An Unexpected Addiction
By: Emily Cradduck
Tags: Mental Health, Addiction, Love, Codependency, Psychology

It’s now December 2018, and fifteen years after sitting on my friend’s dirty laundry, I’m sitting in Jenny’s driveway. My knees are tight against my chest in my maroon winter jacket. My faithful blue beanie is on my head. The air is cold, but the stars are out. I watch them and then I watch her. Her dress is short and her eyes are wide. She’s yelling at me. She wants to know why. Why did I betray her. But I couldn’t say. I wanted to know why too.

All we knew was that I was addicted to her. In love with her, yes. But plain and simple, fully and completely — addicted.

I may have escaped the wrath of alcoholism, could toss my cigarettes without a second thought, can choose when I do or do not want to consume marijuana — but I haven’t been able to fully escape the addictive nature that permeates through my blood. And when Jenny came into my life in my mid-twenties, she became the drink I could never put down.

According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, “Addiction is a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.”

Addiction is most commonly associated with drugs or alcohol, and rightfully so. Amongst addictions, substance abuse is the most destructive and hard to escape. But as the American Society of Addiction Medicine points out, engaging in compulsive behaviors falls into the same category. Gambling, for example, has been widely accepted as an addiction. And as we learn more about the brain, and dive deeper into technology and its available distractions, we’re learning that almost anything can create some sort of addiction. Gaming. Social media. Cell phones. And even love.

Steve Rose, an addiction counselor with a Ph.D. in sociology, states that “Something becomes an addiction if it begins to have significant harmful impacts on other areas of your life. In addition, the individual experiences craving, loss of control over the substance or behavior, and is unable to stop despite these harms.” He goes on to note that “Recreation is about pleasure, whereas addiction is about coping.” And while there is absolutely no comparison between an addiction to heroin and an addiction to constantly grabbing your cell phone, therein lies the key. Addiction is about coping.

But love, how could something so pure and natural become an addiction? Well, the same way anything else could. Complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences.

Helen Fisher, who holds a Ph.D. in biological anthropology, conducted a series of brain studies which found that romantic love stimulates the same region of the brain as drugs and other behavioral addictions. Known as the brain’s “reward system,” it’s associated with focus, craving, rush — leading to tolerance, withdrawal, risk, relapse — all in all: obsession. And when the focus of that obsession relates to romantic love, codependency — an unhealthy reliance and attachment to another person — domineers.

It took too many years, and too much heartbreak, for me to realize I’d been dealing with codependency. I wasn’t enabling a romantic partner who was an addict — the situation most associated with codependency. But I was in a one-sided, unhealthy love affair where I placed all my potential happiness in her hands. It wasn’t that I didn’t make space for my own feelings; it was that I felt — what I thought — was entirely too much. And I smothered her with those feelings. I had little to no sense of identity outside of her, and as time went on, I had even less respect for boundaries.

It took a lot of soul searching to discover that I was seeking validation from Jenny. Validation that love was real. Validation that I mattered. Validation that I existed. None of which she could give me. Only I could do that. But I felt I was going crazy, and I wanted her to tell me that I wasn’t.

In a study of codependency in women, it found significant correlation between codependency and parental alcoholism. As it turns out, sitting on my friend’s bedroom floor relates more to sitting in Jenny’s driveway than meets the eye.