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Science shows the brain literally rewires after a friend breakup. But there's a way to move forward.

“Friendship breakups are often a private kind of pain.”

Photo credit: Canva

Breaking up with a friend hurts.

Imagine this: you’re scrolling through Instagram and suddenly come across photos of your former best friend living their best life—without you. Your stomach drops to the floor, every muscle in your chest tightens, and, without warning, you’re sniffling over someone who once knew your Jamba Juice order by heart (medium Strawberry Whirl with a caffeine boost) but now treats you like a stranger.


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If this resonates with you, know that you’re not alone. Friendship breakups are one of life’s most devastating experiences, yet society either chooses to ignore them altogether or expects us to “get over it,” as if it’s no big deal.

Spoiler alert: it is a big deal. And we have the science to back it up.


The science and psychology behind friendship breakups

Here’s something that might surprise you: when a friendship ends, your brain processes it in much the same way as it would a romantic breakup. The same neural pathways light up, the same stress chemicals flood into your system, and you feel like your heart is breaking into a million tiny pieces.

Ugly crying into a pint of ice cream would not be uncalled for in this situation.


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Research shows that up to 70% of close friendships don’t make it past the seven-year mark. This doesn’t mean that we’re bad at friendship; rather, it’s a reflection of the fact that people change, grow apart, and that life unfolds in unexpected ways. However, knowing the statistics doesn’t make a friendship breakup any less brutal when you’re experiencing it firsthand.

When you lose a close friend, your brain goes into emergency panic mode. Known as the mood stabilizer, serotonin levels drop after losing a friend, leading to mood instability, anxiety, and depression symptoms. The brain goes through dopamine withdrawal, creating feelings of emptiness and a loss of pleasure.

Your amygdala—the brain’s alarm system—freaks out, sending waves of stress signals through your body. Simultaneously, the same regions that process physical pain (the ones that would activate if you broke a bone) start working overtime to process that emotional pain.


woman, sad, brain, head, emotions Woman with her head in her hands.Photo credit: Canva

This is why we use physical terms to describe heartbreak, like "crushed,” “broken,” or “torn apart.” Because in these moments, your brain truly cannot distinguish between physical and emotional pain.

The grief no one talks about

Friendship breakups can be especially painful because our society isn’t built to acknowledge them. When a romantic relationship ends, friends and family typically gather around to offer emotional support and say things like, “You’re better off, sweetie," or “It’s their loss.”

But when a friendship falls apart? Crickets.

Unlike other forms of loss, friendship endings involve ambiguous grief: mourning someone who is still alive but is no longer present in your life.


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This phenomenon is also known as “disenfranchised grief," and refers to the type of pain that does not receive social recognition or support. A friend is someone who has left an indelible mark on your life, and yet, society tells you to get over it because, after all, it’s “just a friend.”

“Losing a close friendship can hurt just as deeply as a romantic breakup, if not more in some cases,” explains Charlotte Fox Weber, psychotherapist and author of What We Want, in an interview with Stylist.

“You’re not just mourning the present reality of the friendship; you’re grieving what it once was—the laughter, the shared experiences, the dreams you built together, and the promise of what life might become.”

Healing happens in stages

The good news is that you’re not broken. This pain will not last forever. Healing from a friendship breakup, much like any other form of grief, happens in waves. Some days you'll feel fine, while others you may want to hide under the covers and stare at old pictures of the two of you. The “good old days.”

First, allow yourself to feel everything. Seriously. Be sad, angry, confused, hurt. Hurl the dictionary and the thesaurus at your grief. Cry in the shower. Scream in the car. Your feelings are valid, even if no one else seems to recognize them.


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Next, practice self-compassion. Talk to yourself kindly and use words full of love. If a family member was going through something similar, would you tell them they were being dramatic? Hopefully not! You would wrap them in a tight hug and remind them that they are worthy of love and friendship.

Finally, get curious about the lessons this experience has taught you. What have you learned about yourself through this friendship? What do you want to do differently in future relationships? Pain can often be our greatest teacher, even if you prefer to learn your lessons more gently.

Plot twist: You’re stronger now

Here’s something no one tells you about surviving a friendship breakup: it makes you resilient. Look at you! You have navigated through one of life’s most under-recognized heartbreaks and emerged in one piece. You sat with difficult emotions, comforted yourself, and became your own best friend when you needed one the most.

That’s not insignificant; that’s everything.

