this is your brain in love

so last night as i was falling asleep i listened to radio lab (great podcast, check it out). the segment was called “this is your brain on love”. i learned a lot of cool stuff about the culture of love. like how people who are “madly in love” get the same rush of happiness that cocaine delivers. people who have gone through a breakup feel withdrawals just like addicts do. i learned a long time ago that love is an addiction. it’s one that people never seem to want to break, or think they need to break. i’m not saying it’s always unhealthy, just sometimes. 

anyways, it talked about the three levels of attraction. dopamine, noraeverasdfawe (i can’t remember how to spell that one) and oxytocine (probably got that one wrong too.) i’ll explain

• dopamine is the chemical that gets you in the mood to be drawn to someone. it sets up the party, plays the music and gets you hyped up
• norepinephrine is that moment where all the lights dim except for on one particularly suave tall dark and handsome guy with the vneck and james franco hair, you start drooling a bit and the rest of the night is focused on making sure that guy pays attention to you
• oxytocine kicks in a little bit later, its the feeling of long lasting. after you have hit it off with sexy james franco look alike and have gone out for coffee a few times, had your first kiss blah blah blah oxytocine comes knocking at your door saying “hey wouldnt it be great to start dating this guy” and eventually “hey wouldnt it be great to fall in love with this guy” and then “hey wouldnt it be great to live with this guy”  after oxytocine has come into the picture dopamine and norepinephrine die out a bit. if your brain was constantly being sent surges of the two, you’d go crazy and be hormone ridden for the rest of your life

i always love finding out about these things, the science of love, the science of emotions. there are too many people who believe that love is a religion, that its unexplainable or something. not true people, its 100 percent explainable. love is not a religion. it’s not really a fluffy cloud of happiness. actually, yes it is but underneath that fluffy cloud are all these chemicals that your BRAIN creates. not your heart.