30 | New Scientist | 15 February 2020Book
Love is the Drug: The
chemical future of
our relationships
Brian D. Earp and Julian Savulescu
Manchester University PressIF 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 canReal-life love potions
Drugs that revolutionise many aspects of our romantic relationships could
bring a whole new meaning to Valentine’s Day, finds Lilian Anekweno 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 detailViews Culture
BEN PHILLIPS/GETTY IMAGES
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 ofstudies 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.
Drugs could also suppress
sexual desires. Love is the Drug
attempts to address even more
controversial questions, such as
whether we should permit thehow 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 alreadyWe need to know what
medicines do to our
romantic neurochemistry“ There already are
drugs, legal and illegal,
that can alter how we
think about love, sex
and relationships”