In Robert Burton's lifework, "The Anatomy of Melancholy," the 17th century author details the many forms of melancholy and our futile attempts to cure it. Within his collection of life's human ailments and existential tonics, he details love's many symptoms: "But the symptoms of the mind of lovers are almost infinite, and so diverse that no art can comprehend them; though they be merry sometimes, and rapt beyond themselves for joy, yet most part, love is a plague, a torture, an hell, a bitter-sweet passion at last…"
Love, both an agent of melancholy and its long-practiced treatment, is still studied as such a sickness; some psychologists look at love as a temporary insanity, largely driven by a complex cocktail of hormones, neurobiological processes, and social conditioning.
Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, researches romantic love and its impact on the brain. According to her work, the neurobiological effects of being in love are not dissimilar to the experience of being on cocaine. "It can be hard to sleep, it can be hard to eat. You're very focused, you're very motivated," she previously told Broadly. Fisher conducted brain-imaging studies on hundreds of people in various stages of romantic entanglement and found that both love and cocaine activate a dopamine production system in the brain's ventral tegmental area (VTA), which is strongly tied to addiction. "With cocaine, it wears off after a few hours," Fisher said. "With love, it can last weeks, months, years."
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