LOVE MAY TURN OUT TO BE A CHEMICAL REACTION

Romance In The '90s: Hearts, Flowers And Test Tubes

Science and romance -- once considered as firmly divorced as Liz
Taylor and her eight husbands -- find themselves united these days in
the quest to figure out why we love, why passion ebbs and flows.

The answer: It's a chemical thing.

Or, at least, that's what researchers increasingly believe, suggesting
that some of us are love junkies lusting for a quick fix, looking for
someone to renourish the chemical rivers deep inside our brains.

"It's like speed," said Anthony Walsh, a man who might aptly be called
the love professor. "That's why we do stupid things when we're in
love. You don't know you're hallucinating, but you have that tunnel
vision. The sun shines out of that person's ears, by God.

"We do a lot of wild, weird, wonderful things."

Walsh wrote a book called The Science of Love: Understanding Love and Its
Effects. What might surprise you is that he's a professor of criminology at
Boise State University in Idaho. Turns out he got turned on by the study of
love during his days working in parole and probation in Toledo, Ohio. Walsh
noticed that some of the most horrific cases he handled had something to do
with love -- or, more often, lack of love.

The study of love is no longer the exclusive domain of poetry
professors parsing Dickinson and Shakespearean sonnets. Instead,
white-jacketed lab researchers hunt answers to the age-old riddle of
why birds do it, bees do it, even hamsters do it. And what they learn
could well provide more clues about why we do it.

Michael Meredith has spent much of his scientific career at Florida
State University plumbing the noses of hamsters, a scientific safari
to figure out how the critters chemically communicate. He and his
associates want to know how a structure in the hamster nose -- it's
called the vomeronasal organ -- transmits messages to the hamster
brain about chemicals known as pheromones. They're odorless molecules
known to be agents of attraction in mammals.

Humans, it has come to be widely accepted, also have vomeronasal
organs. Question is, what do they do in humans?

"It's all very murky," said Meredith, co-director of FSU's
neuroscience program.

Bill Horgan sees it all with great clarity. He's CEO of Human
Pheromone Sciences.

As you might have guessed, where there is love, money is not far
behind.

Over the counter

Horgan's company is in the vanguard of businesses hoping to take
advantage of our increased understanding -- or, at least, suspicions
- -- about the chemistry of love. The Freemont, Calif., company makes
something called Realm that's available at the department-store
fragrance counter.

The secret ingredient: a synthetic version of human
pheromones.

You're asking: Does this pass the smell test?

Horgan figures it's the reason he got to go first class last
week.

When he got to the airport, the best seats were filled. But, he said,
the ticket agent kept telling him, There's something about you,
something about the way you smell. He was fragrant with Realm.

Horgan got to the gate. The agent was there.

"She said, `I'm putting you in first class. I don't care who's on the
waiting list,' " Horgan said.

Moment of madness

But, of course, they had just met. And who hasn't had that experience
of instant attraction, when no flower smells sweeter, no star shines
brighter?

If it seems downright narcotic, that's because it is. You're
experiencing a fully natural, totally legal high achieved with a mix
of neurotransmitters -- chemicals in your brain that go by the names
of dopamine, phenylethylamine and norepinephrine.

Just like any junkie, you can burn out, requiring stronger and
stronger doses, until your brain become benumbed. That's when you
cross the passion chasm, going from what Walsh, the Idaho researcher,
likes to call the attraction phase to the attachment phase.

"I make the differentiation between the attraction and attachment
phases as the difference between Bon Jovi and Beethoven," Walsh said.
"One is wild, wicked, when everything is wonderful -- we don't want to
eat, we don't want to sleep. The other one is a much more calm,
stress-free state, like listening to Beethoven. You just lay back,
close your eyes and waft away."

But suppose you could get a shot of instant passion, a nose spray to
restore what time and nature have stolen? One California scientist,
James Fallon, a neurobiologist at the University of California at
Irvine, believes such a potion is only years away.

FSU's Meredith is more skeptical -- but no less hopeful.

The stuff of dreams

"Imagine," he said, "you sniff the right stuff, you get the right
result. It sounds too good to be true, but if it were true, what a
great finding."

For now, though, relationship experts have a different, more sobering
prescription: hard work.

When University of Miami psychiatrist Eva Ritvo counsels couples, she
hears a weary refrain: There's no time for passion.

"The problem with couples today is we're pulled in too many
directions. We're on the treadmill of life too much," Ritvo said. "And
no one's responsible for maintaining the health of the relationship
anymore."

So, long after the Godiva chocolates have been eaten and the roses
have wilted, UM sex therapist Blanche Freund recommends a good game of
tennis -- or whatever it is that the two of you like to do together.

"Most of the time people have lain back on their laurels and wondered
what happened to the lust and the caring that was there in the early
stages, and it's probably because they took it for granted and went on
their merry way," Freund said. "You can never take passion for granted."