Is Love an Addiction? The Similarities Between Drug Abuse and Romantic Love

Consider the pattern of behavior of a drug addict. The drug most widely recognized as causing complete and utter addiction is probably heroin, so consider a heroin addict. Heroin addiction is characterized by a compulsive, overwhelming need for the drug, which causes the addict to seek the drug out, use it, and do little else. Addicts with severe habits talk of being on "smack time." Smack is a slang term for heroin and thus smack time refers to being on heroin time, meaning the life of an addict is not governed by hours or minutes or day or night but by how long it's been since he or she last had a dose of heroin and how long it will be until the next one. For a new user of heroin, not yet an addict, the dosage is a relatively low amount, and is a fraction of what is needed by a heavy user. As the user's tolerance increases the dosage that the user must take increases, gradually but exponentially, sometimes reaching amounts up to fifty or a hundred times more than was originally used. The method that the drug is administered into the body may also change; snorting may turn to smoking, and smoking to injecting. The life of the user, now an addict, is a series of actions that result in an incrementally escalating intensity, in response to an ever-increasing need and desperation. What was once used as enjoyment becomes a physical need, and as the enjoyment lessens the need greatens.