Love & Other Drugs - Harper's BAZAAR

Would you pop a pill to make you fall in love? How about another to eliminate the pain of heartbreak? Emerging science suggests it’s just a matter of time before who and for how long we love is under our control

Online dating is a numbers game, right? Go on 100 dates, and odds are, one of them will stick. After all, these people have been chosen for you by The Algorithm, that omnipotent entity that knows you — like, really knows you. Maybe this person will be The One, you think as you check your reflection one last time before leaving the house. I’m exhausted. Please just let this one be it.

Sarah* is a 53-year-old single mum who has been app-dating for about a year. “I’ve got a kid, I’m running a household, I’m busy,” she says. “Some younger friends are a bit more savvy about how the algorithm-y thing works, but I’m getting a little bit better at tweaking my profile to make it more effective for me. I’ve definitely made connections, but whether they’re the right ones is another thing,” she says with a laugh. “You’ve got to go through your set of dud matches before you find a good one.”

The Algorithm — with its “I wasn’t just listening to your conversation, I promise” targeted ads and its text suggestions that are, eerily, exactly what you were about to say — can predict many things. Still, while it feeds you person after person who is perfect for you on paper, there’s one thing it can’t predict: who will make you feel that elusive thing — The Spark.

We often think of love as an ethereal, intangible feeling in the depths of our hearts, not something that begins in the brain. But The Spark — or that chemistry we describe as having (or lacking) with another person, is just that: chemistry. Anna Machin, a British doctor of evolutionary anthropology, is the author of the 2022 book Why We Love: The New Science Behind our Closest Relationships. The Spark, she writes, comes down to your brain’s response to the sensory information you’re receiving from the other person (scent, pheromones, body language, speech pattern — all things The Algorithm, try as it may, cannot know). 

When you’re first attracted to someone, The Spark you feel is actually a heady combination of oxytocin and dopamine and a drop in serotonin levels. Oxytocin lowers your inhibitions and opens you up to making new relationships, while dopamine ensures you are motivated to make the first move. Researchers aren’t clear on what role serotonin plays, but low levels have been found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), so one theory is that this drop kicks off the obsession we need to make room for this person in our lives. (That’s why you can hardly talk or think about anything other than your new crush in the early stages of infatuation.) 

Studies have shown that as we move from lust to love, beta-endorphin, the body’s natural pain-killing opiate, kicks in, making us euphoric and addicted to the feeling — and the person. In short: The Spark is an evolutionary process that “motivates you to, and rewards you for, commencing relationships … and then work to maintain them,” Machin writes. Or, as Florence Williams, the American journalist and author of the divorce memoir slash science experiment Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey writes: “[The neurochemicals] keep us euphoric, transfixed, hyperfocused on our love object, greedy for every touch, willing to take risks.” 

Experiencing The Spark — or lack of — is one of the biggest problems in online dating, says Rachel Voysey, a psychologist and the founding director of Sydney’s The Relationship Room. “You’re meeting people, putting your heart out there, and most of the time, you’re disappointed or rejected, which makes it about one of the most unenjoyable experiences of all time,” she says. “But The Spark is also one of the things that makes online dating exciting. People want to believe there’s a spiritual, special romantic aspect to love. We’re willing to take that risk.”

And it is a risk. Love can both heal and harm, writes Machin; the only guarantee is that it will be unpredictable. And we hate that. “Humans crave control, and arguably the most uncontrollable aspect of our intimate lives is love,” she writes. The history books are full of strange and disgusting magic potion recipes for inducing love or curing us of it: ingesting Spanish flies (considered an aphrodisiac) and menstrual blood for the former; bloodletting and avoiding wine (counter-intuitive but probably sensible) for the latter. 

In 2020, Dr Brian D. Earp, a senior research fellow in the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and professor Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Chair, wrote Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships. According to them, having control of love is no longer the stuff of old wives’ tales or such “a far-off, far-fetched science-fiction”, as Earp tells Harper’s BAZAAR. While he stresses that no single pill can induce love, a range of medical substances have been found to interact with the love systems inadvertently. Scientists are now gathering information about which drugs, which systems, and how they can be harnessed to make our relationships easier. “The more we come to understand the biological and neurochemical dimensions of love — what happens in our brains and bodies when we fall in and out of love — the more we will be able to intervene, shaping the course of love in our lives to an extent that has never before been possible,” Earp explains. 

Since functional MRI (fMRI) technology emerged in the early 1990s, scientists have been scanning the brains of the deep-in-love and the deeply heartbroken to gain an understanding of the chemical underpinnings of love. And now, they’re tantalisingly close to reproducing it synthetically. For a generation of over-it app daters, this is a tempting proposition. “People are impatient and want to expedite everything,” Voysey says. “Relationships take time to build, but we want instant gratification; we want it to happen fast, and we want control.”

We’re not used to thinking of love as a condition requiring biomedical intervention, but, as Machin writes, taking a drug to induce love is, in theory, no different from taking an antidepressant. Both medications supplement neurochemicals that naturally exist in our bodies for the purpose of improved health and wellbeing.

While there is yet to be a legal and regulated drug available in a pharmacy, some products that claim to mimic love are already in use. OxyLuv, an oxytocin nasal spray, is available online for less than $50. But be warned: it doesn’t work for everyone. “The neurochemistry that prompts us to form and maintain our relationships is incredibly finely balanced,” Machin writes. “We still do not have a clear picture of what interacts with what.” Add too much of the wrong thing into the mix, and it could have decidedly adverse and unpredictable effects. 

