Crazy Love

My mouth hit the floor when I watched the morning news on CNN earlier this week. A female NASA astronaut, Lisa Nowak, was arrested for the attempted kidnapping and attempted first-degree murder of a colleague who she believed to be a romantic rival for the affections of another astronaut Navy Commander William Oefelein. The story only gets more bizarre.

This astronaut, with a masters degree in aeronautical engineering and who flew to space last July, went wacko because she was in love with a man. Nowak drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando wearing a disguise and a pamper so that she would not have to stop along the way to use the bathroom! To make a very long story short, she confronted the woman in a parking lot, police were called and she was arrested. I must add that she is recently separated from her husband and has three children.

So what makes a woman, in this case a very intelligent astronaut with a masters degree go crazy over some guy? When it comes to love why do we let go of our sensible selves and do obviously crazy things to win the affections of someone else? The great philosopher Plato once said that ‘Love is a serious mental disease.’ We have all heard the stories of women who do anything to keep their man or get one. I have even had a woman call and tell me that she would kill me if I didn’t stay away from her man. To this day, I do not even know who her man is! So what makes us go all nuts over love?

Researcher Helen Fisher of Rutgers University has said that during the stages of falling in love, there is a certain group of neuro-transmitters released in our brains. One of these called Serotonin, is the most important chemical involved in the love process. Serotonin may actually send us temporarily insane! Researchers found that events occurring in the brain when we are in love have similarities with mental illness. So can we really blame this astronaut for her weird and crazy actions? I think that she and her lawyers should just blame the whole incident on Serotonin. I can just imagine the scene in the courtroom. ‘Why did you try to kidnap your colleague Ms Nowak?’ asks the prosecutor. ‘The Serotonin made me do it,’ she answers. ‘Why did you try to kill your colleague?' ‘The Serotonin made me do it,’ she answers again.

Another chemical released while in love is Dopamine which is also activated by cocaine and nicotine use. So that means when we are in love with someone we start acting like crack heads. Anyway, there is even more evidence that shows that people really suffer from a few mental disorders while in love. A1990 research study done in Italy suggested that people who have recently fallen in love have some symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD.

A sufferer of OCD may become obsessive about certain things. One of the authors of the study suggested that these chemical reactions are necessary for relationships to last because we kinda have to be mad to fall in love. Oh well, I wish that astronaut, her family and all others involved all the luck in the world. After all it wasn’t really her fault. The Serotonin did it!