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Trauma Pill Might Help Ease Emotional Pain
FrenchyinOntario writes "Canada's Globe & Mail is reporting that scientists are currently testing a 'trauma pill' that might help the victims of rape, the battlefield and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) forget or perhaps simply never store the memories of what happened to them the way they are stored normally immediately after the traumatic event, when the brain overloads itself with stress hormones. It's theorized that the pills could eventually be handed out to victims of Katrina-like disasters as well as returning war veterans. Critics wonder what kind of an effect it would have on a victim not to work through the pain like people have traditionally done."
Could do with a really big dose of this to blot out the last decade or so.
Into walking timebombs - waiting to go off back at home.
Wonderful.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I want my mind-enhancing "remember everything you read" pills for studying.
Exams in a couple of days dammit!
for rape victims, anyway the pain in life is what makes you grow has a human bean, psicologicly and socialy.
is obsessed with modifying humans to make them mold to the sensual numbness required to function in our society
Would you really want your memory erased with a pill? The emotional stress of a memory is just as important as the events. I guess it is true that ignorance is bliss, but I think the people in this community have chosen to forgo that bliss for the truth, that is in many cases harsh. This looks to me just like another way to escape reality. I can only speak with limited authority as I have never experienced something that I would consider absolutely horrible. I think however In the long run I would like to be able to remember. Why not just give them some heroin to ease their pain?
Someone much smarter than me once said that we must remember the past so that we do not repeat it. Do we really want our soldiers to be able to just take a pill after a battle so that they will not remember? Wouldn't it be better if they remembered, suffered, and convinced people not to go to war in the future? There is nothing really in the article that says that the memories would be totally erased but messing with memory formation is pushing the limits what I want done to me.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Canada's Globe & Mail is reporting that scientists are currently testing a 'trauma pill' that might help the victims of rape, the battlefield and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) forget or perhaps simply never store the memories of what happened to them the way they are stored normally immediately after the traumatic event, when the brain overloads itself with stress hormones.
Does it work for roundhouse-kick related injuries?
(That said, 4 out of 5 doctors fail to recommend Chuck Norris as a solution to most problems. Also, 80% of doctors die unexplained, needlessly brutal deaths.)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Hmmm. It might leave them suitably un-traumatized, and ready to boldly march into positions of victimization as if they never had before. I wonder who that will benefit. Scar tissue sucks, specially acquiring it.; but doesn't it grow for a reason?
Looks good for your age..
Will be to put them into pez dispensers and give them out for free to IT support staff around the world.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
...contrary to the popular "deal with" or "confront" psychology of dealing with tragedy the most helpful mindset is actually to accept and move on. It is actually well documented that in dealing with disaster/death/tragedy it is best to acknowledge that it happened and the accept it and move on. This is well detailed in the book The Road To Malpsychia. Perhaps this pill will truly help. If you choose to take it you can save yourself years of trauma. While it sounds sinister, it may prove to be better than years of dysfuntions or worse suicidal depression etc. Who knows? I am willing to see how this pans out, although I am skeptical this will ever be handed out with rescue blankets by the government. Perhaps as an alternative perscription from a liscences psychiatrist, but not as a mass amnesiac.
So what happens when the rapists and other evil-doers have this drug? Wouldn't it clear the victim of any knowledge of what happened occuring? Sort of brainwashing... Sounds like something that can easily be misused.
This can be mass-marketed and then we'll all sit around licking our PSPs, or something. If the average person thinks they need this, why not just wash down a bottle of Tylenol with some vodka and get it over with?
with apologies to Pink Floyd:
"Just a little pin prick."
" Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
Oh well, what the hell...
Seems you've blotted out your entire educational history there, buddy.
i will happily claim my right to be unhappy, thank you very much.
Is what are the side-effects going to be like?
I know that most anti-depressants and things like that often have side-effects that will affect 'patient'/'victim' for up to a year, sometimes more.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
... of a pill like this in certain situations.
Suppose I commit a violent crime, then take a 'forgetfulness' pill. I don't remember committing the crime at that point. So can I argue my way out of punishment for the crime on that basis? What would be the point of punishing me for a crime I neither remember committing, nor remember being motivated to commit? Wouldn't that be morally equivalent to punishing an innocent person?
