I've recently gotten two queries from individuals interested in experimenting with self-administered oxytocin to help with depression and social anxiety. I think as oxytocin continues to make the news every couple of weeks, we'll see more and more such experiments.
At the same time, Alcibiades, the guy who is certainly one of the top researchers when it comes to self-experimenting with hormones, reports on his blog, Alcibiades' Dream, that oxytocin spray no longer works for him.
Since late December 2005, he's been snorting various amounts and types of oxytocin, and he'd said that it gave him warm fuzzy feelings -- although not for long. For example, snorting oxytocin before calling up a woman and asking for a date made him feel confident and secure.
He writes,
Oxytocin no longer “works” for me. This could be due to my supply having degraded, as peptides are subject to do. Perhaps my oxytocin is fine and I’ve simply become tolerant to the doses able to be administered intranasally. Or, it could be that my past positive experiences under the oxytocin spell can be explained entirely by placebo.
I'm not so sure what he experienced was the placebo effect, however. As has been reported before, pharmaceutical companies are actively engaged in developing oxytocin-based drugs for social phobias. I would guess that the decreasing effects are due to either a) the oxytocin he used losing its punch, or b) Alcibiades' body upping its production of stress chemicals in response to the oxytocin jolt.
In any case, his experiments with oxytocin and other substances are well worth reading, whether or not you want to try this at home.
