Just like many problems in life, drugs may be the answer—even in the case of love. How so? Well, I just read an article about the development of new drugs that can either encourage or prevent “falling in love” by manipulating the oxytocin levels in the brain—the chemical that controls our ability to bond with others.

But before you develop that lifelong bond, you must first fall in love. In a study on the brain’s chemical reactions of people who considered themselves “madly in love,” each subject was shown a pictured of his/her loved one. The part of the brain linked to reward and pleasure would lite up. No surprise, but what I was surprised to learn that this is the same part of the brain that lights up when someone shoots up heroine. That part of the brain is saturated with dopamine—the chemical that creates those feelings of intense energy, exhilleration, focused attention, and motivation to do things we wouldn’t normally do.

Funny, I’ve always referred to those em0tions as a case of the crazies—the irrational behavior a female exhibits after she has become smitten by a male (extreme giddiness, daydreaming, as well as secretly doodling your new married name, Friday-night drive-bys, cyber stalking, etc.).

Anyway, that surge of dopamine, or the crazies, makes you takes risk—both emotional and physical. We’re basically high. And we experience the same reaction when a relationship starts to fail as if we were denied another shot of dope. We revert to depression, loss of appetite, and even crazier “I’ll die if I don’t have you” threats. (Although I have always half-jokingly said the best perk of a broken heart is losing your appetitite and a few pounds as a result. Maybe that’s nature’s way of getting you ready to go back on the market.)

Now drawing from the famous adage “Knowledge Is Power,” we can perhaps take this information and use it to our advantage.

How? Now, let’s say you like someone, and you’d like him to like you back. All you need is for your love-interest to associate adrenaline-packed feelings with you, and he will think he’s in love. And there is a way to do it that doesn’t involve slipping a pill into a drink. For example, riding a rollar coaster or watching an action movie releases a surge of adrenaline and/or dopamine—a high. If you happen to do that activity with someone else, your brain will associate those high-energy, intense feelings with that person. He will like the feeling he gets around you, and he’ll only want more and more.

But be careful. Our bodies can build a tolerance against both the love-induced dopamine as it can against the heroine-induced dopamine. Rollar coaster rides will lead to bungee jumping, which leads to sky-diving, etc. You’ll eventually kill yourself trying to convince this person he is in love with you. But if you’re lucky, the dopamine-drench state of romantic love eventually turns to the slower-paced, oxytocin-dripped state of a lifelong bond. Like I said above, oxytocin is brain chemical that creates lasting bonds with a mate.

But if you’re not so lucky, and he doesn’t bond with you and leaves, well, don’t worry. We’ll soon be able to fix that too. I recently read something about new research to develop a love potion—a pill that increases the oxytocin levels in the brain and the ability to bond. This would be intended for married couples who are struggling to stay connected or a 40-year-old bachelor who wants to get married but just can’t commit to someone. But who says it won’t work for your secret crush?

On the other hand, they are also researching a love vaccine by reversing the effect. Create a pill that blocks the release of oxytocin in the brain, and people won’t stick with one mate. I can see parents using this against their teenage daughters before they run off with their tatooed-biker boyfriend; or, more typically, a guy slipping it into last night’s date’s coffee the morning after.

All this leads me to wonder, are our fates left to the stars or can we manipulate our brains to tell our hearts what to feel? Who knows? We’ll probably never really understand it, and we’ll just continue to wander from mate to mate—hoping that once, just once, we BOTH will feel that spark. But in the meantime I will be following the development of that pill.