Yeah, yeah, I know, put down the bong and go to bed. Still: where does guilt reside, if not in memory?
Have any of your friends ever told you a horror story about waking up next to a m'fugly woman ???
This kind of morning after pill might actually sell!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Can it cheer me up when I get shot down repeatedly at the bar?
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
I'm going through an EMT course, so I wonder if EMTs will eventually carry these pills.
The question then would be whether they're for the EMT or the patient?
What if a rapist forcefully makes his victim consume this pill before raping her/him? Will they still have a full memory of what happened and be[somehow] without trauma? How the hell can rape just be a memory?
Step 1: Barney Fife and his partner beat a man to death for Driving While Brown in the First Degree
Step 2: Hospital required to give memory-zapping pills to distraught family.
Step 3: Profit (or at least no loss of profit from a lawsuit)
"Ignorance is strength" indeed...
Let us imagine this pill works and significantly reduces the trauma by helping the victim forget. It's not going to take the smartest defence lawyer to get the attacker off on the basis that the victim's testimony cannot be trusted, since they can't remember the attack. Such a pill would be unlikely to work if taken only after the trial because the synaptic pathways would have been established firmly by that time.
The article also mentions military use; which is even more worrying. Suppose these had been around in Hitler's day - think how much more deadly the Holocaust would have been if SS guards could just take a pill and get on with the killing the next day. One of the reasons for the industrialisation of death in the gas chambers was that earlier methods of just shooting people caused very high levels of stress related breakdown among the executioners.
1. All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, containing suffering.
2. There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire, rooted in ignorance.
3. There is an end of suffering, which is Nirvana.
4. There is a path that leads out of suffering, known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
The weird thing is, it actually works...
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
"I don't want my pain taken away! I NEED my pain!" -- Kirk, TFF
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
I am sure GW Bush wish he had this pill during Katrina.
"George bush likes black people"
forget or perhaps simply never store the memories of what happened to them the way they are stored normally immediately after the traumatic event
Drop a tab of 4-way windowpain, some mushrooms.. ?
WTF? Since when is introducing a drug actually a good thing for treatment to stress disorder / whatever.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
A recent experience at my workplace accentuated how much more we have to learn about PTSD and what the ramifications of biochemically tampering with it might be. Late one night, a few months back, I got a panicked call on my cell phone from one of the junior system administration staff. He informed me that an electrical fire had broken out in the server room, that the halon fire system wasn't responding, and that the whole server room was on the verge of going up in flames. I tried to calm him (we had a good set up backups offsite), asked him to grab my treasured coffee mug with the vi command set printed on it, and to exit the building in a orderly fashion. As soon as he'd done that, I called the fire department, jumped in my car and drove to the office.
By the time I had arrived the firemen had the situation under control (the halon system had eventually kicked in), but my junior was sitting out in the carpark staring straight ahead, not really responding to any stimulus or being terribly coherent. I asked one of the firemen to fill my vi mug with some hot coffee they'd brought with them, got my junior sipping from the mug, and started to get some sense from him. After speaking with him for a while, I determined that the best way for him to deal with the trauma of almost being burned alive (and losing his bosses ' vi mug) was to get him back to work as quickly as possible.
I took him through to another part of the building unaffected by the fire where we kept some backup server systems. I asked him to rebuild and reconfigure our main file server as quickly as possible. Unfortunately it was quite out of date, so he needed to upgrade several of the packages before it was production ready. I left him to it, and went back outside to discuss the events of the evening with the fire department (and to refill my vi mug).
Around 20 minutes later, I went to check on my junior. Incredibly, he'd already completed the server upgrade and had the system online. I asked him how he had managed the feat so quickly. After all, there would be many dependencies to manage, and several packages would need to be manually configured and cross-checked from a variety of download sites. All he could say was 'apt-get...apt-get took care of it' as he rocked back and forth. It seemed that an entire portion of his memory from the previous 20 minutes had been erased, or more likely, never 'recorded' in his brain. He simply had no memory of having to manage complex dependencies! There was no mental archive of scouring download sites for appropriate libraries! It was like it had all just happened...automatically.
Needless to say, the incident scared me a little, and was a graphic illustration of not only the awesome power of apt-get, but also how little we understand of post traumatic stress disorder. Are we really in a position to start tampering with brain chemistry as such a fundamental level? Will valuable subconscious information be lost by using these drugs? Is it possible to remember all of the apt-get command switches accurately while under the influence of PTSD suppressing beta blockers? I certainly look forward to the community's response on this one!
