Reproduced from the Sunday Times, Aug 1 1999

SCIENCE has now proved what the band Roxy Music knew long ago - that love is a drug. The giddy excitements of mutual attraction are nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brains of courting couples, according to the results of research conducted in laboratory conditions.

Mercifully, though, the chemically induced insanity is temporary, as Roxy Music singer Brian Ferry discovered more than 20 years ago when girlfriend Jerry Hall dumped him for Mick Jagger.

Men and women are biologically designed to be in love for 18 to 30 months, says the author of the research, Professor Cindy Hazan of New York's Cornell University. She interviewed and medically tested 5 000 people from 37 cultures and found that love's limited lifespan is just long enough for a couple to meet, mate and produce a child - there is no evolutionary need for the beating heart and sweaty palms associated with high passion.

Hazen has identified dopamine, phenylethylamine and oxytocin as the chemicals which 'produce what Elvis Presley famously described as "that loving feeling".

These substances, though relatively common in the human body, are found together only during the early stages of courtship, Hazan says.

But, "like a drunk grows immune to a single glass of alcohol, the effect of these chemicals wears off, returning people to a relatively relaxed state of mind within two years.

'By that time, couples have either parted or decided that they are easy enough with each other to stay together. Love then becomes a habit, especially if children are in the frame. But those chemicals rarely return in the relationship' even 11 further children are required.'

Some lucky people become, addicted to the love cocktail, Hazan found, and they are usually men.

They fall in love more quickly and easily than women, who are also more likely to end a relationship.

"These kind of people [love- potion addicts] are not in the love-rat category,' Hazan says. "[Men] are genuinely in love, 'Or at least the chemicals make them think they are, which amounts to the same thing."

She also found that most people learn to fall in love because they feel the other person is in love with them.

'Thanks to the intensity and tunnel vision of romantic infatuation, we enjoy the illusion that we choose our mate. The reality is known to zookeepers - the most certain way to get members of any species to mate is to house them in the same cage.'

Hazan's findings offer a scientific explanation for many famous bust-ups, Including that of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, who fell out of love soon after the birth of their second son. Another celebrity cited as proving Hazan's theories is golfer Nick Faido, 42, who dumped Brenna Cepelak, 24, bang on 30 months after their adulterous affair began.
Gwyneth Paltrow, who recently is won an Oscar for her role in the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love, said of her failed three-year relationship with actor Brad Pitt: 'I was sure that Brad was the love of my life, and then suddenly one day 1 did not feel the same. Nothing happened, but doubt set in.'

The Cornell findings coincide with an Italian study published this week in Psychological Medicine and in New Scientist. It confirms the view that the feeling of failing in love is 'actually an illness indistinguishable from a common clinical psychiatric disorder'.

Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa, found that lovesick people are actually suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, which is characterised by "obsessive, intrusive thoughts'.

Mairazziti writes that she was struck by the fact that 'the persistent, one-track thoughts of OCD sufferers mirrored the musings of people in love'.

She found that the two conditions were biochemically similar. Along with the love additives identified by Hazan, Marazziti found that the two states were linked by low levels in the brain of serotonin, a chemical the body produces to deal with stress.

In tests carried out on students since the early '90s, Marazziti found that serotonin levels recovered at least a year after courtship began, with subjects reporting that initial giddy feelings were replaced with more subtle emotions.

Marazziti's study also offered an explanation for the attraction often experienced between drinking couples.

'One of the effects of drinking is to depress serotonin in the brain, creating a passionate haze that lures you into thinking the person at the other end of the bar is incrediblv attractive ' she writes.

 

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