[ed. I'll take a bottle or two.]
Just take a pill, Bill? Science may soon provide the 51st — and perhaps first-ever pain-free — way to leave your lover.
While love potions and elixirs have been stock characters seemingly since storytelling began, comparatively little drama (hello, Eternal Sunshine!) has focused on their opposite: antidotes to free people from unwanted longing.
A drug that precisely targets only one specific relationship for destruction may be decades away, but drugs that interfere with specific aspects of love like sexual desire are already here. And as scientists begin to tease out the chemical chronology and specific brain systems involved in love, they are already investigating how existing medications taken in carefully timed ways could, for example, prevent the "bonding hormone" oxytocin from initiating or sustaining a relationship.
This could forever change what it means to sever romantic ties. And the ramifications go beyond “Please let me forget”–type situations à la Eternal Sunshine. Anti-love drugs could also provide an intriguing new “treatment” for those trapped in abusive relationships.
Brian David Earp, a research fellow at Oxford University's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and his colleagues have recently published a series of papers making the case for chemically enhancing — and disrupting, if necessary — our most powerful romantic connections. An anti-love drug, as they call it, “would be any substance that works to block or diminish a feeling of love, lust, attraction or attachment,” he says.
by Maia Szalavitz, NY Magazine | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Just take a pill, Bill? Science may soon provide the 51st — and perhaps first-ever pain-free — way to leave your lover.
While love potions and elixirs have been stock characters seemingly since storytelling began, comparatively little drama (hello, Eternal Sunshine!) has focused on their opposite: antidotes to free people from unwanted longing.
A drug that precisely targets only one specific relationship for destruction may be decades away, but drugs that interfere with specific aspects of love like sexual desire are already here. And as scientists begin to tease out the chemical chronology and specific brain systems involved in love, they are already investigating how existing medications taken in carefully timed ways could, for example, prevent the "bonding hormone" oxytocin from initiating or sustaining a relationship.This could forever change what it means to sever romantic ties. And the ramifications go beyond “Please let me forget”–type situations à la Eternal Sunshine. Anti-love drugs could also provide an intriguing new “treatment” for those trapped in abusive relationships.
Brian David Earp, a research fellow at Oxford University's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and his colleagues have recently published a series of papers making the case for chemically enhancing — and disrupting, if necessary — our most powerful romantic connections. An anti-love drug, as they call it, “would be any substance that works to block or diminish a feeling of love, lust, attraction or attachment,” he says.
by Maia Szalavitz, NY Magazine | Read more:
Image: uncredited
