Is It Love, Lust Or Addiction?
Updated: Mar 1, 2023
Written by: Janette Ghedotte, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
In a flash, Ava caught her initial glimpse of Grant and her breath was taken away. Several stories high, through her corporate office window, she saw the object of her affection walking down the street. She had to stop everything and rush down the stairs to follow him. It was important that she not lose sight of him. That was the immediate power that Grant had over Ava. The power that Ava lost within herself.
They worked as marketing executives at the same Fortune 100 corporation. Grant didn’t know Ava; they had not met yet. But for some unexplainable reason, Ava had to have this handsome man. Within a fraction of a second, Grant had a profound emotional grip on her. She was bitten by the love bug. She had it bad.
Can you relate? Have you ever been strongly attracted to and taken by someone that you felt was ‘love at first sight?’ How often does this happen? Perhaps once or maybe twice in a lifetime. Ava had never felt or reacted like this before. At the first moment, Ava was hooked and couldn’t get enough. She was consumed with cravings for Grant. She thought of clever ways of ‘running into him’ at the office and getting him to ask her out on their first date.
Everything about Grant was intoxicating and attractive to Ava. Her heart beat faster and even skipped beats whenever she was within his intimate zone. It was exhilarating. All of her senses were fully activated whenever she was near him. He was eye candy and smelled like baby powder. She yearned to taste him. Was this true love or lust addiction? Her heart whispered that he was the one. Her soulmate. Her endless love.
And, yet, she barely knew him. In between their moments together, she wanted more. She became impulsive and then compulsive about wanting to spend all her available time with him. Did she lose her mind? It sure felt like it. She could not think straight. Forget about good judgment, logic, and rationale. Ava’s brain was highjacked with an addictive lust for Grant.
Grant and Ava dated for a few months and then all of a sudden he ended it. Without warning, notice, or explanation. He ‘ghosted’ her as if she didn’t exist. Ava lost her mind again, but this time in a drug-like painful withdrawal which left her confused, anxious, and depressed. It took almost a year of Grant’s absence for Ava’s brain, body, and heart to gradually and emotionally wean off of him and heal. Afterward, she recalibrates to a new sense of normal.
What happened? Ava’s experience is comparable to those who go through substance and non-substance-related addiction. Shockingly, lust, sex, online gaming, porn, gambling, spending, alcohol, and drug addiction have similar developmental and behavioral stages of:
compulsive goal and reward-seeking behaviors;
immediate gratification without thinking of long-term negative consequences;
escalating poor judgments and choices;
habit formation, tolerance, and painful withdrawal;
neuroplasticity; and
brain systems impairment.
Marc Lewis (2016) argues that the habits across behavioral, substance, and non-substance addictions are to be expected from learning development and neuroplasticity. According to Lewis, addictions are not diseases within the brain. Let’s take a look at the similarities.
In behavioral, substance, and non-substance addictions, the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a dominant role in motivating individuals to get what they want and to repeat the pleasurable ‘highs’ from acquiring their desired object or substance. The insatiable cycles of activating the reward pathways and chasing the highs impair normal dopamine levels, synaptic networks, emotions, and prefrontal cortex cognitive functioning. Excessive release and then depletion of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens are at the core of addictive behaviors. Dopamine receptors in the central nervous system regulate chemical messages in the brain regions of reward, emotions, memory, motor, and learning. Other feel-good neurotransmitters (e.g., opioids, GABA, serotonin, and cannabinoid) may also be involved in the exhilarating lust or drug cocktail.
In the early impulsive stages, the ventral striatum is involved. With rewarding or pleasurable experiences, the ventral segmental directs dopamine into the basal ganglia to set up the cycle in the brain reward pathway to repeat the positive experience. As this feedback loop becomes habit-forming, then the dorsal stratum takes over to continue the stimulus-response and condition-related cues. For some individuals, a compulsive addiction develops.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) loses control and functional connectivity from important areas of the brain (e.g., the striatum, amygdala, hippocampus) involving motivation, fear, and memory. In other words, the addict's brain becomes dysfunctional because prefrontal cortex circuitry, cognitive functioning, gray matter, and synaptic density decrease while cravings and compulsive behaviors increase as the addiction progresses.
