Brian D Earp, Julian Savulescu

Love Drugs

The Chemical Future of Relationships

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Love drugs and anti-love drugs exist and more powerful versions will be available in the near future: What are the ethics of using them, how will they affect society, and will they take the magic out of love?

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 280
• Erscheinungstermin: 21. Januar 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 161mm x 27mm
• Gewicht: 524g
• ISBN-13: 9780804798198
• ISBN-10: 0804798192
• Artikelnr.: 55175856

Autorenporträt

Brian D. Earp is Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University and the Hastings Center and a Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. Julian Savulescu holds the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and is Director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1Revolution
chapter abstract
This chapter highlights the recent burst of controlled, scientific research
on medical and nonmedical uses of psychedelic drugs and MDMA to improve
individual welfare, and argues that this research should be extended to
couples in romantic relationships. It questions the line between "drugs"
and "medicine" and argues that such distinctions often reflect dubious
social and historical factors, rather than a clear-eyed assessment of
actual benefits and harms. It introduces the idea that love drugs might
help strengthen certain relationships, and that anti-love drugs might help
other relationships end. But there are serious risks that might be
associated with such drugs, and the wider social implications will be hard
to predict. To minimize this risk and uncertainty, careful ethical
deliberation and nuanced policy measures will be key.
2Love's Dimensions
chapter abstract
What are love drugs? Basically, they are drugs that affect love-or romantic
relationships, more broadly. This chapter begins with an account of drugs,
explaining that they are essentially just chemicals-clusters of molecules
that work on the brain to produce certain effects-and that our choice to
regard them as medicine versus recreation, or as a means to personal or
spiritual development, is up to us. It is a question of values. The chapter
then gives an account of love, explaining that it has both biological and
psychosocial dimensions. When there is a tension between love and
well-being, it may make sense in certain cases to intervene in either or
both of those dimensions (biological, psychosocial) to improve our
relationships and our lives.
3Human Natures
chapter abstract
Why might tensions arise between love and well-being? Sometimes there can
be painful inconsistencies between our conscious values surrounding love,
the prevailing cultural norms or social scripts for romantic partnerships
in our environment, our subjective experiences of attachment and desire,
and our underlying biological natures. Which of these dimensions can be
altered? Which of them should be altered, and under what conditions? Many
societies hold up monogamous marriage as the ideal for committed
relationships. Is this ideal consistent with human nature? This chapter
argues that there is no single answer to that question: natural variation
among individuals and at the level of the species confounds such
one-size-fits-all thinking. Accordingly, if biological interventions-in
addition to psychosocial ones-will ever help love and happiness coincide,
it will depend on the specific issues facing a given couple.
4Little Heart-Shaped Pills
chapter abstract
This chapter gets specific about the kinds of biological interventions into
love that are currently possible-and those that may exist in the future. It
shows how love can be affected by certain chemicals through a variety of
different pathways, depending on the psychosocial context. It also
discusses common medications that may already be influencing love and
relationships, such as hormonal birth control and antidepressant pills, and
argues for a shift in scientific research norms: away from an exclusive
focus on individuals and clinical symptoms, and toward a more inclusive,
relationship-oriented paradigm that considers the interpersonal and social
implications of drug-based medical treatments.
5Good-Enough Marriages
chapter abstract
If love drugs become more widely available, who should use them? This
chapter introduces Stella and Mario, a married couple with dependent
children. The couple are in a "gray" relationship-that is, a relationship
that is not violent, abusive, or otherwise clearly dysfunctional, but which
has lost its romantic spirit, despite many earnest attempts to keep it
alive. The couple are unhappy. They are considering a divorce. They worry
about how this might affect the children. They do still care about each
other and value what they have built together. But they've run out of
places to look for a shared sense of joy. The chapter argues that this is a
very common situation for long-term partners, and that love drugs may soon
be a viable option for supporting couples' mutual well-being within such
relationships.
6Ecstasy as Therapy
chapter abstract
Drug-supported couples therapy is not a new phenomenon. In fact, MDMA was
widely used for this purpose, to good effect in many cases, into the
1980s-before it was banned, largely for political reasons. This chapter
discusses the history of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, making clear that
MDMA is not just "emotional glue" that holds romantic partners together no
matter how incompatible they may be. Rather, professionally guided,
drug-enhanced counseling may help some individuals or couples realize that
