How love drugs could help rekindle fading passions

“LOVE drugs” could be used to help save failing marriages within three years, according to an Oxford University academic.

Scientists have not yet identified the chemical components of love, or how they can be isolated or used in medical form, but Dr Anna Machin, an evolutionary anthropologist at Oxford and author of Why We Love: The New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships, thinks that time is fast approaching.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, she discussed the four key chemicals in human brains behind the mechanics of love: oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine and beta endorphin.

A cocktail of these potent molecules is released when a person is in love, or falling in love, and this changes our thoughts, behaviour and emotions.

Oxytocin is known as the cuddle hormone and reduces inhibitions, dopamine is a “reward” hormone that makes us feel good, serotonin is what makes us obsess over another person, and beta endorphin is an opiate which literally makes us addicted to an individual.

These four chemicals are responsible for love, which itself evolved as a mechanism to help people raise children. Evolutionarily, Dr Machin says, women want child care, while men want sex.

She believes we know enough about brain chemistry to suggest chemicals that people could take to “enhance your abilities to find love or to increase the possibility that you will stay in love”.

She said: “One of the frontiers of love research commercially – because can you imagine how much money you would make? – is in exploring possible love drugs. There are lots of ethical questions.”

Speaking after her talk, Dr Machin added: “Love drugs used in couples therapy could be available within three to five years.” These chemicals are likely to be based on the four neurotransmitters, such as pure oxytocin, or a drug which can elicit greater production of one of them, such as MDMA, also known as ecstasy.