Love A Powerful Drug – All About The Chemistry Of Love
The chemical compounds we secrete when we feel love can be more addictive than a drug.
Honestly, love is one of the most extraordinary sensations that human beings enjoy. But have your soul ever broken?
The drug of love: why is love addictive?
The chemistry of love can make you feel in full swing, make you suffer a slump, or make you think the monkey for someone. That love is like a drug is true, and it has certain curious side effects.
As a study points out, when love breaks down, just like when a person is addicted to drugs, the consequences of addiction are so strong that they can lead to serious depressive and obsessive behaviors.
It’s a known fact that love can cause emotional dependence. In the following lines, you will understand why.
The chemical compounds and hormones that love generates
Love releases dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin; that’s why when we fall in love, we are excited, full of energy & our life looks magnificent.
But the neurochemicals of infatuation come to squirts. After a time, just as it happens when someone uses drugs for a long period of a long period, comes tolerance or what is commonly known as habituation.
When the chemical cascade descends, many people interpret it as a loss of love. What happens is that neural receptors have already become accustomed to that excess chemical flow, and the lover needs to increase the dose to keep feeling the same way.
That can turn a natural fluctuation into a crisis, and the pretty phrase can come: “I don’t feel the same way anymore.” But leaving a relationship isn’t always that simple.
The brain needs a recovery process to return to normal chemical flow levels, and it takes time to regain stability.
Oxytocin: A hug is worth a thousand words
The chemical cascade can make us lose our minds, but why is this happening?
Expert neurologists believe oxytocin helps forge permanent bonds between lovers after the first wave of excitement. The hormone works by “changing the connections” of billions of neural circuits.
This hormone is known as the confidence or hugging neurotransmitter and is released in large amounts during orgasm and in smaller pieces when they hold your hand or when animals ingest their babies.
Oxytocin is an endogenous substance (segregated by the body). It acts as a drug (exogenous substance introduced into the body from the outside), releasing transmitters such as dopamine, norepinephrine (norepinephrine), or Serotonin.
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These neurotransmitters allow flooding the brain with phenylethylamine. This chemical compound is from the amphetamine family and lasts in mind for about four years.
Chocolate is rich in this compound, so it is common for excessive amounts to be consumed during “bad loves.”
Reptiles release oxytocin during sex, but mammals produce it all the time. That’s why snakes stay away from other reptiles except when mating, while mammals form attachments to relatives, litters, or herds.
The more oxytocin is released, the more attached you feel to the other person. But keep in mind that levels of segregation of neurotransmitters or hormones also depend on our beliefs and perception of things.
The ideas, prejudices, values, experiences, expectations, or fantasies we have can cause us to release more or fewer chemicals.
This process follows a fixed pattern: more contact, more oxytocin, more confidence (more strengthening of neural connections).
Expectations or imagination also act as a form of communication and follow that pattern.
But we don’t realize that obviously, lovers don’t always meet each other’s expectations, whether they’re realistic or not.
That can lead to a state of frustration. Also, contact with an ex-partner can revive that pattern or connection between neurons, and that’s why most love-expert psychologists recommend all-or-nothing therapy to overcome a rupture.
By no longer maintaining contact with the loved one, relationships weaken, and over time, relapses are becoming less frequent.
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Oxytocin also plays an important factor in jealousy. For the brains of mammals, any loss of confidence is a life-threatening emergency.
When a sheep separates from its herd, oxytocin levels drop, and cortisol levels increase. The substance: Cortisol is the sensation we experience as fear, panic, or anxiety.
It works for sheep motivating them to reconnect with their flock before they eat it alive. In humans, cortisol converts frustrated expectations or a lack of confidence in emergencies.
Serotonin: the happiness neurotransmitter
Getting respect feels good as it stimulates the release of Serotonin. In the animal world, social dominance brings with it more mating opportunities and more offspring.
Animals do not dominate by long-term conscious goals; they dominate because Serotonin makes them feel good.
