helped our ancestors pursue mating opportunities with preferred partners see Savulescu and Sandberg In other words, love is deeply bound up with reproduction, which is the engine of natural selection Blum, Chen, et al.
And while we can flourish without ever taking drugs, we cannot do so if deprived of food, or, indeed, some measure of love and human affection. However, these considerations do not entail that love addiction, food addiction, and drug addiction are different in kind.
Nobody strictly needs drugs to flourish, but in some circumstances, and for some people, some non-therapeutic drugs could certainly be considered compatible with human flourishing if taken within reason, such as the moderate consumption of alcohol. Finally, there is the fact that love must be requited for it to deliver its full benefit. Lovers rarely regret being in love if the love is returned, and indeed a significant part of the suffering associated with falling in love stems from romantic rejection , or withdrawal of love—rather than from love itself.
Substance addicts, by contrast, are never rejected by their drug in the same way, so perhaps there is a difference in this regard as well. Even so, there are some potential parallels on this dimension that complicate the notion that love addiction and drug addiction are totally incommensurable phenomena. For example, consider the fact that the difficulty of obtaining drugs can be the source of many if not most of the problems that drug addicts experience. Access to drugs is constrained by scarcity, cost, illegality, and social stigmatization in addition to any biological side effects.
Some of the destructiveness of drug addiction occurs because an addict is unable to afford her drug and turns to crime; because her friends and family reject her for taking a drug; or because she cannot obtain her drug and goes into withdrawal.
The addiction itself is not clearly the cause of most of the associated harms. Therefore, we can draw at least a tenuous analogy here, too, between a lover who is rejected and a drug user who cannot access her drug of addiction.
Taken together, these considerations show that while there are indeed some differences between love-based and drug-based addictions, these differences may have more to do with the frequency of problems at the population level, or with the typical degree of reward-stimulation involved in particular cases, than with any clear incommensurability in kind.
The behavioral, psychological, and neurophysiological evidence concerning love, love-related phenomena, drugs of addiction, and the parallels between them, paint a very complicated and hotly-debated picture. The available neuroscientific and behavioral evidence simply cannot settle the question firmly one way or the other.
Or, as Burkett and Young have recently suggested, might it be the case that there is a neurological equivalence between quite ordinary experiences associated with falling in love—and even basic social attachment itself—and addictions of a more conventional stripe? Much more work is needed, we suggest, both empirical and conceptual, to arbitrate between these differing views. At a minimum, however, the evidence we have discussed in this article suggests that drug addiction, on the one hand, and at least certain love-related experiences or behaviors, on the other, can reasonably be understood to be equivalent phenomena at the level of the brain, underwritten by the same neurophysiological processes.
If this is correct, it cannot be the case that narrow addiction is a phenomenon confined to addictive drugs. Holders of the narrow view must instead claim that addiction is a term we can apply to any person who has undergone chronic and unusually strong pleasurable experiences—intense drug-reward in the case of drug addicts, food binges in the case of binge-eaters, or powerful personal attachments in the case of love addicts.
Based on this premise, in the next section, we will explore some of the practical and ethical implications that arise when we acknowledge that love has or can have addictive characteristics, at least on the narrow view, but also possibly on the broad view as well. The science and philosophy of addiction—generally speaking—have sought to solve two basic mysteries.
The solution to these mysteries, in the case of love-addiction as much as for any other purported form of addiction, will have important practical and ethical implications. First, we have sought to learn whether, or to what degree, those who suffer from addictions are capable of abstaining from or moderating their reward-seeking behavior; and second, we have been very interested to know whether—and how—we can help people to recover from addiction using various treatment modalities.
The first longstanding mystery concerning addiction in general is whether addicts are capable of abstaining from or moderating their drug use or other problematic behaviors. The solution to this mystery would have some indirect implications for the medical treatment of addicts, but it has much stronger philosophical and ethical implications: for example, is it reasonable to force addicts to abstain?
It is reasonable to hold them morally or criminally responsible for their drug-taking? What about for illegal actions they committed in pursuit of their drug? These deep empirical and conceptual problems date back at least as far as the time of Plato, who wondered how a responsible person could continue to choose courses of action that she would predictably come to regret. Naturally, this issue does not apply to love in the same way as it does to substance addiction or to other problematic behaviors.
We do not ordinarily choose to love someone at least not consciously and it would be a hard thesis to defend that we should be held responsible for falling in love—even though such an occurrence can have very far-reaching, and sometimes destructive, consequences for those involved.
People who are in love make choices every day about how to express their feelings: whether to seek proximity with their loved one, or physical affection; whether to make expressions of their attachment a matter of public notice, and so on. If addictive love is nothing more than a symptom of abnormal brain processes i.
Hence, proponents of the narrow view of substance addiction have frequently argued that addicts lack control over their actions and are not fully autonomous Hyman If this is the correct view, then we might think that it would be reasonable to try to eliminate the problematic feelings and behaviors associated with addictive love, since they are merely the symptoms of disease.
And we might even believe that we could be justified in using coercion or force to prevent a love addict from being near the object of her desire. Indeed, we, too, have previously argued that in some domestic abuse situations, including Stockholm Syndrome-like cases of attachment between the victim and her abuser, coercive intervention may possibly be justifiable Earp, Wudarczyk, Sandberg, and Savulescu The broad view, by contrast, argues that even the strongest, most negative forms of love are merely extremes of an authentic emotion.
