The LOVE Drug

LOVE is a drug. We’ve heard that before. But you know its a card carrying addiction when there’s a 12 step group that starts to support it. LSAA stands for Love and Sex Addicts Anonymous. I remember in the darkest week fresh from my break up of 3 years ago...it was hard to be awake. I would wake up in the middle of the night and reach for my bong. I couldn’t even exist without copious amounts of marijuana. I was really close to going to an LSAA meeting, but instead I decided to go to another kind of bio-energetic jedi meeting to help get my spirits up. This ended up being a great decision as I met a really good friend there who is actually still my comrade to this day. I just wanted to be held by something and weed was always that something when there was nothing. I made the decision to end my relationship, and I had done so many times before. “You need to be less co-dependent.” he would tell me, urging each break up to happen. I broke up with him three times and 3 times he pulled me back. I was just looking at the Love Addicts website which has a list including: Choosing partners who are emotionally unavailable and/or verbally or physically abusive Choosing partners who demand a great deal of attention and caretaking but who do not meet, or even try to meet, your emotional or physical needs Participating in activities that don’t interest you or go against your personal values in order to keep or please a partner The ex and I struggled with polyamory. Before him, I always thought that because I was a sex worker, poly would be the natural way to go for me. Boy was I ever wrong. It was like being skinned alive and pushed down a lemonjuice waterslide on a weekly basis for me! The thing with point #3 is that I knew it wasn’t for me after long. I’m not a good drug addict because I don’t like pain. I like short stints of pain perhaps but as soon as something is too uncomfortable I try my damn hardest to exorcise that demon out of me. Sometimes this is premature and so the cycle must run its course, which is what it did three times. He knew what he was doing and loving it. Perhaps he wasn’t conscious so much of his abuse, most abusers aren’t. The last time we got back together he even brought cocaine for me so that he would be sure that I wouldn’t say no to him that night. The thing about the break up and make up cycle is that it does follow the love addiction cycle because getting back together has that bliss that follows the darkness as if it is a drug, as if you are going to last this time. But, in the end, it’s just like a rail of coke. Short lived. One of my mentors calls herself a Love and Sex addict. She was a card carrying group member. Seems like sex work can attract LSAAs too. There is a spike and a high for some who can mistake high dollar clients giving them money as a symbol of the approval that they need in life. And then when the phone doesn’t ring, or the stripclub is empty, no one is making it rain so it pours inside their hearts. I think it is way way worse as a stripper because you actually have to walk around and ask for approval and men are actually rejecting you which can be really draining on yourself esteem if you aren’t even making enough money to pay your stage fee.