You can see this in many people, and in yourself, you must admit that romantic attention from a higher-status person triggers strong feelings and makes you feel good.
The problem begins because our brain always wants more respect to get more Serotonin. Your partner can give you that feeling first and give you the consideration you need or help you feel respected by others.
But his brain takes for granted the respect he already has, and over time, he wants more and more to get a bigger dose of good feelings.
That’s why some people always make more demands on their loved ones, and others are constantly looking for higher-status couples or lovers.
Self-esteem plays an important role in this aspect and does not fall for error; it helps to understand our neurochemical impulses’ origins better.
Serotonin acts on emotions and mood. It is responsible for the well-being, generates optimism, good humor, sociability, and plays an important role in inhibiting anger and aggression.
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Low Serotonin levels are associated with depression and obsession (symptoms of distortion). Antidepressant drugs are responsible for increasing Serotonin levels to correct the neurochemical deficit, so Prozac (the most famous antidepressant on the planet) is called the happiness drug.
Constant positive thoughts and positive experiences increase Serotonin levels. Instead, unpleasant thoughts, bad news, talking about sad and worrying things, or getting angry, completely inhibit serotonin activation.
Dopamine: Love addicts
Dopamine is related to pleasure and is the neurotransmitter that plays an important role in gambling, drug use, and love.
When someone falls in love, dopamine is released, making them feel euphoric and energetic. If someone is unique in their life and focuses on that person, it’s because the dopamine system has been activated.
Dopamine is important as it is involved in the reward system. Pleasure makes us feel good, have sex, eat food, and do things that allow us to survive.
But in both drugs and love, when external (pill) or stimulus (oxytocin) disappears, it can create serious problems for a person. Then the monkey and the obsession appear.
Norepinephrine: the dose of adrenaline
Norepinephrineonorepirefrine is the neurotransmitter that induces euphoria in the brain, exciting the body and giving it a natural adrenaline dose.
This causes the heart to beat faster, blood pressure rises, and causes us to breathe harder to get more oxygen into the blood. It causes the symptom of sweaty palms and blushes in the early stages of infatuation.
The drug of love versus reason
Animals are surprisingly demanding with whom they meet. Free love is not a natural thing. In every species, sex has some fore preliminary.
Animals only have sex when the female is actively fertile, except bonobos (who do so for food and resolve conflicts). Female chimpanzees only have sex every five years.
The rest of the time, they are pregnant or breastfeeding, and without ovulation, males are not interested. When opportunity calls, it’s an important event.
Natural selection produced a brain that evolved to maximize reproduction, and the neurochemicals of happiness developed to promote reproductive behaviors.
That doesn’t make much sense in a world with birth control and sustainability pressures. But in nature, you had to focus on reproducing many babies.
Therefore, natural selection has created a brain with happy chemicals to reward reproductive behavior.
Love promotes reproduction, which causes a lot of happiness-producing chemicals. Sex is just one aspect of reproductive behavior.
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Passion motivates you to travel the world as long as you are alone with that special person. Of course, that reason is above those biological sayings, but the neurochemicals of happiness make it so good to be in love that the brain is looking for a way to get more.
Neurochemicals do their job speechlessly, and we look for words to explain the madness of our motivations. Sometimes it’s simpler to deceive or manipulate than to try to understand it.
In short, we want to be happy and have a maximum of neurochemicals of happiness. We expect that from love and other aspects of life.
But no matter how many neurochemicals we get, in the long run, the brain gets used to infatuation as when there is tolerance to the drug.
Knowing why this happens can help you manage your behavior despite confusing neurochemical signals.
There’s good news. Don’t blame yourself if you’re not the same as the first day with your partner. You have to know how to distinguish love from infatuation.
Love has to do with beliefs and values, and passion is a series of chemical reactions produced in different brain regions that make us have an idyllic perception of a person.
Still, it’s not a bad thing; it’s just been its turn to live with the operating system that’s kept humans alive for millions of years.