The Jonas Brothers were recently on the cover of Rolling Stone, and while the article about the band was interesting (more on that in another post) what I found most intriguing was a comment from neuropsychiatrist Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of the bestselling book, The Female Brain.
Brizendine likened the screaming of teenage girls when they see their favorite pop idol to a heroin high.
Seriously!
Brizendine tells Rolling Stone writer Jason Gay:

“There’s a thing in biology we call synchrony. Basically, one girl affects another affects another, and it becomes a domino effect building up to that level of hysteria. They are getting all these brain hits of dopamine, and also oxytocin, which is a love-and-bonding hormone. Teenage girls have so much estrogen, which just catapults the level of dopamine and oxytocin in the brain, creating this sort of ecstatic rush in themselves and others. It truly is a state of ecstatic love.”

The article says further that “the release of dopamine in a screaming teenage girl’s brain upon seeing her pop idols is like ‘injecting heroin.’ Being with other screaming girls, she says, only makes the effect wilder.”
Well, now that explains it.
Considering how addictive heroin is, it’s no wonder why, when you get thousands of teenaged girls at a Jonas Brother concert (or a Hawk Nelson concert, as my deafened hearing can attest), the atmosphere is nothing but total frenzy. One girl screams, another follows suit, and before you know it all the pop idol has to do is step up to the microphone and all common sense flies out the window.
Maybe we should stop sending heroin addicts to methadone clinics and just start sending them to Jonas Brothers concerts?