not the motorcycle diaries

I have decided to embrace biochemical determinism and start taking The Pill again. I’ve tried taking it on a few occasions over the past 9 years, and every time it has sent me completely mental. So I was never on it for very long, and I always started taking it *after* I had fallen in like/lust/love and was therefore in an unaltered hormonal state at the time of attraction. However! perhaps it was my *reasoning* for taking the Pill that was totally wak, i.e. to avoid getting pregnant.

My *new* reason for Pill-popping is to change who I ‘have chemistry’ with. Scientific rumour has it that taking the contraceptive pill alters your pheromones/reception of pheromones, and therefore alters *who you are attracted to*. The experiments reported in 2001 suggested that women who were on the pill were attracted to a completely different set of genetic characteristics than those who were not. Women on the pill had chemistry with men whom their bodies thought would be appropriate people to mate with more permanently, because the pill makes the body thinks it is pregnant and therefore seeks out stability and protection (sure I might end up getting starry-eyed over my eighth cousin, and it might reduce fertility and/or fecundity, but perhaps these are risks I’m willing to take). So it was suggested to women that, “if you are on the pill and meet someone you want to have children with, you should stop taking oral contraceptives.” You should “Go off [oral contraceptives] … to see if you’re still attracted.”

Presumably, going *on* the pill will provoke a similar alteration - and therefore, chances are, I will stop wanting to be entwined with the wrong people, and start getting happy love feelings for more appropriate ones (albeit with strangely familiar features and reduced chances of offspring). Brilliant!