First hit. Body tingles, soul shivers. Colors bleed vibrant. Time stands still. Everything suggests divine presence. Second hit. Worries fade away, replaced by euphoria. Obsession begins, craving more. Third hit. Calm, happiness, contentment. Need a bigger dose to feel. Need a bigger dose to think. Need a bigger dose to function. Fourth hit. Can’t live without it. Too much time between hits. Getting fidgety. Moral compass points only to the next hit. Insanity lingers. Fifth hit. Fatal.

Is this the cycle of a drug addict? Or a human falling in love? Turns out, it doesn’t matter. The brain can’t distinguish the difference

“This is the chemical formula for love: C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2

dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. It can be easily manufactured in a lab, but overdosing on any of them can cause schizophrenia, extreme paranoia, and insanity. Let that sink in." PHASE I: CONSUMPTION “Spontaneous romantic love makes a man free and in the moment dependent… spontaneous love can become unhappy, can reach the point of despair.” Søren Kierkegaard

It was electric. Time stood still when they spoke. After only their first encounter, he was betwitched. Unconsciously, he became addicted to her details. Her swim-in-me eyes, her intoxicating perfume, the way she tamed her wild hair around her index finger, twirling while listening. In his brain, dopamine was released in huge quantities in the nucleus accumbens (NAC) shell which acts to increase the salience of incentive cues that predict the reward.