So, take your time. Feel your feelings. Be gentle with yourself. And remember, almost everyone has experienced a loss like this at some point. You’re not behind in life; you’re exactly where you need to be.

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Animals & Wildlife

A scientist created a 'utopia' for mice and then they all started dying

The results are fascinating, but are they relevant to humanity?

Canva Photos

How could Mouse Heaven go so terribly wrong?

In 1968 John Calhoun, a scientist and animal behavioralist, decided to create a "utopia" for mice. It would have unlimited food and water, with beautiful nesting spaces and plenty of materials for the mice to make cozy homes with. Sweet experiment! the mice were probably thinking. Much better than the Maybelline trials we're used to.

However, there was a catch, of course. There was one thing the utopia would be lacking, and that would be physical space. As the mouse population grew, overcrowding would become an issue, and Calhoun wanted to study the problems this would potentially cause. That sound you hear is the collective sigh of the disappointed mice who were stoked about the 24/7 all-you-can-eat buffet.

The experiment, dubbed Universe 25, began when Calhoun introduced four mouse "couples" into the utopian complex. A year or so later, it was overrun and the conditions had turned hellish, even though the mice had not run out of food or water.

mouse, mice, animals, science, research, studies "The conditions had turned WHAT?" Giphy

Initially, for just the eight original mice, the square box Calhoun built included 256 nesting boxes (or apartments) stacked on top of one another. Water bottles and food dispensers were located all along the nesting spots, and mice could travel throughout the complex at will via mesh tunnels. The starter mice were also screened for diseases and the population was obviously protected from predators. The climate was controlled and comfortable. Conditions were perfect.

The first mouse pups showed up a little over three months later, with the population of the colony doubling every 55 days. Nineteen months later, there were 2,200 mice living inside the box. With such perfect surroundings, the infant mortality rate was practically zero, leading to the rapid rise in numbers.

mice, mouse experiments, scientific research, animal experiments, overpopulation John Calhoun poses with his rodents inside the mouse utopia. Yoichi R Okamoto, Public Domain

By month 19, this rodent utopia had become an overcrowded hellscape. Calhoun noticed three alarming trends, in particular.

In short, everything was devolving into chaos and the very society of the mice began to collapse at a rapid rate.

The "Beautiful Ones" and the "Dropouts": Mice have a complex social hierarchy ruled by dominant alpha males. Sam Kean of Science History Institute Museum & Library notes that, in the wild, non-dominant males (the ones who lose macho showdowns) can skip town and start over somewhere else. But in the close quarters of Calhoun's experiment, with nowhere to hide, they were forced to hang around and viciously battle with each other over scraps. Eventually, non-dominant male mice, which Calhoun called the "Beautiful Ones," withdrew from society completely and only ate, slept, and groomed themselves.

Though resources were unlimited, certain aggressive males hoarded them anyway: The alpha males ruled over everything in the once-utopian mouse society. They kept harems of females in the apartments to mate with and fought fiercely to defend their territory. But new waves of hungry young male mice kept coming and coming, and eventually even the most dominant alphas abandoned their posts. This led to more attacks on nursing females, which in turn led to more mothers kicking their pups out of the nest early.

Birth rate declined dramatically: With the non-dominant males giving up completely and focusing on #SelfCare, dominant males too exhausted from endless battles, and females sick and tired of it all (many became asexual hermits by the end), stopped mating and giving birth entirely. Once this happened, the society was doomed. Even with plenty of food still available, cannibalism was rampant.

Calhoun was not shy about drawing parallels between his research and humanity. "I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man, on healing, on life and its evolution," he once wrote.

mice, mouse experiments, scientific studies, universe 25, sociology, overpopulation Alpha male mice, anyone? Photo by Kanashi on Unsplash

There are aspects of his wild experiment that certainly sound familiar.

We live in a world with plenty of resources for everyone, but a few select people hoard more than their fair share. When you think of the rodent "apartments," it's hard not to picture densely packed urban environments where people are stacked on top of each other at every turn. Maybe on some level some of us can relate to the “Beautiful Ones” and their urge to not participate in all the ugliness and just sequester and groom themselves. You can make an argument that when the mice stopped having to worry about food and shelter, it removed the element of challenge from their lives and left them lost. Similarly, many of us are lucky enough to not have to wonder where our next meal comes from, and maybe that has something to do with our never-ending search for meaning. Some even go so far as to link more people choosing to delay having children, or not have children at all, with the collapsing society of the mice.

