Experts still debate whether ‘love addiction’ appropriately describes destructive romantic fixation

Elizabeth Gilbert was using people like drugs: a point she emphasizes throughout her memoir All the Way to the River, released in September.

In the book, Gilbert describes falling in love with her friend Rayya Elias. Elias’s terminal cancer diagnosis compelled Gilbert to reveal her feelings, despite being married at the time. She admits to enabling Elias, a self-described “ex-junkie”, to access hard drugs and alcohol during her final months as a warped act of care.