IF A pill could make you fall deeper in love and transform your romantic relationships, would you take it? Or if a doctor was able to prescribe an anti-love drug to help a break-up go smoothly and avoid a potential lifetime of heartache, would you urge your partner to make an appointment? For Brian D. Earp and Julian Savulescu, who pose these questions in Love is the Drug, these aren’t merely theoretical or philosophical matters. There already are drugs, both legal and illegal, that can alter our minds and the way we think about love, sex and relationships. “All of these love drugs exist right now. Others have yet to be created,” they write. As such, it is no longer a question of can we use the chemicals to control our feelings, but should we. This gives Earp, a cognitive scientist, and Savulescu, a doctor turned philosopher, the scope to ask deliberately provocative questions to stoke the debate. It is time to imagine a world in which we can chemically alter feelings, they say. In an interview with New Scientist, Savulescu says he has pushed for such a debate since he became interested when a relationship ended after 15 years; Earp says his motivation is to get beyond the sentimental “sense that love is this disembodied thing that happens in a soul”. “It’s going to be the case that we’re able to do something about love, and that changes the choice set before us,” says Earp. “We can no longer just shrug our shoulders and say – love is just something that happens to you. Given that there’s going to be and, in some ways, already are active steps that we can take to shape the course of our romantic lives, once a choice is available to you, failing to engage is not a choice.” In the book, the authors detail how conventional medicines, such as antidepressants, can have libido-altering side effects that may affect relationships. “We have good theoretical reasons, and now increasing empirical reasons, to think that these drugs are having effects on our romantic neurochemistry,” says Earp. “They’re having those effects whether we measure them or not. What would be foolish would be to fail to understand the effects of the drugs we’re already using – [drugs that are approved and seen as medicinal].” The book doesn’t ignore the possible hype around the subject. For example, it sounds a note of caution over the many research claims made for the so-called “love hormone” oxytocin – a molecule made by the hypothalamus that acts on the brain, and plays a role in bonding, sex and pregnancy. There should still be a healthy scepticism about the effects of oxytocin nasal sprays, say Earp and Savulescu: the results of studies of its ability to enhance relationships should be taken with “a grain of salt”, they write. But the scepticism might be addressed if there were more rigorous studies of the way drugs affect our relationships, the authors argue. “This is a blind spot in Western medicine: the tendency to ignore the interpersonal effects of drug-based interventions,” they write. “It should be a scandal that we don’t know more about the effects of these drugs (good or bad) on our romantic partnerships.” This needn’t be restricted to chemicals that alter our relationships “for the better”, say the authors. They explore the potential of “anti-love drugs” to suppress emotions like jealousy, and drugs that could help break the attachment of an abused person to their abuser. “There already are drugs, legal and illegal, that can alter how we think about love, sex and relationships” Drugs could also suppress sexual desires. Love is the Drug attempts to address even more controversial questions, such as whether we should permit the use of such medicines to curb what society may see as taboo or deviant sexual desires, or even addictions to online pornography. We learn, too, about the growing use of illegal drugs such as MDMA and psilocybin as a means to help people with relationship problems. Psilocybin, the psychoactive substance in magic mushrooms, is being explored under strict controls and supervision by psychiatrists, alongside other treatments, for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, which can be a cause of relationship breakdown. There is also a suggestion from research in mice that MDMA, also known as ecstasy, might help to relieve social anxiety for people with autism. “We’re not talking about a chemical utopia where everybody tries whatever drugs they want,” says Savulescu. But neither should individuals have to get a diagnosis in order to qualify for love drugs for medicinal purposes, he argues. “We don’t need to call them medicinal or recreational drugs,” says Savulescu. “We can introduce a third category. We need to identify the people for whom they would be genuine welfare enhancers, not crutches, not replacements for dealing with the deep questions in their lives, but people for whom they would genuinely improve their lives.” But this would mean breaking free of society’s distinction between legal and illegal drugs. “Everything is just chemicals, and whether we decided to call it medicine or not is largely a social and value decision,” says Earp. The authors say they don’t know if society is ready for this new approach, to start a new relationship with drugs as chemical love enhancers. But they are happy to matchmake. Source
