“How often do you feel left out?”
January 26, 2019 3:05 PM   Subscribe

How well can we sense each other’s loneliness? [study abstract] "As the correlation scores show, the participants’ partners tended to be better at judging their loneliness than did their friends and parents.  In fact, there was no significant difference in statistical terms between participants’ ratings of their own loneliness and the ratings given to them by their partners. In contrast, parents and friends tended to underestimate the participants’ loneliness."
posted by not_the_water (19 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
So if you're lonely, it's good to have a partner, eh?

Thanks, scientists.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:56 PM on January 26, 2019 [24 favorites]


Scientists are working on a pill for loneliness (Laura Entis, Guardian)
Loneliness, according to Stephanie Cacioppo, is the result of biological signals that push us to reach out to others interacting with a dysfunctional mind that perceives social danger everywhere. She’s focused on a promising intervention: a neurosteroid called pregnenolone, which has been shown to improve stress-related disorders and ease the hypervigilance in the brain that arises when a person is exposed to social threats. Cacioppo’s goal is not to make people stop feeling lonely altogether, but to interfere with the ways loneliness affects the brain and body.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:06 PM on January 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


Do you feel left out? Lonely? Like you have no-one to turn to? I did. Then I learned that I was suffering from Social Isolation Syndrome, and I found Pregnenalone. Now I feel secure and satisfied. I got my life back, with Pregnenalone. Talk to your doctor about Pregnenalone.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:59 PM on January 26, 2019 [12 favorites]


fuck everything
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:00 PM on January 26, 2019 [18 favorites]


fuck everything

That's the traditional solution. Not accessible to everyone, and doesn't work particularly well for most people.

Oh man.
posted by ambrosen at 7:11 PM on January 26, 2019 [5 favorites]


a neurosteroid called pregnenolone

Yo this is straight up a precursor hormone for, like, everything, and you can buy it in absurdly dangerous doses off freaking Amazon.

It’s a steroid that gets routed into whatever the fuck, but it’s a steroid. Of fucking course you feel amazing on steroids at first.

Source: have taken it in low doses (2.5mg) for an extended period of time when I couldn’t get an endocrinologist and had extremely rare and specific endocrine needs that my endos typically kinda guess at anyway. It was AMAZING (and it worked for what I needed). And then I found an endo and weaned myself off very, very slowly. And it was still a terrible idea, albeit the least terrible of several terrible options.

There’s only one company that I’m aware of that sells 5 mg pills (which is probably 5x as much as anyone should take), and the rest sell, like, 50-100 mg pills. That shit is dangerous.

Anyway. ‘Roiding people up to treat loneliness is literally the dumbest, most actively harmful treatment I’ve encountered in a while.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:14 PM on January 26, 2019 [14 favorites]


Whoo, sorry. I saw that and every alarm bell in my head went off. Don’t take steroids unless you really, really, really have to.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:17 PM on January 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


So what I am hearing is that there is a pill I can buy on Amazon which will make me feel amazing.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:22 PM on January 26, 2019 [32 favorites]


Scientists are working on a pill for loneliness

Mine's already available, though it comes in liquid form.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:50 PM on January 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


Sadly, these changes often affect people in ways that further isolates them – for example, lonely people are more sensitive to negative facial expressions. If we’re to break this cycle and provide friendship to the lonely, a starting point is to recognise that a person is feeling isolated. take CBD.

FTFY, though YMMV.

I won an award in high school for my and a partner's summer research on the effects of pregnenolone on rats' sleep patterns. I currently could not tell you what my findings were off the top of my head, though.
posted by limeonaire at 8:04 PM on January 26, 2019


Given how awful and resolutely unempathetic most of the romantic relationships I've observed seem, at least from the outside, this seems like joyful and optimistic news.
posted by eotvos at 9:19 PM on January 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


pregnenolone? really?

I can't believe a thing that sounds like what that sounds like that could make you feel better

(pregnen? olone? call now for help without judgment)
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:29 PM on January 26, 2019 [16 favorites]


Sadly, these changes often affect people in ways that further isolates them – for example, lonely people are more sensitive to negative facial expressions. If we’re to break this cycle and provide friendship to the lonely, a starting point is to recognise that a person is feeling isolated.

