Slog Comments
"What if we could take drugs to get better at love?"
4
Is taking an analgesic to lessen the pain from an injury copping out of the full range of human experience?
6
I believe many consider Viagra, Cialis et al, love drugs, but I get the difference: a boner is not love. Still, despite the full range of possibilities of the human experience, many people would benefit from this and others will abuse them. I guess down the road we can have a pill to learn to love our politicians... How about a drugged out society in love with a dictator? Oh, yeah, there are other options already available for that.
7
Fascinating true fact of the day - the author of the Love Drug piece, Brian Earp, is also a professional actor hailing from Seattle. He spends half his time here performing (played the leads in Balagan's Spring Awakening last year and Village Theatre's The Producers) and half the year in Oxford, writing and researching articles like this one...
http://thesunbreak.com/2012/01/14/balaga…
http://thesunbreak.com/2012/01/14/balaga…
8
I think one of the points of the book Listening to Prozac is that the SSRI-type antidepressants can help you to remember/re-learn what "normal" feels like, but the experience of many (myself included) is that if they work, over time there's a blandifying effect and you get to where you want to feel more of the peaks and valleys (not to mention normal orgasms) again.
(Tapering off is certainly not without some unpleasant side effects too, and not advisable for people with serious long-term depression.)
(Tapering off is certainly not without some unpleasant side effects too, and not advisable for people with serious long-term depression.)
10
We've already got alcohol to help us start relationships, I don't see what's wrong with something to keep them going.
11
Chocolate is a drug. So is hot cocoa.
Just because we don't call them drugs, doesn't mean they don't work.
Just because we don't call them drugs, doesn't mean they don't work.
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@10 alcohol works well for men, less well for women. Women get cautious about establishing relationships if they drink too much (not about sex, about relationships). So, basically, if two men, drink. If two women, share hot cocoa in cute mugs. If a man and a woman, the guy should drink and the woman should drink hot cocoa. Oh, and add lavender.
At least from a scientific viewpoint.
A rainstorm actually helps.
At least from a scientific viewpoint.
A rainstorm actually helps.
14
Oh I remember this story. Jim Carrey did a pretty good job. I think it's one of the few dramatic roles I've seen him in where it didn't look like he was trying too hard. Tom Wilkinson probably should've been nominated for an award for his performance.
15
Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins has been studying psilocybin in human subjects for the past few years, looking at how subjects (who are generally hallucinogen-naive, IIRC) rate the personal and spiritual significance of the experiences they have on the drug. One of his early studies was a group selected for being religiously or spiritually inclined to begin with. A substantial portion (a third, I think) of the people that received the drug rated it as among the most significant spiritual experiences of their life...with full knowledge that their experience could have been manipulated by the presence of the drug.
In other words, people who already believed in some form of spiritual transcendence, and who knew that their brain chemistry was (possibly, there was a placebo group) being manipulated with a simple drug still considered what they experienced to be a "spiritual" event.
I would imagine a "love drug" could have a similar effect, at least for some people. I.e., you might know that the warm fuzzies are coming with a chemical assist, but it is still very real and profound to you.
In other words, people who already believed in some form of spiritual transcendence, and who knew that their brain chemistry was (possibly, there was a placebo group) being manipulated with a simple drug still considered what they experienced to be a "spiritual" event.
I would imagine a "love drug" could have a similar effect, at least for some people. I.e., you might know that the warm fuzzies are coming with a chemical assist, but it is still very real and profound to you.
17
Since nobody else has yet, let me just point you over here to George Saunders' "Escape from Spiderhead," newly published in his collection Tenth of December.
"No longer, in terms of emotional controllability, are we ships adrift. No one is. We see a ship adrift, we climb aboard, install a rudder. Guide him/her toward love. Or away from it. You say, ‘All you need is love’? Look, here comes ED289/290. Can we stop war? We can sure as heck slow it down! Suddenly the soldiers on both sides start fucking. Or, at low dosage, feeling super-fond. Or say we have two rival dictators in a death grudge. Assuming ED289/290 develops nicely in pill form, allow me to slip each dictator a mickey. Soon their tongues are down each other’s throats and doves of peace are pooping on their epaulets. Or, depending on the dosage, they may just be hugging."
"No longer, in terms of emotional controllability, are we ships adrift. No one is. We see a ship adrift, we climb aboard, install a rudder. Guide him/her toward love. Or away from it. You say, ‘All you need is love’? Look, here comes ED289/290. Can we stop war? We can sure as heck slow it down! Suddenly the soldiers on both sides start fucking. Or, at low dosage, feeling super-fond. Or say we have two rival dictators in a death grudge. Assuming ED289/290 develops nicely in pill form, allow me to slip each dictator a mickey. Soon their tongues are down each other’s throats and doves of peace are pooping on their epaulets. Or, depending on the dosage, they may just be hugging."
18
So there's this book that explores this territory, written by a local.
http://www.amazon.com/Nexus-Ramez-Naam/d…
http://www.amazon.com/Nexus-Ramez-Naam/d…
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