You can study love

Sitting on a long flight from Paris to DC, watching a Tedtalk by Helen Fisher. She's a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, and she has been studying love in its various guises; lust, romantic love and attachment ("so that you can stand living with someone"). A fine talk it was, which I was enjoying. And then she started in on a digression. She said she wanted to say a little about anti-depressants, especially selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. Ok. And her little bit said, basically, that increased serotonin would depress dopamine production. (I maybe need to go back and re-listen so I can get this down properly.) And decreased dopamine means decreased libido. Well, yes. And fewer orgasms. Uh huh. And less attachment, less love. And she said that a world without love would not be very good, and that she was worried about the number of people taking SSRI anti-depressants chronically.

And that hit me like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.