Individuals caught up in lust, substance, or non-substance-related addictions go through these 4 stages:
Pleasure Stage: Reward, Exhilaration, Intoxication
Activation of the ventral tegmental (VTA) releases dopamine and endorphins from the nucleus accumbens (NAcc).
The nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) shell modulates motivational salience and the core reinforces learned behaviors.
The combination of both dopamine and endorphins creates a sense of pleasure that we want to repeat the experience.
Habit Stage: Impulsive, Compulsive, and Addictive Patterns Develop
Appetitive conditioning: the process through which new rewards are learned and acquire their motivational salience.
Conditioned environmental stimuli trigger the addictive processes.
Hippocampus: encodes the experience into memory.
Neurocircuitry: The brain organizes and reorganizes the chemical circuitry so the pleasurable experience compels the individual to repeat the urgency, impulsivity, immediate gratification, and sensation-seeking patterns in the brain.
Globus pallidus: located in the basal ganglia is involved in the development of habits leading to ingrained automatic responses and addictive behaviors.
The prefrontal cortex (Pfc) weakens so that logic, reasoning, evaluation, and long-term decision-making are compromised. The Prefrontal cortex loses the power to control and inhibit the nucleus accumbens.
Painful Stage: Withdrawal | Negative affective states
Dopaminergic neurons are inhibited when the addicts do not get what they crave.
Individuals experience negative feelings and physiological effects when not using, consuming, or experiencing substances or objects of desire.
Sobriety Stage: Healing the Brain, Body, and Soul
Prolonged abstinence from the source of addiction (e.g., lust, sex, porn, electronic games, gambling, spending, eating, alcohol, drugs, etc).
Receiving sobriety support, treatment, and therapy.
Easing the debilitating stranglehold of addiction.
Recalibration is the complex balance of brain chemistry and circuitry.
With the roller-coaster volatility of emotions, is this love, lust, or addiction? What Ava experienced felt like an addiction. In many aspects, the repeated pattern of desire, craving, exhilaration, and withdrawal are similar to and overlap with addiction. In the brain, lust, and addiction have parallel patterns. The debate continues as some will argue that addiction is a brain disease while others insist that it is the expected neuroplasticity of learning, reorganizing of stimulus and response, and healing the brain and body. Initially, Ava’s experience with Grant was exhilarating. However, the aftermath was debilitating enough that she did not want to go through the ordeal again. The chemical attraction may be physiologically beyond her control.
From Head to Toes, the BODY Always Shows the TRUTH.
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Janette Ghedotte, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Truth & Deception Detection Expert Janette Ghedotte is a MA LLP Clinical Psychologist, Founder, and CEO of Accurate Body Language.
Accurate Body Language is the KEY to crack the code, unlock the vault of nonverbal communication, and reveal the secrets of human interaction.
With over 20 years of corporate business, marketing research, advertising & strategic brand positioning, and clinical psychology experience, Janette specializes in understanding the complexities of human behavior, interpersonal relationships, verbal, and nonverbal body language communication.
References:
Brewer, J. A., & Potenza, M. N. (2008). The neurobiology and genetics of impulse control disorders: relationships to drug addictions. Biochemical pharmacology, 75(1), 63–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcp.2007.06.043.
Burkett, J.P., Young, L.J. The behavioral, anatomical and pharmacological parallels between social attachment, love and addiction. Psychopharmacology 224, 1–26 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-012-2794-x.
Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic attraction, and attachment. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 413-419.
Fisher, H. E. (2000). Brains Do It: Lust, Attraction, and Attachment, Cerebrum. https://www.dana.org/article/brains-do-it-lust-attraction-and-attachment/
Fisher, Helen & Aron, Arthur & Mashek, Debra & Li, Haifang & Brown, Lucy. (2002). Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic attraction, and attachment. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 413-419. Archives of sexual behavior. 31. 413-9. 10.1023/A:1019888024255.
Lewis M. (2017). Addiction and the Brain: Development, Not Disease. Neuroethics, 10(1), 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-016-9293-4.
Seshadri K. G. (2016). The neuroendocrinology of love. Indian journal of endocrinology and metabolism, 20(4), 558–563. https://doi.org/10.4103/2230-8210.183479.
Wu, Katherine.Love, Actually: The science behind lust, attraction, and companionship.https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-companionship/
