Do you remember those early high school days? Those salad days when your face was a tambayan for acne, when masticated guava leaves were used as a balm for a tuli gone wong, and when you begged your parents not to let your yaya pick you up from school anymore? And do you remember that earth-shaking day when your eyes grew large, your heart raced and your pimples erupted because you spied the girl of your dreams during the high school dance while the magical song Never Gonna Give You Up was playing in the background?
Do you remember how you spent hours doodling in your school notebook, scribbling little hearts while attaching your family name to her first name without her consent? Do you remember admiring the countenance of her beauty from 50 meters away as you hid behind thick bushes with your high-powered binoculars? Do you remember those late nights when you felt a lump in your throat as you called her house, but when she answered the phone, you would abruptly put down the phone because you were just too dumbstruck to speak? And remember how you called her house 50 more times just so you could hear her sweet voice utter the words, “Walang hiya ka, sino ka baaaaa!!!? Stop calling my house!!”
When you look back at those days of puppy love, I’m sure you can’t help but tell yourself, “I wish I could stick an ice pick up my nostril and stab away at that part of my brain that retains those memories.” And, you also thank God that caller ID had not yet been invented. Man, puppy love was such a bitch. What were you thinking when you used up a year’s worth of baon to buy her a charm bracelet or when you made her harana with your Rey Valera minus-one tape in full view of all her friends or when you carved her full name with a kitchen knife into your chest? What the hell was wrong with you? Were you freaking high!?
Well, yes. You were high. Very freaking high.
Times like these, when we become as irrational as administration congressmen pushing for Charter change, it is important for us to get ourselves tested for naturally occurring drugs. Because when rational thought has left the building your brain is probably floating on phenylethylamine — or as it is known by its gangsta “street” name, Notorious PEA. Notorious PEA hangs out along the brain’s nerve endings and helps electrical impulses jump over the bakod from one synapse to another. When the nerve cells in your limbic system are sloshing around with PEA, your body feels that rush of excitement, that surge of energy, that wave of exhilaration, that sensation of euphoria and, sometimes when we least expect it, that brush with diarrhea. And the reason for that tingle of elation and that liquid bowel movement is because notorious PEA is structurally similar to the drug amphetamine or “speed.”
So is it first love, or is it just a bad trip? Well, sometimes you can’t really tell because the symptoms of infatuation and amphetamine use are physically similar. After all, for all of us who have been victims of puppy love, who hasn’t felt the following amphetamine-like symptoms like increased heart rate and blood pressure, racing thoughts, distorted sensations, excitability, hyperactivity, nervousness, restlessness, anxiety, paranoia, blurred, vision, enlarged pupils, impaired speech, dizziness, excessive sweating, dry mouth, loss of appetite, disturbed sleep, diarrhea or constipation (apparently amphetamines like to have fun with your colon), and in cases of amphetamine overdose, a slight case of psychosis and erectile dysfunction. Ah, to be ecstatically in love, slightly psychotic, and unable to achieve tumescence. When you are in this state, it’s unsure if you are in love or if you should be arrested by the PDEA.
If the bane of flaccidity isn’t enough to make you cringe at the onrush of PEA, maybe this will: the early stages of infatuation are also associated with a release of fear hormones. But how can you experience love and fear at the same time? That’s because evolution has a notorious sense of humor: love and fear are connected biochemically mag-pinsan. So that heady mix of PEA and fight-or-flight hormones bubble over into an exhilarating yet goosebump-y rush that makes you wonder whether or not you should wet your pants. This is the same type of infatuation slash trepidation that adult men must deal with when they date a nymphomaniac serial killer, a Thai ladyboy, or a black widow spider.
And just how long can we coast on the zig-zagging, pockmarked overpass of infatuation until we hit the toll booth? Psychologist Dorothy Tennov, the author of Love and Limerence, discovered that there is a shelf life to being unashamedly “head over heels.” She measured the duration of romantic love — from the point of infatuation to the point of deadma. Dr. Tennov concluded, “The most frequent interval, as well as the average, is between approximately 18 months and three years.” According to Michael Liebowitz of the New York Psychiatric Institute, the expiration date for infatuation comes when the brain not only becomes more manhid to all of the PEA stimulation, but also when the PEA levels start to taper off. As Liebowitz summed it up, “ If you want a situation where you and your long-term partner can still get very excited about each other, you will have to work on it, because in some ways you are bucking a biological trend.” It was not mentioned if working on it required some battery-operated machines, some candle wax, and some small domestic animals.
