Falling in love is hard work. Staying in love might be even harder. Instead of subjecting yourself to the tyranny of dating apps or the labor of couples therapy, what if there were a pill or potion that could deliver you straight to your happily ever after? Well, Elizabeth Augustine, one of the protagonists of Oprah’s 102nd Book Club pick, offers her clients just that… Sort of.
Elizabeth, the loving mother and conflicted lover at the center of Wellness, works for a company that offers placebo treatments to unsuspecting patients—trust me, this is less malicious than it sounds. Elizabeth’s fake treatments often provide real results, without the nasty side effects that sometimes accompany more, ahem, active pharmacological interventions. Along with treating complaints such as headaches, mental fuzziness, and stress, Elizabeth offers a co*cktail for perhaps the most devastating malady of all: the broken heart.
The treatment, known around Elizabeth’s office as “Love Potion Number Nine,” can be administered in the form of “intranasal dopamine sprays or oxytocin patches or testosterone gels or cleansing estrogen scrubs or pheromone nebulizers,” depending on which form is likely to be most convincing to a particular patient. Author Nathan Hill came up with these ideas after reading a paper with the “deeply sexy” title “Could intranasal oxytocin be used to enhance relationships?” It was written by researchers at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, and the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Research Institute, and that data inspired all those other (totally made-up) love potions. Is there a love potion that could work on the author himself? “I’m an oyster-and-martini kind of guy,” Hill admits. “Call me old-fashioned.”
The love potions of Wellness may be invented, but the history of romantic enhancement is all too real. Read on for some of the most unforgettable remedies.
Fatal attraction: Toxic brews in the ancient ages
For as long as humans have experienced love, we’ve been trying to figure out how to hack it, concocting potions that promise to turn the mystery of love into a definitive science. These enhancement techniques were invariably disgusting (see: medieval “love cakes” baked with a wooer’s sweat) and often toxic; indeed, as Lisa Perrin explains in her lavishly illustrated The League of Lady Poisoners, “The word venom may have originally derived from Venus and referred specifically to a love potion. This meaning later evolved to include remedy, potion, and invariably, poison.” This evolution makes sense when you look at the early days of love potions. The ancient Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius is rumored to have been driven mad—and eventually to death—by a love potion administered by his own wife, Lucilia. Though it is not known precisely what ingredients Lucilia may have used, the so-called Spanish fly (which is neither Spanish nor a fly) was commonly used in ancient Greek love potions. Roman gladiators and empresses alike observed that, when ingested, the bug or crushed beetle produces a warm, fuzzy feeling throughout the body that they assumed to be the fiery burn of fresh passion. In reality, the feeling was most likely caused by inflammation—the species contains a deadly toxin that can blister the skin on contact and kill when consumed in high enough quantities.
Definitely not a girl’s girl: A witchy seduction in 17-century Versailles
Perhaps the most infamous purveyor of love potions is the “ravenously beautiful and venomously cunning” Madame de Montespan, who, according to Eleanor Herman’s bestselling history, Sex With Kings, spiked King Louis XIV’s meat and wine with a “disgusting concoctions made of dead babies’ blood, bones, intestines, along with parts of toads and bats” in order to win—and keep—his love.
Born to one of the oldest noble families in France, Madame de Montespan was determined to woo the notoriously philandering king.
Montespan was the “reigning beauty” of King Louis XIV’s court—and a royal flirt. Despite her good looks—and Louis’s notorious philandering—she was unable to catch the king’s eye. “She tries hard,” he told his brother, “but I’m not interested.” (Oof.)
But, like Blondie, Madame de Montespan was definitively not the kind of girl who gives up just like that. She cozied up to the queen and managed to weasel her way into private dinners with the royal couple. Over the course of these meals, the king seemed to magically change his mind about the lady; she became his official mistress and mother of seven of his children.
The secret to Montespan’s seduction came out through the 1679 investigation of the famed sorcerer Catherine Monvoisin, who was arrested in connection to a slew of Parisian poisonings in 1679. During her trial, many whispered that she had one particularly high-profile client, but Monvoisin kept her lips sealed for the rest of her short life—she was burned a the stake in 1680. It was the (alleged!) witch’s own daughter who revealed her connection to the king’s most famous mistress. As Herman writes, “Louis finally understood why for 13 years he had awoken with a headache every morning” after he dined with his beloved mistress. Montespan was permitted to stay in Versailles, but the king’s visits to her became rare, and he never ate or drank anything she offered him again.
Your love is my drug—literally
In Wellness, Jack and Elizabeth fall in love by observing each other through their apartment windows. In the late ’70s, psychopharmacologist Alexander Shulgin proposed that a very different “window” might help people connect. In his private garden-shed chemistry lab, he synthesized (and personally sampled) a drug that seemed to eliminate fear, break through his habitual thinking patterns, and allow him to see clearly into the world as it truly was—a quality for which he nicknamed the compound “window.” Today, that formula has earned a few more nicknames, including MDMA, Molly, ecstasy, and—of course— the love drug (side effects may include extreme cuddliness, enhanced empathy, and zapped resentment). As the American divorce rate skyrocketed in the early ’80s, couples therapists began experimenting with what seemed at the time like a pharmacological love potion. While the then-unregulated drug showed early promise in reigniting that finicky marital spark, it wasn’t long before it spread from the therapist’s couch to the warehouse rave party. In 1985, the DEA officially banned MDMA, listing it as a Schedule 1 substance, with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” In the decades since, you’d have a better shot of finding this alleged love potion in a Skrillex mosh pit than a pharmacy—but all that may be changing soon. As psychedelics enter the mainstream (thanks, Michael Pollan), more and more experts are advocating for the therapeutic use of ecstasy, including in couples therapy. Perhaps the “microdosed MDMA tinctures” that Elizabeth advertises to the dissatisfied betrothed of Wellness aren’t as far off as they seem.…
Charley Burlock
Associate Books Editor
Charley Burlock is the Associate Books Editor at Oprah Daily where she writes, edits, and assigns stories on all things literary. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from NYU, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. Her work has been featured in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review, Agni, the Apple News Today podcast, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a book about collective grief (but she promises she's really fun at parties).