There is one drug scientists believe can mimic love almost exactly. But it is illegal in most countries, with huge fines and prison times imposed for possession in Australia. MDMA (aka ecstasy, molly) releases the exact neurochemicals involved in feeling The Spark. (Although with a heavy list of side effects, including jaw clenching, nausea, racing heart and possibly death.) In the 1970s, MDMA was used in couples’ therapy sessions, but quickly became a street drug and was made illegal in 1985. Still, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently evaluating it for clinical use. Last year in Canada, physicians were allowed to request MDMA for psychedelic-assisted therapy. 

Australia shows no signs of changing its stance on the drug. “We caution against people rushing out and experimenting with these powerful drugs for themselves,” Earp says. Aside from it being dangerous and illegal, “in the context of dating or starting new relationships, [if you’re using MDMA to feel a spark with someone] the risk of inauthentic bonding is much higher if you don’t already have a strong foundation with them.” 

Voysey agrees, adding that this consideration should apply to any love pills that become available on the market, not just the currently illegal ones. “Who you partner with is probably the single biggest factor that changes the course of your life,” she says. “You want to ensure you’re making that decision well.”

While being in love is wonderful, losing it can be debilitating. In her 2022 book, Notes on Heartbreak, the dating columnist Annie Lord describes when her boyfriend of five years ended their relationship seemingly out of nowhere. She offers a viscerally disturbing description of her pain: “[It is] like a tarantula who’s using my body as her nest,” she writes. “I swallow her down, but eight legs means she works her way back up again quickly.” She googles “Can you die from …” and finds that “heartbreak” is the second autofill suggestion after “a hangover”.

“Being heartbroken is one of the worst human experiences,” Voysey says. That’s because unlike many other traumatic scenarios, a breakup also includes social rejection and maddening “what ifs”. Another reason breakups hurt so much comes down to — surprise — neurochemistry. That beta-endorphin that helps us stay addicted to love also causes withdrawal when we’re suddenly dumped. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who studies the neurotransmitters of love, found that the same parts of the brain that light up with physical pain, craving and addiction also light up with heartbreak.

One of Fisher’s studies showed that the recently rejected thought about their former lovers for 85 per cent of their waking hours. That doesn’t leave much room for much else. “I’ve had more people in the foetal position in my room as a couples’ therapist than I think you would see in any other part of medicine,” Voysey says. “I’ve had to cancel [patients] for the rest of the day because someone is on my floor looking like they’ve just been told they’re going to die because someone’s walked out on them.”

Emerging research suggests that there could soon be a painkiller for heartache. “Heartbreak doesn’t sit in the rational part of the brain,” Voysey continues, “so no matter how much people tell you that you’re better off without them, it doesn’t reach the place where the pain sits. These drugs would be designed to hit that part of your brain that is harder to get to with talking therapy.”

After Williams’ husband of 25 years divorced her, she struggled to move on. She travelled across the US to visit scientists and psychologists who specialise in love, and also tried questionable recovery methods, including an MDMA/psilocybin fusion therapy. “I set out to experiment on myself, to see if I could understand the way heartbreak changes our neurons, our bodies and our sense of ourselves,” she writes in Heartbreak. She also heard about studies that showed people who received common painkillers after being rejected felt markedly better, while others who received a placebo and were told it would lessen their pain did, in fact, show less intense heartache. 

Machin also writes that the side effects of some SSRIs (antidepressants) — a drop in libido and a dampening of emotions — means` they could be used as anti-love drugs. 

Recently, a technique called memory reconsolidation therapy showed promise in reducing and eventually eliminating the pain of heartbreak. Alain Brunet is a clinical psychologist and psychiatry professor at McGill University in Canada and a co-author of the study. He explained that “reconsolidation therapy consists of recalling a bad memory under the influence of propranolol with the help of a trained therapist”. Propranolol is a beta-blocker usually prescribed for high blood pressure and migraines. One of its side effects is that it can weaken the emotional tone of memories. Thirty-five of the 48 people who completed the test said they felt better for at least four months. 

The goal is not to delete traumatic memories, Earp explains, but to “keep the memory intact while removing its traumatic aspects. Following treatment, many patients said reading through the details of their memory felt like ‘reading a novel’: the narrative remained, but the pain was gone.”

Some people, like Sarah, are wary that using drug-based therapy to heal a broken heart means you are doomed to repeat the same mistakes because you haven’t learnt anything. “I am into feeling my feelings,” she says. “I have been in a bad relationship, and the breakup was painful, but I’m taking what I learnt into my next endeavours.”

Whichever Big Pharma company cracks the love market stands to make a lot of cash. It “presents an opportunity to those who wish to make money from the basic human need to love and to be loved. Whoever harnesses love, whoever can control it, is set to reap vast monetary rewards,” Machin writes. 

But rushing to unleash them upon the world means ethical implications may be skipped over. Is taking a love aid before a date fair to the other person? When do you tell them? If you both decide to take it, what happens when one of you wants to stop? What if these drugs fall into the wrong hands? They are ripe for abuse in relationships with power imbalances or in regimes with strict views on who it is appropriate to be attracted to. 

“It raises major philosophical and ethical questions about how much control we want over this phenomenon that is a central source of value in people’s lives,” Earp says. “The pharmaceuticalisation of relationships is not something we should take lightly. The time to think through risks is now, and we need to come together as a society to decide how we will handle these biotechnological changes responsibly.”

Popping a pill to fall in and out of love in the time it takes to swipe for the next date may be tempting, but for now, we must embrace the unpredictability of love and try to find joy in its sorrow. “Unfortunately, the cost of love is pain,” says Voysey. “Being in love is a deep, meaningful, intense experience, and the flip side is pain. They have to exist with each other to exist at all.” 

This article originally appeared in the February 2023 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR. Artwork by Anna Pogossova.