But Calhoun's work has also been heavily scrutinized, with some claiming it's based on shaky science. And in the end, there’s the small matter that humans are not mice. We are infinitely more complicated, and so much better suited to adapting to our environments. Kean writes, "Ultimately Calhoun’s work functions like a Rorschach blot—people see what they want to see."

It's fascinating and thought-provoking nonetheless. Watch this breakdown of the experiment shared by the National Library of Medicine in the early 1970s.

- YouTube youtu.be

This article originally appeared in April. It has been updated.

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Animals & Wildlife

Forget what you know about bed bugs. Avoiding and getting rid of them is pretty simple.

And thankfully, there are no toxic chemicals involved.

Mark Rober/YouTube

Mark Rober subjected himself to bed bug bites in the name of science.

"Good night! Sleep tight! Don't let the bed bugs bite!" This sing-song rhyme that has been around for centuries alludes to the fact that bed bugs were prevalent in the past. After a significant decrease post-WWII, however, the sneaky pests have been making a comeback. Since the 1990s, bed bug infestations have risen dramatically, leading people to look for ways to avoid and get rid of the blood-sucking little buggers.

Unfortunately, a lot of the information about how to do that is flat-out wrong. Popular YouTube science communicator Mark Rober invites viewers to forget what we think we know and go on an educational journey with the leading bed bug researchers at Rutgers University's urban entomology lab. Not only did Rober subject himself to bed bug bites on purpose to see what happens when they feed, but he also conducted a series of experiments in the lab to find out what is actually effective at killing them and what is not.

bed bugs, bed bug, insects, gif, infestation Bed Bugs Belarus GIF Giphy

Bed bugs have a reputation for being nearly impossible to get rid of, which isn't really the case, according to Rober. When you know what works, it's actually a fairly simple process to kill an infestation. And the good news is that it doesn't entail any toxic chemicals—in fact the pest control chemicals sold for bed bugs don't work at all, according to Rober's tests.

In the process of learning about bed bugs, Rober shared a few "super wild" facts about the infamous creatures.

Fact #1: Bed bugs can live 3 to 10 months without feeding.

Eek. No wonder it seems like it's impossible to get rid of them. Starving them doesn't work. They can live in the resting stage for three to six months, and if the environment is cold enough, they can survive around 300 days, or 10 months, without eating.

- YouTube youtu.be

Fact #2: Bed bugs don't transmit disease

Some good news here: Unlike blood-sucking mosquitoes, bed bugs don't carry or transmit disease. The bad news on the front is that because they don't pose a disease threat, only an annoyance, there's not a big incentive to fund research to eradicate them.

Fact #3: Bed bugs are attracted to vertical objects

In one of Rober's experiments, he placed a dish with a cylindrical vertical column inside it and a dish without a column, and nearly all of the bed bugs in the enclosure ended up in the dish with the column. "If you think about it, humans sleep at the highest elevation any given room. So their logic is just crawl up any vertical surface you see until you eventually find a warm-blooded meal at the top."

Part of how they find humans is by smell, which is why certain strong-smelling items can act as a deterrent for bed bugs. In Rober's experiment, Bounce dryer sheets, moth balls, baking soda, and essential oils all seemed to repel bed bugs (as opposed to ultrasonic pest repellants, which appeared to have no effect). However, none of those things did anything to kill them.

bed bugs, bed bug, infestation, how to spot bed bugs, tips Bed bugs are about the size of an apple seed. Photo credit: Canva

Fact #4: Before 1950, one in three homes had bed bugs

Yikes. Even with the resurgence, we're still nowhere near those numbers, thank goodness.

Fact #5: The way bed bugs mate is weird

The term used to describe it is called "traumatic insemination," and really, you should just let Mark Rober explain it with his visual metaphor. Start at minute 11:30.

bed bugs, mating, bed bug, infestation, tips bed bugs Giphy

Two things work well to kill bed bugs—diatomaceous earth and heat

In testing chemical sprays, foggers, and other items marketed for killing bed bugs, Rober found a "superstar" in a natural, non-toxic substance. Diatomaceous earth—pulverized fossilized remains of tiny aquatic organisms called diatoms—was the most effective at killing the buggers with a 90% mortality rate after 10 days as opposed to 12% with the Hot Shot bed bug spray. Diatomaceous earth is mostly silica, which absorbs moisture, and when the silica dust sticks to the bed bugs as the walk through it, it dehydrates them. A light dusting of diatomaceous earth around all the cracks and crevices of a room is one way to kill off an infestation, though that process can take days.