Hence it is possible to argue, from these grounds, that even those people who suffer from harmful extremes of love may be fully autonomous in their behavior. On this kind of view, any possible treatment modality would then differ along certain dimensions. Likewise, treatments should never violate the autonomy of the person-in-love, nor should they involve coercion or force of any kind. Two of us have advanced a similar point of view regarding treatment for substance addiction Foddy and Savulescu In other words, the possibility of treating love—given the right sort of circumstances—may not be so far-fetched after all.
Yet as we show in what follows, the general conclusion of such an analysis may not differ very much in the end, regardless of the view one takes. That is, love addiction— however it is conceived —would seem to be an appropriate candidate for treatment in at least some circumstances.
Or so we argue in this section. On this kind of view, love addiction is a neurobiological disorder that has no place in a healthy or flourishing life, and it follows that we ought to offer love addicts some measure of treatment or support.
For example, just as heroin addicts are sometimes given oral naltrexone to block the pharmacological effects of their drug, we could use oxytocin antagonists to reduce the reward an individual receives from being close to another person see Earp, Wudarczyk, Sandberg, and Savulescu According to the broad view, by contrast, everyone who loves is on a spectrum of addictive conditions: being addicted to another person is not an illness but simply the result of a fundamental human capacity that can sometimes be exercised to excess.
On this kind of view, it can be objected that love—no matter how destructive—is never an appropriate object of psychiatric treatment. Yet this is where the distinction between broad and narrow begins to break down.
On both views, that is, the primary difficulty from an ethical point of view is to determine how we ought to distinguish the good kinds of love from the bad: the innocuous or even the beneficial from the dangerous and the harmful. As one of us has argued, in cases of mental illness it can be very difficult to sort pathology from normal function, especially in the grey areas between extremes Savulescu For example, we arbitrarily define anyone with an IQ two standard deviations below the mean as being intellectually disabled—and hence deserving of special treatment—but we could just as easily have put the bar at one standard deviation, or three.
Nearly every psychiatric disability or disease represents an extreme of a smooth spectrum of behavior, function, or capacity. Not all sad people are depressed, and not all energetic people are manic. Our definitions of psychiatric illness, therefore, are essentially holistic rather than purely naturalistic; they are based inevitably on judgments of value—or in other words, ethical judgments.
At base, these judgements relate certain states of biology or psychology to well-being: when a state either constitutes or creates harm, it may come to be defined as a disease and thereby mark itself out as a candidate for treatment. Given this inherent value-ladenness, we suggest, in defining some condition as a disease or a disorder, we should consider a range of different outcomes that would result from the application of such a label.
We must consider who we think should have excuses for their behavior; who should receive support from friends or from the state; who should be an object of medical research; and above all who should receive treatment. In other words, it matters fundamentally whether harm, difficulty, or ill-consequences are associated with the reward-seeking behavior: the reward itself is not the problem.
What insight do these considerations bring to our understanding of love addiction and its potential for being an appropriate subject of treatment? The message by now should be clear: regardless of whether we understand the love-related phenomenon to be the result of abnormal brain processes, or simply the manifestation of a strong appetitive desire, the key determinant for labelling and treatment should be the degree to which the individual is harmed by the love through its deleterious impact on her well-being.
In the next section, we examine this perspective in greater detail. There are three main theories of well-being—or classes of theories—discussed throughout the literature Griffin ; Parfit How one relates love addiction to well-being, and therefore to treatment, will depend upon the theory or theories of well-being one finds most convincing.
The first class of theories concerning well-being are hedonistic theories , which are defined in terms of mental states. I love the song but most of all I adore the girls in the video. They were all models working in London at the time and were hired by Terence Donovan for the shoot which took one day at a studio in Holborn London.
Although they didn't know each other prior to the shoot they became great mates. They have all carved out successful careers in various fields and have remained in touch to this day. When asked by an interviewer what was the worst part of the day one of the girls said having to leave at the end! Although obviously not choreographed they all moved in time and on the beat.
I suppose it would be considered a bit non PC these days by some people but I think it's fantastic. Details Edit. Release date United States. United Kingdom. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 4min. Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content.
Edit page. Best New and Upcoming Netflix Releases. See the full list. Love itself is not addictive. Instead, at The Glass House, we used the term attachment dysregulation to refer to love addiction and highlight its severity. Attachment dysregulation often seems to result from an attachment style that developed from adopting specific survival patterns that help the individual tolerate the hurtful feelings of neglect and abandonment. And that unmet longing is driving every single relationship.
In fact, I was chasing relationships with the hopes of finally experiencing a sense of belonging. I always had to be in a relationship. After all, how could I be addicted to something that I had never experienced? What I was addicted to was chasing unavailable people. Love addiction develops from experiencing an avoidant bond in childhood. Love addicts tend to resonate with the term attachment disorder upon looking at the neglect and abandonment they experienced in their childhood.
They often cling on in relationships when challenged with their attachment wounds, all because of a deep-set fear of abandonment. As their deep, unmet longing is hard to tolerate, the individual is often left feeling lifeless and empty.
They are found in a highly destabilizing position when abandoned, often being unable to function at work or in social circumstances because of their relational withdrawal.
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