I can see blocking formation of memories for rape victims and the like, but giving it to veterans? After they get home? That makes no sense - the memories would be imprinted. Giving it when the trauma occurs in battle might or might not work - you wouldn't want to give it after combat missions - you'd have perpetually green troops rather than seasoned veterans and a higher casualty rate to go with it.
There are already techniques to desensitize those with troublesome memories - try a Google for 'NLP' and 'reframing'. I had this done for some PTSD stuff I had about ten years ago and it worked amazingly well - three treatments over six weeks and a large portion of my symptoms had evaporated by the end of that time. I've had a handful of the falling/chasing type dreams since then, I see what is after me, and I see myself escaping. I still have the memories of the stuff behind the PTSD in case I run into a similar situation but they just don't have any power left in them.
This story is much more interesting from the perspective of our increased knowledge of brain function than from any immediate therapy value.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
"forget or perhaps simply never store the memories of what happened to them"
Where was this back when I was in high school? Seriously, they should put this into the cafeterian food...
Hmm, they don't need to make one. MDMA (Ecstasy) already exists.
But hey, if everyone is stuck in this mentallity that all drugs, and every drug is bad, people who need it wont be getting it soon enough.
"Critics wonder what kind of an effect it would have on a victim not to work through the pain like people have traditionally done."
People said the same thing when anaesthesia was invented. There were those who worried that people would suffer from missing out on the "transformative experience of pain." Guess what? It turns out that biting a stick while a surgeon sawed off your leg wasn't that crucial to enriching the human experience after all.
These criticisms don't have any rational basis. People who have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder aren't better adjusted than other humans -- quite the opposite. Irrational fear of change runs deep, it seems.
Try integrating what you need to learn with your existing knowledge. It might help to have an emotional reason to remember whatever it is you're trying to remember. Rote memorizing of facts is stupid, because you'll forget them sooner or later.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
...as a POST trauma drug, but in military useage it will be used more often as a PRE trauma drug. Get rid of those pesky inhibitions of genocide, torture, "free fire zones" "destroy the village to save the village" whatever and etc. Or say send your boys out on a "questionably legal" mission, say something to do with domestic work and civvies, whistleblowers, whatever. A nasty job but it needs to be done, there are careers and billions at stake! Single dose for the team going out,a double dose back on return. Problem solved, no memories from your boys, no leaks!
Oh no, this won't be used and abused....
2. Receive painful, ego-shattering rejection.
3. Take pill.
4. Suddenly 2. doesn't seem so bad...
5. ???
6. Profit
(7. Repeat)
The NS article had some very interesting moral and ethical questions too.
You want to pass a polygraph after comitting a murder. Could taking these pills before committing the crime help that? If this were the case, could the presence of metabolites of the drug in your system be used to incriminate you?
Do we really want to raise an army where the soldiers experience no guilt whatsoever no matter who and how many they kill? Soldiers are members of society too. Do we really want that kind of future society?
The philosophical argument is interesting too. Memories are a fundamentally defining attribute of the human experience. What happens to us as human beings when we choose to modify that?
There's no doubt that trauma patients in A&E benefitted from receiving these kinds of drugs. Their experiences and states of mind after the fact were demonstrably better than those who didn't get the drug.
I can totally see scenarios where this could have great value.
I'm just saying that it could be a very sharp double-edged sword.
Thoughts?
"The eternal sunshine of a spotless mind" seems very truthfull all of a sudden. Good film too.
It's theorized that the pills could eventually be handed out to victims of Katrina-like disasters as well as returning war veterans.
I bet it works wonders on torture victims, too.
I had a very hard trauma to solve; caused a car accident in which my mother died. It was very hard to get through, but I grew mentally and psychologically stronger. It's these phsychic impacts, which make us more and more able to live through a world full of hard tasks - if we don't learn to stand up again after a hard blow, we will break down after a light one!!!
A skilled psychiatrists/hypnotist can pretty much implant memories if they get you to lower your guard far enough.
My guess is that an evil shrink could induce anxiety disorder/phobias in otherwise normal people, just through the power of suggestion.
