aguineapig
Member
- Joined
- May 16, 2019
- Messages
- 159
This has become more and more of a fascinating subject to me over the past 7 or 8 years. In fact, at times, and for certain people, I think the euphoria of romantic love is the pinnacle of "drug highs". I have heard heroin described as feeling like love, cocaine obviously merges into the realm of love and libido, and my own experience with alcohol was after a painful breakup, trying to approximate some feelings of love.
Certain studies peek into this stuff. For example, this relatively publicized one where looking at the picture of one's muse triggers a pretty significant dopaminergic response. But I also question how much greater it would be, if it were not simply a picture of their muse's face, in a sterile hospital environment, with their head ace bandaged to a PET scanner. Talk about a buzzkill.
Then there is SLAA which not only encompasses the more material sexaholics but also the compulsive obsessionists ("romance intrigue"), who become so emotionally dysregulated off of their endogenous drugs that they come up with all kinds of contortionistic coping strategies like their coined sexual/emotional/social anorexia.
This struck me, as during a crazy period in my life, I had to avoid interacting with women, sometimes altogether, or at times would be highly reserved or misrepresent myself out of fear of "falling in love"--either outright, or by receiving some kind of social cue of being accepted or garnering interest, but not wanting to deal with the ensuing tumult and break up etc.
I see polyamory as being almost like a late stage addiction to endogenous drugs, where serial monogamy no longer hits the vein.
Anyway, it is just such a strikingly fascinating subject. I would enjoy seeing more pertinent research, as so much is very trite and pop culturey. The under evidenced "love lowers serotonin" assertion being an example--I suspect it likely does, but I haven't seen really good evidence. And they immediately liken the state to OCD with its intrusive thoughts (I struggled with OCD and brought myself back to functionality in living with intrusive thoughts with a combination of cyproheptadine and buspirone to lower serotonin).
How do the biological chips fall? is it lowered serotonin, or increased dopamine/noradrenaline? Endogenous amphetamines like PEA have been implicated too. Who knows, but I am interested.
Certain studies peek into this stuff. For example, this relatively publicized one where looking at the picture of one's muse triggers a pretty significant dopaminergic response. But I also question how much greater it would be, if it were not simply a picture of their muse's face, in a sterile hospital environment, with their head ace bandaged to a PET scanner. Talk about a buzzkill.
Then there is SLAA which not only encompasses the more material sexaholics but also the compulsive obsessionists ("romance intrigue"), who become so emotionally dysregulated off of their endogenous drugs that they come up with all kinds of contortionistic coping strategies like their coined sexual/emotional/social anorexia.
This struck me, as during a crazy period in my life, I had to avoid interacting with women, sometimes altogether, or at times would be highly reserved or misrepresent myself out of fear of "falling in love"--either outright, or by receiving some kind of social cue of being accepted or garnering interest, but not wanting to deal with the ensuing tumult and break up etc.
I see polyamory as being almost like a late stage addiction to endogenous drugs, where serial monogamy no longer hits the vein.
Anyway, it is just such a strikingly fascinating subject. I would enjoy seeing more pertinent research, as so much is very trite and pop culturey. The under evidenced "love lowers serotonin" assertion being an example--I suspect it likely does, but I haven't seen really good evidence. And they immediately liken the state to OCD with its intrusive thoughts (I struggled with OCD and brought myself back to functionality in living with intrusive thoughts with a combination of cyproheptadine and buspirone to lower serotonin).
How do the biological chips fall? is it lowered serotonin, or increased dopamine/noradrenaline? Endogenous amphetamines like PEA have been implicated too. Who knows, but I am interested.