by L. Merlino

Created on: August 31, 2008

Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" sums it up. In the all-telling music-video, his backup singers all look like vacuous clones of each other, rather void of identity. The symbolism is there:

"The lights are on, but no-one's home
Your mind is not your own"

Are you minding house? What's in that head of yours anyway? Love should further your sense of presence, not diminish it - unless it's an addiction! Whether addicted to food, chemicals, or even love, the addict tends to get out of touch with reality - and self!

We humans can become addicted to just about anything including work, chocolate, shopping and pain. Love is especially easy to become addicted to. As with any other addiction, the end result is pain and dysfunction. How can this be when love isn't a vice?

When we crave the intense high first experienced in love's early stages - more than the actual object of professed affection, the situation can degrade into vice pretty quickly.

When first falling in love, we are literally bathed in an ocean of hormones - a real chemical high. We float down the street, heads on cloud nine. The sobering fact is that for any relationship to survive it needs to eventually get grounded past the early stage of mesmerization. Eventually it must resolve itself with the more practical ebb and flow of daily life.

For some people those initial heights of infatuation become an addiction that ultimately takes over their very lives. Love addicts usually believe that they truly love their partners, but in reality they are simply "in love with love itself."

For typical love-junkies, life is a high-octane amusement ride as they coast from partner to partner to maintain that continuous high. They may keep at that flighty behavior for years, however if any sustainable relationship is what they aim for, the mundane reality of hanging on to a special someone repeatedly intrudes like speed bumps on a race track.

Whenever the "high" wears off, depression sets in, and a desperate search for the next partner ensues. Love addicts typically have issues with real intimacy, and as soon as too much familiarity sets in, they are off to greener pastures. When a love relationship loses its buzz, they sink into a miasma. The normal progression of a love relationship inevitably bores them.

With desperate hopes and constant fears, love addicts typically zoom through a succession of partners like drunken drivers. They fear rejection and pain yet court it at every toll gate along life's highway. Sometimes they park

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