Addicts go low on highs of love

Jack, a millionaire's son, had done his time at both Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and, at Sex Addicts Anonymous, had sorted out his obsession with porn and prostitutes. At last his life was in some kind of order. But when the 38-year-old company director went to The Meadows, a clinic in Arizona, to do some further work on his "issues", he was diagnosed with a new addiction - love.

"Just before I arrived I fell in love with my yoga teacher," explains Jack, who lives in London and Devon. "People at the clinic said I was creating a stash - I'd given up drugs, booze and sexual acting-out, but I still needed something to medicate my feelings, so I'd developed a relationship with someone just as I was leaving for treatment."

While the notion of people being "addicted" to love may send many eyes rolling, it is a very real concept for some in the (highly lucrative) therapeutic world. It is treated at private clinics in America and Britain and sufferers can share their troubles at Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings.

Dr Brenda Schaeffer, an American psychologist who has written a self-help book called Is It Love or Is It Addiction?, defines the afflicted as those who "get obsessed or go out of balance" because of their love relationships. "It's any time that we look outside ourselves to satisfy our hunger for security, sensation, power, identity or sense of belonging.

"The love addict generally has a lot of separation anxiety. They will say yes when they mean no. They will compromise their values in order to stay in the relationship, and after a while many become depressed and very anxious and almost have withdrawal symptoms when they think about leaving a relationship. I think that all relationships have elements of health and disease and love addiction. It can range from a mild co-dependency to a fatal attraction, where people begin stalking."

Schaeffer says it is that pattern of behaviour that sets the addict apart from those who have simply experienced a bad relationship. Love addicts repeatedly attract the wrong person - the emotionally or physically abusive, people who will eventually leave them.

Schaeffer says addicts can be drawn to the euphoria of romantic highs and become addicted to the feel-good surges. When these eventually wane, they look for a new relationship to get another hit.

Dr John Marsden, research co-ordinator at Britain's National Addiction Centre, says that dopamine - the drug released by the brain when it is aroused - has similar effects on the body and mind as cocaine or speed. "Attraction and lust really is like a drug. It leaves you wanting more."

Men and women are equally prone to love addiction, says Schaeffer. Those more likely to become addicted are people who have suffered from trauma, or who have been sexually or physically abused, or who believe they don't deserve to be loved.

The consequences can be fatal. "I have seen too many people become depressed and suicidal," Schaeffer says. "Their drug has been taken away."

Jack, who has been treated twice for love addiction, agrees. "I had these relationships with people when I fell in love very heavily and was very intense, and if it broke down I still obsessed about what I could have done differently. I was a serial monogamist. I would find a woman I thought was amazing and give her magical qualities that maybe she didn't have, then pursue her. Once I got her and had to face the intimacy, I would then probably go into my avoidance. Love addicts love the seduction and the intensity of the infatuation, and they mistake sexual contact with intimacy.

"When I started dating this yoga teacher, I said, 'I'm on a celibacy contract but I've had visions of delivering my baby out of your womb in the surf in Barbados, yet I haven't even had coffee with you.' I think love addicts build these huge fantasies in their heads ... and build up expectations that turn into resentments, so it's pretty debilitating."

Love addiction is usually treated with psychotherapy. Since it opened in February, the Life Works Community, a residential treatment centre in Surrey, has had about a dozen such patients, whose treatment lasted from five to eight weeks. Founder Don Serratt says: "A lot of people with love addiction have severe abandonment issues. What we do is to look at the whole family-of-origin dynamics and what went on with them in their childhood.

"We give them a lot of education about dysfunctional family patterns and how that sets them up for love addiction. Then we help them to go back and make peace with that past."

Many love addicts have previously suffered from drug and alcohol dependency and their problems with relationships surface once their original addictions have been treated.

"We go very deep and treat what's driving the addictions so that people don't shift addictions," Serratt says.

Jack still attends 12-step meetings and therapy sessions, but he has now found what he hopes is true love. "I've got a lovely girlfriend at the moment," he says. "It's the healthiest relationship I've had. But I'm not looking for her to fix me."

- INDEPENDENT