Love, or Anti-Love, Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss
A few days ago, there was an article by John Tierney in the New York Times that might be very interesting to anyone wishing to successfully “date” and or start or stop a relationship. We think of it as an offshoot of the old saying of “better living through chemistry,” sort of. . . .
According to Larry Young, a neuroscientist who studies prairie voles at the Yerkes National Primate Research Centers at Emory University, pair-bonding in humans can be enhanced or suppressed by tinkering with brain hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin -- and that we may soon be seeing new drugs to do just that.
In the article, Tierney asks: “Would you rather have a love potion that made you more likely to become attached to someone else, or a love vaccine that stopped you from falling in love with the wrong person? ... The not-so-bad news is that you may enjoy this potion if you took it knowingly with the right person. But the really good news, as I see it, is that we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from making an infatuated ass of yourself.”
“When you take these serotonin enhancing antidepressants, you can jeopardize your ability to form long-term attachments,” said Dr. Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University.
Tierney reports that “casual sex is not always casual. It’s possible to fall in love with someone just because you had sex with them, because with orgasm you get a flood of oxytocin and vasopressin that can cause you to feel attached to the person. … You come obsessed; you distort reality; you do dangerous things; you crave the person, you have withdrawal symptoms.”
How to avoid that fate when, say, you find yourself tempted to have a fling at a convention? “Take enough Prozac beforehand,” Dr. Fisher says, “and your emotions will be so blunted that you won’t even get into bed with anyone.”
Tieney adds: “Even if the effects could somehow be targeted to the right partner, would you want to start building a long-term relationship with a short-term drug? What happens when it wears off?”
Indeed! While it may be fun (for a while) to be a test subject and or play with this stuff in an ongoing relationship, who among us would wish to use such a crutch to start a relationship?
Take a moment read more of the interesting possibilities of these drugs in the full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13tier.html?em&exprod=myyahoo
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