Drug to Make You Forget
 

We all have painful memories we have to live with. Some are as common as losing your girlfriend, and others are far more traumatic, like watching your best friend have a bullet put through him during war. If these are traumatic enough, disorders such as post-traumatic stress syndrome can prey on these memories. Such disorders are often difficult to treat.

According to a recent study a drug taken just after a traumatic event or while recollecting the event can erase the memory from the brain. Some obvious questions come to mind. Does it work? Can it be a useful treatment? What about the possible side-effects? How about potential for abuse?

A drug known as propranolol treats hypertension, but it also has the effect of weakening the memory of a traumatic experience when given right after it happens. New research from McGill university suggests that it may also act in a retroactive way -- if it is given ten years after the event while a subject is recalling traumatic memories it abates the emotional content of the memory while leaving the factual content intact.

Another drug has shown to entirely remove a single memory from rats while leaving everything else intact. I don't have much detail on the study, so I don't know exactly how it was conducted, however this was their conclusion.

The question that needs to be answered before the drug is ever manufactured on a large-scale is its potential for abuse. Could it be used as a tool for debriefing by the military? Surely that goes far beyond the power of the government. Your memories are sacred, and nobody but you should be allowed to alter them. It may not even be worth making the medicine.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10806799/

This is pretty scary!

I concur.

This sounds like a step in a very bad direction.

On the surface, it seems like a good thing, help you cope with a family member dying or what have you. But should you really cover something like that up?

For instance, in the "losing your girlfriend" scenario, perhaps you lost her because of something she did or something you did. If you cover the feeling up, you could very well just let it happen again in future relationships.

And then, watching your best friend get hit with a bullet. This would generally give someone a distaste for war, and rather they would want peace. If they cover up that memory, they might not have that anymore.

Pretty much what I'm saying is, I believe things happen for a reason, and for the most part I wouldn't want to change anything that has happened to me in the past. I've got issues from my childhood with my father being an alcoholic and all that jazz, but I've learned a lot from it. Watching my father turn into a monster and beat my mother was quite traumatic, but I've learned a lot from it. I firmly believe things happen for a reason.

Also, unless they come up with a drug that only removes memories that a person is willing to remove, it's asking for abuse.

I wouldn't want to erase anything in my past, because then it would be almost like living a pseudo-life. Just wouldn't be right. Things do happen for a reason.

Indeed.

I don't want to imagine what uses this could be put to.

Government thizz@__@.

You don't have to because a whole lot of people already have and there are many famous books!

I didn't know propanalol could be used that way. Huh.

There's an anti-anxiety med called Versed (midazolam) which is generally used before surgery which I've heard causes a sort of retroactive amnesia, blanking out the hour or so of memory prior to taking the medication. That's just a possible side effect, but it's some crazy shit.

I think if they made one that you could use to temporarily make you forget something(for say, like 24 hours, a week, whatever), I think that would end up being better. That way, you could just get as much as you need to forget something for as long as you want, but nobody could make you forget anything permanently with it.

I read an article in Popular Science about this. The drug doesn't weaken the memory of an event, persay, but rather it blocks the effects of stress hormones. So, instead of actually forgetting traumatic events altogether, it just deadens the reactions you get while recalling said events.

Direct quoting from the Popular Science on how it works:

1) Trauma triggers the amygdala to release stress hormones, which enhance memory formation in the brain.
2) Memories of the trauma are first stored in the hippocampus. Then a chemical reaction encodes them into neurons in the cerebral cortex, cementing them into long-term storage.
3) When a victim recalls the trauma, the memory transfers back to the hippocampus, where it can trigger the release of more stress hormones.
4) Propranolol blocks the effects of the hormones and softens the victim's perception of the trauma. The brain re-stores the newly edited memory.

/quote

So, in cases where people recall an event and start having severe reactions to it, id est they start hyperventalating, shaking, crying, panic...Propranolol weakens the emotional attatchment of the memory itself. So you'll still remember the event clearly, but you'll be able to recall it without all of the negative emotional side-effects you would have had before.

In fact, the link mentions that as well.


Personally, I'm not sure I agree with the use of the drug. I can see using it for people whose traumatic events effect their every-day lives, however.

I stand by my "things happen for a reason" opinion. It isn't an event itself that changes who you are, it's the emotions attached to that event. If you remove that, you'll lose part of yourself in the process. Things that happen to you shape and mold you every day.

And I completely agree with you. There are cases however, that I'm sure warrent for the use of such a drug as Propranolol. Rare cases, but they're there.

Holy shit, I had forgotten about this thread.

I guess the government gave me some PropanoLOL.

Sounds like a new rape drug to me, you commit the act, then adminster this drug to them so they cant' remember, always a bad side of anything good.

If we all take the drug will Thanatos cease to exist? He's just a painful figment of our imagination.

Get off my nuts, ho.

I'll take 'Unrelated Sniping' for $400, Alex.

I'd never want to take a pill that made me forget. If I forgot all the painful memories, I'm sure that somehow I'd lose a piece of myself and maybe alter who I am as a person.

Some people have trouble functioning because of painful memories.