The Ethics Of Using Drugs To Fall In & Out Of Love - Brian D. Earp | Modern Wisdom Podcast 268

Supposing that these clinics arise in the next 10 years or so, where people will be able to have psychedelic-enhanced, uh, couples therapy, let's see what happens if we can just go into this place together, put our shared values on the table, talk with the therapist about what we want to accomplish, learn about the effects of this drug, recognize that it'll put us into a different state of mind for a while. The effects of the drug won't be permanent, but while we're in that altered state of mind, maybe we'll be able to kind of recapture, or rekindle, or explore some things together that, just because of the pattern that we're in, we aren't able to really do by our own volition, and, and see what happens. Some of the people who have been in these trials recently say, "I look at my partner like when we first met again." And for some people, having the direct influence of a drug to kind of wipe out some of their patterned ways of thinking and allow them to see what's right in front of them with new eyes does allow them to kind of remember and re-experience why it is that they value the relationship in the first place. And to me, that doesn't seem inauthentic. That just seems like we can get ourselves into inauthentic patterns by falling into habits that aren't good for us. (wind blows)

What is love?

That's a good question. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and obviously so have a lot of other people in a lot of different, uh, disciplines and using different lenses. Um, most of us, I think, probably start to think about love outside of our own experiences through art and literature and maybe philosophy. Um, more recently, scientists have taken an interest in love, and they're starting to figure out what's going on in our brains when we at least report subjectively that we feel that we're in love, and they start to try to triangulate in and see neurochemically what's happening. Um, so I end up adopting a view that tries to integrate all of these different perspectives. So, I think of love as kind of a bio-psychosocial phenomenon. It's something that feels a certain way, so there are subjective components to it. And if you report that you're in love and I report that I'm in love, we're kind of comparing notes and trying to see, is what you're feeling the same thing as what I'm feeling? And to do that, we'll often refer to tropes and scripts and concepts in the culture. So, you might say, "Well, it feels like that thing that's represented in that movie," or, "When I read this poem by so-and-so, it really makes me feel like that's what I'm feeling." And that's one of the ways in which we compare notes, is through cultural artifacts. And then there's also stuff going on in our brains, as I suggested. So, at the, at the very least, you know, love is scaffolded on top of things that are related to our ex- our nature as a sexually reproducing species. So, the reason why we're drawn toward at least some people in this passionate way, and we want to meld with them, uh, has got to be related to the fact that we reproduce sexually, and so we're gonna have to have mating partners, and love is wrapped up in that. Uh, there's some, some theorists that suggest love has kind of different phases or stages. So, there's a, a, a set of brain systems that are oriented around, uh, lust or libido, which is just to drive us toward a potentially range of mating partners. There's attraction, which narrows our focus in on a smaller number of people, maybe one in particular. And then attachment, which is this long-lasting kind of pair bond that exists in a lot of different mammal species and in ours, and that's more if toward child-rearing potentially, or long-term relationships. So, how that plays out in a given cultural or historical context, well, that depends on, you know, accidents of history and, um, you know, prevailing concepts and ideas. So, love just situ- sits, sits at the interface of these kind of biological, subjective, experiential, psychological aspects and the wider social historical context. That's, that's the best I can say of what love is.