I want a new drug

We have been living in the age of serotonin. Bad moods, say the experts, result from a deficiency of serotonin, and are corrected by selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—Prozac is the celebrity. But the discovery came from outside the pharmaceuticals, from guerilla drug warriors, in the form of MDMA—ecstasy—the substance that lets us swim in the sea of serotonin that our brains hide from us.

Finally science is surpassing this paradigm. From The New Scientist, the hormone that is now capturing the attention of researchers: oxytocin.

Emotions have structural relationships to drugs in the brain. Our brains, of course, produce drugs—people who run marathons are essentially junkies, who have found a less constipating way of encouraging their brains to produce opiods. When we fall in love, experience orgasm, or feel affection for our families, oxytocin is at work. When we take ecstasy, not all the credit can go to serotonin; the magic also comes from oxytocin.

Never mind the medical uses. What does the research surrounding this internal drug mean for the psychonaut, the explorer of inner space? The problem with oxytocin is that, like serotonin, simply taking the hormone has no real effect. What a drug would have to do is change the way the brain produces and absorbs the hormone, as outlined in The New Scientist:

Pharmaceutical companies are eager to find a small molecule that would enter the brain more easily and switch on oxytocin receptors long-term. An "oxytocin agonist" is the ultimate prize, says [Paul] Zak [director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies in Claremont, California]. So far, no one has announced such a discovery.

Ideally, such a substance would be beneficial but not prone to misuse. Yet given oxytocin's association with comfort, love and sex, such a molecule could turn out to be hugely pleasurable, or even make users fall in love. MDMA is often credited with unleashing the "second summer of love". Just imagine what the third could be like.

Hopefully some backyard chemist will get there first.

P.S. For the necessary background information, please take a listen to this excellent lecture by Andrew Weil, the face of "integrative health" who started out as a very serious analyst of drugs and the human mind.