they need to end their relationship, and may allow them to do so in a more
loving and healthy way. The chapter asks whether MDMA poses a threat to
authenticity or personal identity, and raises other risks that may be
associated with its use under certain conditions. It concludes with a call
for careful, controlled scientific research into the potential of MDMA as
an aid to couples counseling.
7Evolved Fragility
chapter abstract
Why are there are so many couples looking for help in the first place? Why
is it so hard to make long-term, romantic partnerships work, much less
flourish? This chapter argues that at least part of the explanation may lie
in a disconnect between our ancient, evolved dispositions for mating and
attachment, and the social and physical environment we have created through
culture and technology. In short, our capacity for love did not evolve to
support lifelong relationships in contemporary societies. Rather, it
evolved to support our ancestors' reproductive success under social
conditions that for the most part no longer exist. In addition, the place
of love in marriage-and the institution itself-has undergone a
whiplash-inducing transformation over the past 200 years, leaving us
ill-equipped to fit the pieces together. Is there a role for chemical
treatments in strengthening attachment bonds directly?
8Wonder Hormone
chapter abstract
One of the most hyped possibilities for chemically strengthening love and
attachment directly is the hormone oxytocin. This chapter surveys the
evidence for oxytocin-enhanced relationships and identifies a number of
gaps in the literature that would need to be filled before oxytocin could
be used as a love drug. If stronger evidence comes out supporting
real-world effectiveness of oxytocin in a relationship context, clear
guidelines would need to be put in place to ensure that it was used
responsibly and ethically. Building on this insight, the chapter concludes
with an outline of key ethical constraints that should apply to any
drug-assisted mode of couples therapy.
9Anti-love Drugs
chapter abstract
Instead of trying to strengthen a relationship, what if the relationship
needs to end? This chapter discusses existing drugs that may be capable of
diminishing love, lust, attraction, or attachment to a current romantic
partner. It also raises concerns about possible negative outcomes and
points to the limits of what is likely to be possible. Given that drugs or
medications used for other purposes may have anti-love side effects, what
would be the ethics of prescribing them off-label as a way of assisting
with a difficult breakup or healing a broken heart? The chapter concludes
by acknowledging the risk of "pathologizing" love and romantic
relationships by intervening in them with medical substances, and suggests
a way to avoid this particular worry.
10Chemical Breakups
chapter abstract
Who could benefit from using anti-love drugs, and what are the most serious
ethical concerns raised by the prospect of a chemical breakup? This chapter
identifies several cases where the use of a drug-in combination with
appropriate psychosocial measures-might be justified as a way of blocking
or degrading love, lust, attraction, or attachment: for example, victims of
intimate-partner violence who want to sever a feeling of addiction to their
abuser; individuals with pedophilia who risk causing harm to children and
who need help to control their urges; people suffering from unrequited love
leading to suicidal thoughts or tendencies. By working through these and
other case studies, the chapter develops a set of ethical conditions for
the responsible use of anti-love biotechnology.
11Avoiding Disaster
chapter abstract
Anti-love drugs could easily be misused. They bring to mind disturbing
parallels with sexual orientation conversion therapies and other attempts
to coercively intervene in the biology of vulnerable minorities, such as
LGBTQ children and adolescents. This chapter explores the dangers of making
certain biotechnologies available under oppressive conditions or in
societies characterized by widespread intolerance or injustice. It also
questions the logic of the "born this way" movement for LGBTQ rights, which
is premised on the idea that sexual orientation is not a choice. If
high-tech conversion therapies are ever developed that can in fact change
sexual orientation, the intellectual foundation for the movement would
collapse. The chapter therefore argues for the movement to be placed on
stronger footing, and suggests how this might be done.
12Choosing Love
chapter abstract
This final chapter has two main goals: to address lingering worries about
the medicalization of love-that is, bringing love and relationships into
the domain of medicine in a way that threatens to undermine their value-and
to put forward a positive vision of love as something we can partially
choose, or improve, through science and technology. Will knowing how love
works, and even shaping it through hormones and chemistry, rob it of its
importance in our lives? Or will it empower us to make our most intimate
relationships more reliably consistent with real human flourishing?
Epilogue: Pharmacopeia
chapter abstract
So much of our lives has been subsumed by drugs and medicine: do we really
need another "pill" to add to the mix? This brief epilogue argues that the
answer is, actually, no. We need fewer, but better drugs-drugs with less
severe side effects and more power to genuinely improve our well-being. The
potential of MDMA and some psychedelics to replace a range of harmful
medications is discussed, with a renewed call for high-quality research
into this possibility as applied to relationships.