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Ask HN: Drug that can erase sexual desire for increasing focus on research?

7 points by Blamvitoads ↗ HN
For many unattractive and non family oriented person like me, I am wondering if there's any way to erase evolutionary coded sexual desire.

It makes sense for spreading genes to have sexual desires. But my sexual desires do not get me anywhere in life, Infact it's counter productive and takes me away from better pursuit in life like working on green energy research, working on my hobbies etc...

I am usually pretty chill person, but I have begin to notice when met with sexual tension and sexual competition, I go crazy and start acting selfish. I do not like it and often time I only introspect my behavior when things have already happened.

I am not even seeking any romantic partner so mostly it ends up having to visit escort or watching porn, both of which I am finding immoral lately and waste of time, energy and money. But I can't seem to exercise control over my behavior resulting from sexual desire. So I've reached conclusion that if I do not have sexual desires to begin with, I'd be a much better person.

It seems rather cruel joke, that I do not have anything to do with sex yet I have sexual desires. Man some startup can help here, get rid of sexual desires by paying a subscription fee monthly. I would have already subscribed if something like this existed.

Is there any work that is being done to kill sexual desires for people who do not want it? I am pretty sure army would have done any research on it?

11 comments

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uberman
A simple Google search will tell you as will your doctor. Don't take medical advice from strangers on an internet tech forum.
MattGaiser
Would a doctor come anywhere close to approving this?
uberman
If they would not, that seems like a great reason to have talked to them about this rather than you and I (assuming you are not a medical doctor :-)
PaulHoule
All you gotta do is prove you are anxious or depressed and you can get an SSRI or SNRI from a primary care doc.

This will suppress your libido.

Probably the poster would fit the criteria. Just that he has the strong idea that he is unattractive and is distressed by this is an indication. The poster should print out this list

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/sy...

and then check anything that applies and being really liberal in accepting that he has the symptoms. I'd guess leading with "I want to nuke my libido" would be a winning story with some docs, but if you can tell a sprawling story of how distressed you are that works in as many symptoms as possible you are going to get the script. Unlike a lot of situations you want to go to the doc's office looking as bad as you can.

You will get a low dose and you should keep in touch with the doc, if side effects are bothering you they can switch you to another med, if you have no response or a partial response you should increase the dose, certainly the anti-libido effect is dose dependent.

There is also talk therapy but if you do enough of that you are probably going to get a girlfriend, repair any relationship you are in, leave a relationship that is bad, turn poly, or have something develop in a forward direction.

diehunde
I know a side-effect of several antidepressants is low libido. I have no clue if a doctor would prescribe it for that though.
salawat
There's always the old Aquinas route. Channel it into your work, or get in the habit of prayer or meditation for relief from that aspect of yourself. If a medieval monk whose family did everything possible to provoke a carnal response out of him can find it in himself to get past them, so to can you. It's a mental thing to be sure, but it can be gotten past.

I'd recommend against any pharmaceutical intervention. Better living through chemistry aside, a mental habit of recentering and refocusing is much easier to undo later down the road than drug induced changes to physiology. And yes, those happen, no, they aren't necessarily either researched or monitored for.

If you're still dead set on the pill route, your best bet is a talk with a doctor of reproductive medicine, and they may be in for an ethical quandry.

Might be some old herbal remedies out there but most efforts of ye olde healers were ah, in the opposite direction.

anon2020dot00
Everything in moderation as the saying goes. Being too pre-occupied with sex is an unhealthy habit like over-eating. However, it is unrealistic to stop eating and also unrealistic to stop having sexual desires.

Like, with diet, with which we can exert some discipline to not over-eat; it is also possible to exert some discipline to not over-indulge in sexual matters. One approach is to just set a schedule for it, like once a week so that the mind isn't pre-occupied with it outside of that specific time.

h2odragon
Seek professional help, perhaps. We pay therapists to tell us our problems arent our fault; we pay doctors and dentists for body services, why should this be different?

Or get a goat.