The other way to kill bed bugs is heat. Steam kills bed bugs, as does heating up a room to over 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Temps over 122 degrees kills bed bugs instantly, and as Rober points out, there's no way for them to build immunity to this kind of treatment. So steamers and clothes dryers set to high are the average person's best bet for killing off bed bugs if they have them. The "nuclear option" is to have a pro come in with big heaters and cook your home for a day.

checking for bed bugs, bed bug poop, bed bugs in mattress, safety, tips Checking mattresses for signs of bed bugs at a hotel can help you avoid bringing them home. Photo credit: Canva

How do you avoid getting bed bugs in the first place?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that's true for bed bugs especially. Avoiding an infestation if there's already one in your apartment building is trickier, but a lot of people inadvertently bring bed bugs home from hotel stays. Checking the underside of a hotel mattress as soon as you enter the room is a good habit to practice. Bed bugs poop a lot, and there will be spots along the edges of the mattress if bed bugs are present.

The other tip is to use the luggage rack to store your suitcase instead of leaving it on the floor or furniture, and to hang clothes on the closet hangers instead of putting them into the hotel room's dresser drawers. Some people may even put their suitcase in the bathtub, at least until they've checked the bed for signs of poop.

Nobody wants to deal with bed bugs, but at least now we have clear evidence of what actually works to get rid of them and what doesn't. Cook them with heat/steam and dehydrate them with diatomaceous earth, and take some simple steps when traveling to lessen your chances of getting them in the first place.

Sleep tight, everyone!

This article originally appeared in March.

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A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. This is what it looks like today.

12,000 tons of food waste and 28 years later, this forest looks totally different.

Image via Dan Jansen

A before and after view of the experiment

In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea. In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.


natural wonders, nature, recycling, conservation, environment, oranges, orange peels, dumps The first deposit of orange peels in 1996. Photo by Dan Janzen.


"It's a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it," Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.

When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was floored. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was "like night and day."


Environment, natural wonder, natural miracles, nature, oranges, planet, conservation The site of the orange peel deposit (L) and adjacent pastureland (R). Photo by Leland Werden.


"It was just hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems," he explains.

The area was so thick with vegetation he still could not find the sign.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

The results, published in the journal "Restoration Ecology," highlight just how completely the discarded fruit parts assisted the area's turnaround.

According to the Princeton School of International Public Affairs, the experiment resulted in a "176 percent increase in aboveground biomass — or the wood in the trees — within the 3-hectare area (7 acres) studied."

The ecologists measured various qualities of the site against an area of former pastureland immediately across the access road used to dump the orange peels two decades prior. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, the site of the orange peel deposit featured two dozen species of vegetation, most thriving.


natural wonder, nature, environment, conservation, oranges, orange peels Lab technician Erik Schilling explores the newly overgrown orange peel plot. Photo by Tim Treuer.


In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter, on the plot.

"You could have had 20 people climbing in that tree at once and it would have supported the weight no problem," says Jon Choi, co-author of the paper, who conducted much of the soil analysis. "That thing was massive."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon at roughly 11 times the rate of old-growth forests.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

In many parts of the world, rates of deforestation are increasing dramatically, sapping local soil of much-needed nutrients and, with them, the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves.

Meanwhile, much of the world is awash in nutrient-rich food waste. In the United States, up to half of all produce in the United States is discarded. Most currently ends up in landfills.


natural wonder, nature, conservation, environment, planet, oranges, orange peels The site after a deposit of orange peels in 1998. Photo by Dan Janzen.


"We don't want companies to go out there will-nilly just dumping their waste all over the place, but if it's scientifically driven and restorationists are involved in addition to companies, this is something I think has really high potential," Treuer says.

The next step, he believes, is to examine whether other ecosystems — dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas — react the same way to similar deposits.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. Neither had spotted the original sign.

In 2015, when Treuer, with the help of the paper's senior author, David Wilcove, and Princeton Professor Rob Pringle, finally found it under a thicket of vines, the scope of the area's transformation became truly clear.



natural wonder, nature, environment, environmental miracle, planet, oranges, orange peels The sign after clearing away the vines. Photo by Tim Treuer.


"It's a big honking sign," Choi emphasizes.

19 years of waiting with crossed fingers had buried it, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the rind of an unassuming fruit.

This article originally appeared eight years ago.

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