DELIMERENCE XR
Take One Capsule By Mouth Daily
— read the green pill bottle that Thomas was holding. This was going to change everything for him. He tried to temper his excitement by telling himself that he still had to be deliberate about his actions once he took what was inside the plastic cylinder he held. “This is not a magic bean,” he kept repeating to himself. His first few failed attempts to pry open the bottle dampened the peak of his narrative arc a bit. After soldiering on and cursing himself, he finally held the red translucent capsule in his hand. He stared at it for a few seconds
“Was this still a good idea?”
“Would I get addicted to it and be unable to fall in love later in life when I want to?”
“Would it somehow affect my ability to play tennis?” He remembered something vague that he had read about how the drug affects heart rate.
The answers to his questions were on the medical information sheet that lay on the table. He did not bother to check it. He knew all that he needed to know about DeLimerence before he went to the psychiatrist.
DeLimerence would stop him from feeling frantic, anxious, and out of control whenever he really liked a girl. This had held him back his whole adult life. He would like someone he met on a dating app or at a party, or for a brief moment at a coffee shop.
“It could practically happen anywhere anytime,” he remembered telling the psychiatrist.
“I would really unreasonably like this person and then completely lose my mind over them,” Thomas had explained when the psychiatrist had asked, “why are you here?”
“I would then be unable to concentrate on my game during the matches, text her too much, become a real nervous wreck with extreme mood swings. It affected everything I did, and nothing good came out of it,” Thomas explained as he looked out the window of the psychiatrist’s office, envious of the trees that swayed gently in the wind, seemingly enjoying a better life than him.
In the middle of his explainer, Thomas noticed that he was having a hard time even making eye contact with the psychiatrist. He tried to turn his head towards the person in front of him, but his eyes landed squarely at the bottom of a bookshelf, fixating on a kitschy photo frame that read, “You are loved and important.”
He knew that the psychiatrist was just a pawn to make quick work of in the medical-industrial complex. He was going to ask him all the questions off DSM-IV, check off boxes, give him the pill.
“Did you hear about any drugs for this elsewhere? Did someone recommend this to you?” the psychiatrist had asked as Thomas finished his sentence.
“No,” he responded without a moment’s delay.
On the back of his mind was the subreddit r/unalovebomber that had put him onto the diagnosis he was seeking. It had been yet another torrid week. Thomas had gone on a single date with someone he met on Hinge. He had kept his cool before the date even though the long texts had built anticipation. He kept repeating his usual mantras in the shower just before the date “keep it cool, enjoy yourself, even if nothing happens, you get to enjoy someone’s company.” And then the date had gone extraordinarily well. They were both athletes - Thomas, a tennis player, ranked #400 in the world, Maddie a triathlete who worked as a nurse. They spent 6 hours talking about life, books, music, childhood stories. A day passed, Thomas held onto his nerve and did not double text, and then he got the text:
You’re a great guy but I don’t think it’s a match. Hope you have a great career and make it to the top 250
HE KNEW THE DRILL. HE HAD DONE THIS BEFORE AND FELT HELPLESS ABOUT the fact that his baseline instincts were going to take over. Resent her, console himself by saying, “it’s her fucking loss”, watch porn and then after 4 hours when all coping mechanisms failed, weep and scream into the couch in his living room. The downstairs neighbors had filed a noise complaint the first time he cried when he moved into his new apartment, and the couch was a good acoustic cushion. After about 6 hours of this he had found new (or perhaps old) resolve to fix this once and for all and was on r/unalovebomber subreddit looking for inspiration, solutions or whatever hooked his mind. He found a post by r/epicureanjoel that he knew was going to change things and there was some sense of finality to it :
I’ve been on DeLimerence XR for 100 days and it has completely transformed my life
I’ve been a 7/10 all my life, rarely had problems finding dates regularly but only met people I liked once in a while. And then when I met someone I liked, I would become a complete schizoid and show classic symptoms of a love bomber - sending too many messages, not taking any kind of negative reaction from her well, my mind would be completely out of place. Even got to the point where I almost lost a job because of this habit. Finally got diagnosed for affection processing disorder and got prescribed DeLimerance XR 10mg. I’ve been on 4 dates since starting medication, and it has gone great. I have a good time with them, don’t get anxious about text replies and you know what? 3 of those 4 dates have gone well, I’m still seeing them. Something about me being more cool and aloof about it definitely makes me more attractive to them and to myself. Don’t fall for the temporary displacement of ego that instant attraction or “love at first sight” offers. Get diagnosed and work on yourself.
IT ALL CAME DOWN TO THIS MOMENT NOW. THOMAS HAD READ THAT IT TAKES anywhere between 30 minutes to one hour for DeLimerence XR to take effect. The most common dosage instruction on r/unalovebomber was to take it when you were actively dating. It was Friday, and Thomas had a few matches on his dating app that he had not initiated conversations with. He was also planning to go to a house concert with a friend, Vijayan, in the evening. ‘Friend’ was too generous a definition for their relationship. Men who are in their 30s don’t have friends. Their lives are like airports, people come and go, stay awhile, make conversation, but eventually, they leave like they originally intended to.
Thomas felt an easiness about texting the girls on the app. Not excited, not nervous and on edge. Not craving approval like he always used to. He even firted when they replied back. He had a picture of him wearing a t-shirt based on the PT Anderson movie There Will Be Blood, and someone he matched with commented.
“Nice t-shirt btw. I love that movie.”
And Thomas, to his own surprise, had replied “Haha, who knows, may be you’ll get to wear it someday”.
2 hours in, he tried to cast doubt over the effect of the medicine, maybe he had just convinced himself that the pill works, and nothing substantial had actually changed in his brain chemistry. But he also did not want to find out. He liked the way it felt and planned to continue to do so. He tried to remember the names of the girls on the dating app he had ended up making plans with and could not remember. “Doesn’t matter. I have plans with them and it’s just a first date anyway,” he told himself. It was time to find out whether this drug helped with social anxiety when talking with women.
Nostalgia for the Present is a series of 30 flash speculative fiction pieces responding to the present from the lens of the future