You’ve called him a stinking rat to your friends, played I will Survive 15 times in a row at full volume and answered a dozen small ads from men with a GSOH. But you still jump to the phone at the first ring and feel your stomach drop into your boots when it’s your mother. You doodle his name at work during meetings, take furtive detours past his place to check if the lights are on, and fantasise endlessly about how it might have been. In short, you are in love-painfully..and hopelessly.

Every woman who has been there has dreamed of an instant cure for unrequited passion, but until recently the only ‘cures’ were tea, sympathy and - for the really desperate - a lot of psychobabble. This is not always enough. Most of us, at least once in our lives, have been so besotted with another person that we have behaved in a way that - if the cause were anything other than love - would be seen as madness.

You tend to wonder which is worse… being in love or the aftermath! At the beginning of each relationship you are like some crazed fanatic. Thinking about the guy every single waking moment, working out this entire fantasy life you would share - right down to the names of your kids. When the relationship does not work, you are into deep depression.

Now science is showing that the emotional upheavals caused by passionate love, the gnawing discomfort of unfulfilled love and the pain of heartbreak really are a kind of insanity. Furthermore, the cause has been traced - as with other mental illnesses - to disruptions in brain chemistry. As with depression or alcoholism, romantic love is an illness that can damage your body and create chaos in your life. But don’t despair, these findings are opening up the possibility of a cure - the anti-love pill is on its way.

The answer lies in the complex chemistry of the brain. Scientists have studied the three distinct stages people go through while in the throes of love. They found that each one is associated with huge surges and plunges in the level of various neurotransmitters - the chemicals that turn different areas of the brain on or off to bring about different thoughts and feelings.

The first stage is when you feel that lower-abdomen jolt when your eyes connect with those of some desirable hunk. This is actually due to a sudden flurry in the hypothalamus, which triggers the release of a punchy cocktail of adrenaline and sex hormones.

The second stage is attraction - a pleasant, light-hearted stage of love, but for some it is like being on a fantastic trip which feels too good to be allowed to end. Attraction is brought about by a group of neurotransmitters known as monoamines. In some people this produces a state similar to drug withdrawal, in which people need more and more affection or excitement to maintain a sense of wellbeing.

The third stage of love is attachment, which brings a new batch of chemicals into play. Chief among these is oxytocin, a neurotransmitter that has a bonding effect on people, and is released whenever you have that warm, huggy feeling of love for someone.

If all these chemicals remain balanced during this three-stage process, the course of true love runs smoothly - couples pass painlessly from lust of attraction to attachment and live happily ever after. But more often than not, the chemistry goes wrong. The main danger point is during the shift from attraction to attachment. The ‘high’ is terrific but, like all chemically induced states, there comes a crash.

Doctors today are prescribing some kind of anti-depressant to deal with this ‘love’ syndrome! The pills can take away not only the misery you would feel after breaking up with someone, they can also stop any obsessive ruminating on the affair. Many studies have shown that some antidepressants can calm the frenzy of infatuation and soothe the pain of a heartbreak, just as an aspirin can relieve a toothache. They can even subdue feelings of obsessive jealousy.

Anti-depressants are not licensed specifically for treating heartbreak, but if the end of a love affair triggers depression - as it sometimes does - you could ask your doctor to prescribe some anti-depressants for you. Of course, most people will get over a failed love affair without taking pills - and the pangs of a heartbreak often help us to be more sensitive to others - but for others they may be vital for emotional health. So, didn’t we always know that scientists will eventually find a cure for just about anything? A pill for being lovesick? Wow!