I remember being in 2nd grade and thinking, none of these kids will talk to me because none of them are already talking to me. How can I ever change this? I remember that feeling of not knowing how to fix it.
I was completely right and what happened was that basically no one talked to me for the next 12 years cause when they did I was too weird from not enough people talking to me. I was thinking about this recently remembering how my 6th grade teacher figured I was a snob and needed to be taken down a peg by constantly splitting me up from my first two ever friends. So in conclusion I’d say that loneliness can be judged the absolute worst by the teachers at the schools I went to.
posted by bleep at 1:04 AM on January 27, 2019 [19 favorites]


Lonely or introverted? "Loneliness" is the latest buzzword, but don't assume someone alone is lonely.
posted by Carol Anne at 6:03 AM on January 27, 2019


So what I am hearing is that there is a pill I can buy on Amazon which will make me feel amazing.

Ah my response to this last night got eaten by my browser.

Ooooooh boy you don’t even KNOW. In addition to the recovery effects, sex drive stuff, mood elevation, energy, freaking muscle development, there’s also a face lift effect.

Buuuuut then you fuck up your endocrine system but GOOD, which is not a hell I wish on anyone. (I managed to avoid this bc a) mine was already fucked up, that was the problem; and b) teeny tiny little doses, bc holy shit.) Also, probably strokes, heart attacks, and cancer? But I don’t know if it’s been studied in humans so much, because you can’t patent it.

But yeah. Steroids feel amazing at first. And then the bill comes due. Every once in a while I check to see if they’re still selling it in 100mg pills and I just...am terrified.

(I would love to see it studied in small doses for stuff like fibromyalgia, tbh, but like...1 mg every other day or something. I literally cannot fathom what 100mg would even do to you.)
posted by schadenfrau at 6:08 AM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


(let's all remember that steroids refer to a type of molecular structure and a steroid like pregnenolone is different from a steroid like prednisone is different from testosterone and "'roiding out" is very specific to androgenic steroids as opposed to neurogenic ones or immunosupressant ones or other types)
posted by Anonymous at 6:15 AM on January 27, 2019


I mean, yes, but also at high enough doses many of them make you feel like Zoidberg during mating season? Or, anyway, for these purposes: before I figured out the dosage, pregnenolone didn’t feel all that different from the time I was given a big ‘ol dose of dexamethasone for an allergic reaction and went legit manic for like two weeks.

ANYHOO. In conclusion: no, pregnenolone is not a cure for loneliness, Jesus Christ. Structural changes to society that relieve the survival stress of constant precarity and allow humans to feel safe enough to engage with each other will help. Pumping us full of pregnenolone will...I mean, it will do something. But probably not help, long term.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:22 AM on January 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


shocked to discover pregnenolone is a real thing, totally assumed it was a joke at first based on sounding like "pregnant and alone"--

in fact, despite the webmd and wikipedia and list of drug websites with search results on it I still feel like I'm being pulled in by a very thoroughly built drop-bear conspiracy.

who named it???
posted by Cozybee at 9:41 AM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sadly, these changes often affect people in ways that further isolates them – for example, lonely people are more sensitive to negative facial expressions. If we’re to break this cycle and provide friendship to the lonely, a starting point is to recognise that a person is feeling isolated.

I just wanted to expand on this point a little bit more. Once someone has been isolated they get a certain "stink" on them of being untrustworthy. Well other people aren't trusting this person, so I had better not. Deep down in our lizard brains we feel like if someone is feeling isolated, they were probably isolated for good reason. The worst thing is that sometimes, it's actually true, and you never know til you find out that you made a mistake. And sometimes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem is that our poor little brains are making this calculation based on a long out of date understanding of how society works.

I was also thinking the other day that if you brought the first humans forward in time and brought them home to your house, they'd be like, wait, it's just the two of you here? Yep. "Forever?" Yep. "What about everyone else?" Oh they're around. We see them sometimes. It's easier if they're not thousands of miles away, but most of the time, that's where they are. "What if you made a mistake with this person? What if you choose wrong? How do you know how to choose?" Well for most of human history if you were a woman you just had to suck it up. "Wow, that sounds like a huge risk with not that much reward." Yup.
posted by bleep at 10:46 AM on January 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


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