Unlike the plethora of social networks out there where you can simply click an ‘x’ and all those nasty, unwanted comments drift off into cyberspace, in real life there’s no quick solution for rejection or other social setbacks. Sure, a couple of drinks might ease the pain but it’s never a sure-fire thing and it has its own drawbacks. But, what if you could just pop a pill, the legal, over-the-counter type, and make it all go away?

A 2010 study by psychologists at the University of Kentucky suggests that the pain you feel from physical harm and that experienced from an unfortunate social reaction are more closely linked that you think. Rather than two mutually exclusive sensations, they could in fact be two aspects of the same thing.

Although experienced differently, it’s believed that the same neural processes are used to register feelings of discomfort, physical or mental. Following this train of thought they posited that in the same way that medication can reduce the effects of physical pain, it should be able to the same for social pain.

Pain, whether caused by physical injury or social rejection, is an inevitable part of life. These two types of pain-physical and social-may rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms that register pain-related affect. To the extent that these pain processes overlap, acetaminophen, a physical pain suppressant that acts through central (rather than peripheral) neural mechanisms, may also reduce behavioral and neural responses to social rejection.

Following some clinical trials and the use of high-tech equipment, it was found that there were significant overlaps in the response regions and as such medication could be taken to glean specific results.

What it comes down to, is that you could potentially pop a pill to finally emerge from that cocoon and become the social butterfly you’ve always wanted to be without the fear of rejection or ridicule.

So basically, we’ll have more socially awkward people except now they’ll be the only ones who don’t know it.

[Source: Discover Magazine]