{"id":1019,"date":"2008-03-11T09:30:25","date_gmt":"2008-03-11T09:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html"},"modified":"2008-03-11T09:30:25","modified_gmt":"2008-03-11T09:30:25","slug":"beware-of-the-head-rush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html","title":{"rendered":"Beware of the Head Rush: Emotional Affairs of the Head"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think it’s also important for addicts and depressives to keep in mind the head rush that happens in the infatuation stage of a relationship. Not confusing the dopamine and norepinephrine high with true love is so crucial in making such massive decisions like ending a marriage, committing to a marriage, leaving a marriage for a love interest, and so forth.
\nThe article, “An Affair of the Head,” by Neely Tucker of the Washington Post <\/a>was especially intriguing to me, since I am so chemically sensitive. To get to his incisive article, click here. <\/a>Following are some excerpts.<\/p>\n

It’s all about dopamine, baby, this One Great True Love, this passionate thing we’d burn down the house and blow up the car and drive from Houston to Orlando just to taste on the tip of the tongue.
\nYou crave it because your brain tells you to. Because if a wet kiss on the suprasternal notch — while, say, your lover has you pinned against a wall in the corner of a dance club — doesn’t fire up the ventral tegmentum in the Motel 6 of your mind, well, he’s not going to send you roses tomorrow.
\nDopamine.
\nGod’s little neurotransmitter. Better known by its street name, romantic love.
\nAlso, norepinephrine. Street name, infatuation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

These chemicals are natural stimulants. You fall in love, a growing amount of research shows, and these chemicals and their cousins start pole-dancing around the neurons of your brain, hopping around the limbic system, setting off craving, obsessive thoughts, focused attention, the desire to commit possibly immoral acts with your beloved while at a stoplight in the 2100 block of K Street during lunch hour, and so on.
\n“Love is a drug,” says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and author of “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.” “The ventral tegmental area is a clump of cells that make dopamine, a natural stimulant, and sends it out to many brain regions” when one is in love. “It’s the same region affected when you feel the rush of cocaine.”
\nPassion! Sex! Narcotics!
\nWhy do we suspect this isn’t going to end well?
\nBecause these things are hard-wired not to last, all of them. Short shelf lives. The passion you fulfill is the passion you kill. The most wonderful, soaring feeling known to all mankind . . . amounts to no more than a narcotic high, a temporal state of mania.
\n“Being in love, having a crush on someone is wonderful . . . but our bodies can’t be in that state all the time,” says Pamela C. Regan, a professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, and author of “Mind Games: A Primer on Love, Sex and Marriage.” “Your body would fizzle out. As a species, we’d die.”
\nSome of these love chemicals in the brain, scientists measure by the picogram, which is a trillionth of a gram.
\nHow fragile, this thing called love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it’s also important for addicts and depressives to keep in mind the head rush that happens in the infatuation stage of a relationship. Not confusing the dopamine and norepinephrine high with true love is so crucial in making such massive decisions like ending a marriage, committing to a marriage, leaving a marriage for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships"],"yoast_head":"\nBeware of the Head Rush: Emotional Affairs of the Head - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beware of the Head Rush: Emotional Affairs of the Head - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I think it’s also important for addicts and depressives to keep in mind the head rush that happens in the infatuation stage of a relationship. Not confusing the dopamine and norepinephrine high with true love is so crucial in making such massive decisions like ending a marriage, committing to a marriage, leaving a marriage for…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-11T09:30:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Beware of the Head Rush: Emotional Affairs of the Head - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Beware of the Head Rush: Emotional Affairs of the Head - Beyond Blue","og_description":"I think it’s also important for addicts and depressives to keep in mind the head rush that happens in the infatuation stage of a relationship. Not confusing the dopamine and norepinephrine high with true love is so crucial in making such massive decisions like ending a marriage, committing to a marriage, leaving a marriage for…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2008-03-11T09:30:25+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html","name":"Beware of the Head Rush: Emotional Affairs of the Head - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-11T09:30:25+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-11T09:30:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/beware-of-the-head-rush.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Beware of the Head Rush: Emotional Affairs of the Head"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. Borchard","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75","name":"Beyond Blue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","caption":"Beyond Blue"},"description":"Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}