However, there are some idealists out there who want to remain in that euphoric, speech-impaired, diarrheal and/or constipated state of being for a period that is as indefinite as the Chief Executive’s stay in power. I call these people Big-Time Bigo sa Pag-Ibig (BTBP). Dr. Liebowitz calls them “infatuation junkies.” These are individuals who crave PEA so much that they enter into a string of random, ill-fated relationships hoping to get that original high they tripped out on when their brains were first saturated with Notorious PEA. Their selection of partners is even worse than the government’s choice of bidders for a World Bank road project: sometimes they pick partners who are emotionally unavailable. Sometimes they pick partners who are real a-holes. Sometimes they pick monkeys (and they could actually be better off with the monkeys). But after monkeying around, the infatuation junkie will persevere in their quixotic quest for a stimulating partner who will provide him or her with a supply of PEA that is more constant than our supply of LPG.
But for the life of me, I just can’t fathom how people want to stay hooked on PEA for the rest of their monkey-filled lives. How can you live such a masochistic lifestyle!? If you love yourself at all, then why waste your lives addicted to a naturally occurring drug? Magbagong buhay ka na, kaibigan. Mag-totoong drugs ka nalang. And don’t worry if you become addicts. As long as our Justice Secretary is running the show, all addicts will be released because their arrests were probably unconstitutional.
You can’t really blame these infatuation junkies, though. PEA withdrawal is probably more painful than watching Lito Lapid chair a Senate hearing. Similar to amphetamine, the withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, depression, agitation, fatigue, chest pain, hypertension, excessive sleeping, increased appetite, psychosis and suicidal thought. So this means that falling in love can be excruciatingly sweet, while falling out of love can be excruciatingly sweeter. Ngek. Sometimes the No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs) are much better off with self-love.
For those running low on PEA, but who wish to avoid overeating, suicidal thoughts, and a return to self-love that comes with the inevitable withdrawal, the good doctor from the New York Psychiatric Institute has the answer: take more drugs. In a highly experimental study, Dr. Liebowitz pumped infatuation junkies full of antidepressant drugs called monoamine oxidase (a.k.a. Fifty Cent MAO) inhibitors, a class of substances that limit the production of Notorious PEA in the brain. Several weeks after shooting up their subjects with MAO inhibitors, one of the subjects — a perpetually lovelorn man and poster child for BTBP — started to choose his partners more comfortably, even starting to live comfortably without an inappropriate mate. Or a mate. Or even a monkey. There were no reported side effects from the MAO inhibitors, aside from a drastic increase in his forearm asymmetry since his last mate.
Don’t fret, though, if you have no visa to drop by Dr. Liebowitz’s psych ward to volunteer as a human guinea pig; there are still others ways to counteract a sudden drop in PEA. In Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness, BTBPs who are as unlucky in finding true love as Victor Wood is at winning an elective position try to modify their mood by binging on food that have trace elements of PEA — like chocolate. So for the lovelorn out there, nibble away at those Nestle Crunch bars, wolf down those Choc Nut candies, and inhale those thousands of M&M pellets. After some time, you will feel the rush of first love again. You will also weigh 500 pounds more, but it is probably worth that three-second rush.
A temporary bump in PEA levels can also be manufactured by intense experiences that pack that one-two punch of excitement and fear — like bungee jumping, joining Pinoy Fear Factor, playing patintero with the buses plying EDSA, or watching porn without locking your door.
But if you want streaming levels of PEA, then we will take you there, literally. In a study by psychiatrist Hector Sabelli of 33 people who were happily attached to a “significant other” and who also claimed to be feeling great as well, all of them were found to have high levels of PEA metabolite in their urine. So, if you want to feel the exhilaration of infatuation without the burden of emotional investment, then find a giddy couple who are irrationally in love with one another. I am sure that they will be more than happy to pee all over you.
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For comments, suggestions or if you need some urine samples, please text PM POGI <text message> to 2948 for Globe, Smart and Sun subscribers. Or email me at ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net.