Amy Winehouse's life and lyrics shimmered with the glories and agonies of love and she once said she drank because she was in love and botched her relationship. How many of us cover up romantic problems with other chemicals and then never learn to cope with the love stuff very well?
    This week in Sexcult: Self-Medication in SeXis magazine I looked at love as a gateway drug and got to interview Dr. John Sharp of Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab, Dr. Joseph Shrand of the CASTLE Adolescent Rehabiliration Unit at the High Point Treatment Center in Brockton, MA and cultural anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher.
     Brian Alexander, author of America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction who was nice enough to give me a quote for the piece, said that  "on the more general idea that some people are predisposed to "addictive" (I prefer brain-rewarding) stimulations and resulting behavior, I do believe this is true and I do bleieve it accounts for why some people have ultra intense serial love affairs  that peter out and why some of these same people may turn to other activities or substances taht can provide similar stimulation like cocaine, booze, public performance, body modification and so on. It's also possible that one is not always, or necessarily born with this predisposition genetically speaking but that it can be acquired through experience."
     Since I started looking more deeply into why we do what we do in my upcoming book Crazy Little Thing: How Sex and Love Drive Us Mad, the subject has fascinated me. And as someone who is as artful at avoidance as an octopus, I wonder how it effects us to hide rather than confront. Is it always bad? 
      Thanks to everyone who helped me with the piece! Hope you enjoy it!

      

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Day at the Races

Image
       So - has anything especially fast, slow, theatrical, queeny, nostalgic, crowd-pleasing, hot, aerodynamic, silly or record-breaking ever happened in your bed? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it has. So the difference between you and this event is that your spectacle (probably) didn’t happen in front of a mob of drunks on as glorious an April day as you could order out of a goddamn Hallmark calendar.       This was the scene at the    Fairvilla Megastore   Conch Republic Red Ribbon Bed Race  down Duval Street in Key West, a benefit for AIDS Help, which took place this past Saturday. More than 20 businesses participated in this charity goodf allism, racing real beds which must be a certain size, have a mattress, four wheels that touch the ground, four runners pushing and be manned or womaned by one person.             Once you get past the rules the cool thing is outfitting your bed for maximum creativity – there was a coffin bed and a bong bed, and pirate
Read more

Say Ahhhhh: Drive-Thru Pap Smears in the COVID era

Image
        Listening to my friends talk about the COVID-19 test I thought it was going to feel like getting a lobotomy.      “They stick a swab so far up your nose, I felt like it was going into the back of my eye,” one said, but when free drive-through testing was offered in my little Florida beach town I went. I can pinch a penny until Lincoln starts crying and if something is free, I’m going to get one, even if it means being skewered like a corn dog.  The test was mildly irritating. You tilt your head back and they do, indeed, poke a swab up your snoot farther than you’d expect it to go. It felt like I’d been bike riding and got ladybug stuck up my nose, a sensation which lasted about 45 minutes after the actual sticking. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, but I’d anticipated getting my eyeballs yoinked out through my nostrils.  Anything else was emotional found money. What left a more lasting impression than the test was the joy of drive-through medical service. Si
Read more

Buy my book: Crazy Little Thing: How Love and Sex Drive Us Mad

Image
       Carl von Cosel installed a phone in his dead wife's tomb so they could chat - he eventually just took her home.      Burt and Linda Pugach married after he did a prison sentence for sending thugs to 'scare' her and they blinded her with acid.     Love makes us all feel insane. If it hasn't knocked you on your ass you haven't been in it.       I wrote Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad several years ago because I wanted to understand why romantic problems had such a stranglehold on me and how people's greatest happiness, the thing we all want, could lead to them killing each other. It was published by Viva Editions just before the explosion of true crime shows like Wives with Knives and Who the Bleep Did I Marry?      My hope for the book has always been that the interviews with everyone from psychologists to felons would help people understand themselves but also that it would be a good enough read to take them out  of themselves, which is
Read more