Love Junkie Scan ◉

Like any drug, love loses its potency over time. A healthy couple transitions to comfort. A love junkie escalates to drama—secret cameras, breaking up to make up, stalking exes. The Question: Do you spend more than 50% of your waking mental energy thinking about a romantic partner or potential partner?

We live in a world that glorifies the “hopeless romantic.” We sing songs about needing someone like a heartbeat, we watch movies where characters drop everything for a passionate kiss in the rain, and we scroll through social media captions that equate love with oxygen. But what happens when the desire for love stops being a preference and starts being a compulsion? love junkie scan

Withdrawal is the hallmark of addiction. If the absence of a text back causes a physiological stress response, you are not in love—you are in detox. The Question: Can you maintain a positive internal image of yourself when you are alone, or do you only feel “real” when reflected through a partner’s eyes? Like any drug, love loses its potency over time

If you have ever felt that you cannot survive without a romantic partner, that you obsess over new lovers to the detriment of your work or health, or that you constantly chase the “high” of a new relationship only to crash into despair, you may need to run a love junkie scan on yourself. The Question: Do you spend more than 50%

In clinical terms, love addiction is a pattern of maladaptive behavior characterized by an obsessive, compulsive, and/or addictive pursuit of romantic partners and the euphoric feelings associated with them. When you run a literal fMRI brain scan on a person experiencing intense romantic attraction, the brain lights up in the same regions as a cocaine addict’s brain. Specifically, the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the nucleus accumbens release dopamine—the neurotransmitter of reward and pleasure.

A is designed to differentiate between a healthy crush and a pathological addiction. It asks the hard questions: Are you chasing the person, or are you chasing the feeling? Why You Need to Perform a Love Junkie Scan Immediately Ignoring love addiction has devastating consequences. Unlike substance abuse, love addiction is a “socially sanctioned” addiction. Friends might encourage you to “get back out there” hours after a breakup, or applaud you for “falling hard.” Society rewards the obsession.

Relapse is part of addiction. If you have broken up and gotten back together with the same person more than twice, you are not trying to make it work—you are chasing a withdrawal reversal. The Question: Do you abandon your hobbies, friends, values, and goals to merge with the partner’s life?