Love and heartache have always been inexorably tied. Recall the paranoid, lust-dizzy characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or the tortured, memory-deprived lovers in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if a pill could take away the pain of a breakup? Researchers are looking into it.

As unromantic as it sounds, love is essentially a biochemical cocktail, and a poorly understood one at that. Scientists do know that oxytocin—often called the love hormone—plays a powerful role in bonding. In one experiment, Adam Guastella, a clinical psychologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, administered oxytocin to quarreling lovers during couples’ therapy. “It does seem to help people reduce their hostility and increase their willingness to take another’s perspective,” he says. Inhibiting the hormone could have the opposite effect: When Emory University researchers injected drugs into the brains of prairie voles to block oxytocin receptors, the voles lost interest in their long-term mating partners. With the manipulation of oxytocin, a love “off button” seems possible. (1)

We were Gods.
Loving others.
Killing for love.
Getting killed for love.

Now we are educated.
Now we are evolved.
Now we are cowards.
Avoiding love.
With drugs.

Modern civilization.
Look under the surface.
Discover rot.