I had never heard the phrase "Addicted to Love" uttered outside a Robert Palmer video or bad poetry until a few years ago, when a particularly poisonous breakup drove me temporarily insane. After endless hours of listening to me cry and obsess over what went wrong during my seven-month relationship, a few friends gently suggested that I seek professional help.

Fighting off sobs, I asked them if this was like the "Sex and the City" episode where Carrie's friends cut her off. They replied that they felt more like the passengers in Airplane!, who chose to hang and stab themselves rather than be subjected to yet another sob story about someone's ex-lover. The next day I found myself a psychologist whom I saw twice a week. Soon after I was officially diagnosed as a love addict.

That's why, a few months after entering therapy, I found myself seated in a flimsy folding chair at a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (S.L.A.A.) meeting in a moldy church basement. I approached my first meeting with more than a little trepidation. To my surprise, many of the other attendees appeared to be relatively normal. Others were stone-cold crazy. For the next hour we all went around the room sharing our tales of unrequited love and bad romance. One woman