Anyways, my point is that memories aren't the real problem, but the emotions we associate with the memory.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What doesnt kill me.. makes me stronger!!!
This is the sort of thing that suggetss forgetting is good:
r auma_Pluses_and_minuses.htm
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Reliving_t
Traditional psychiatry, with its emphasis on remembering every humiliating or traumatizing moment of your life could easily make you miserable.
If you look at treatments for PTSD, you'll see that psychotherapy hasn't been proven to be helpful.
Look at the standard human reaction after a war: don't talk about it. Pretend it didn't happen. Try to get on with life. Otherwise you'll just be a mess, and not get anything done.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Hey! Can I have one?
I'm trying to forget my last Windows crash................
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Finally there is a solution for dups on slashdot!
Maybe, authorities should administrate medication BEFORE any potential traumatic experience, as Katrina, at least there will be less complains afterwards, everybody would be sooo much happier, after all, isn't that what we all are looking for?
...a preventive approach of trauma? I know some leaders that would love the idea, ;)
Better prevent than cure,
Anyway, I'd love to have a pill before next status meeting,
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Is anyone else getting Star Trek 5 flashbacks here?
I've been looking for a text of Kirk's speech on the issue of "forgetting" your pain. Perhaps a lone Slashdotter can recite it from memory. If it was good enough for Bones, then it's good enough for me.
May the Maths Be with you!
HAL: "Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over."
A gramme is better than a damn.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
This is just capitalism at its worst.
Their personal spiritual outlet, diet, exercise, and positive social contact are what people require.
Given the lack of deep understanding of how the brain works, I'm perfectly content to watch other people spend a lot of money experimenting with their body chemistry.
Not that these daredevils are operating in isolation. The insurance companies, alas, spread the costs around the economy to a painful extent.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
For a guilt free night out.
"It's a pretty harmless drug," he said. "If you could give them one or two pills that could prevent PTSD, that would be a pretty good thing."
Now, what are the effects when these pills are taken in larger doses - say 6-10? Hallucinations, hunger - accompanied by greater appreciation for taste and aroma, dry throat, open-eyed visuals?
Already use this a lot for heart patients, not a dramatic new drug, haven't seen many psychological effects. I am a hospice nurse so emotional trauma goes with the territory. We have a different drug that causes loss of memory we use in people undergoing surgery. A significant percentage of people actually come out of anaestheisa during surgery and have to be put back under. This drug is given in case that happens so they don't remember. Also used for "conscious sedation" type surgeries. Stickler is that it does not work for everyone, some people still remember the events. Just an FYI.
Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because we actually dese
Progress
First we mechanize war, so we dont have to die.
Then we make it long distance, so we dont have to see who we kill.
Then we shut up the press, so we dont have to hear about it.
Now we pop a pil, so we don't know its there.
Isn't this just doing that; turning humans into machines. How do you value joy without pain.
Right, so we have pills that will "solve" erectile dysfunction, pills that will "cure" depression, and now pills that will "help" people who have undergone trauma. How long before we have pills that will do everything else, or have it become accepted to sprinkle something on your cornflakes that will increase your ability to slog through work, pills that will blot out a bad day at the office, pills you can take to get through arguments with your girlfriend... While I appreciate that some things are harder to get through than others, it is probably better in the long run for people to take responsibility for their own mental functioning without treating the body as a machine - how long before it's considered unnatural to live without supplements?
Welcome to brave new world!
Have some soma!
Where the guy wakes up, doesn't realise he was part of a consipracy to blow up the whitehouse, turn on the TV to see CNN reporting the whitehouse is on fire.
Blah blah he finds out he was drugged.
These drugs are sick man, sick!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
This reminds me of so may things that's just plainly wrong. Take for example the film "equilibrium". I assume noone want to live like that. Furthermore, we have the "psychological treatment" lobotomy.
This treatment isn't meant permanent, like the ones mentioned, but how do we know for sure that the effect doesn't stay for longer then intended? Or can it cause flashbacks?
I feel, therefore I am.
Why is it that My Lai is mentioned all the time but the Tet '68 mass killings by the Communists in and around Hue are never mentioned?
y /cg-66.htm
During the months and years that followed the battle, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Hue containing nearly 3000 civilians. In some of the mass graves victims were found bound together; some appeared tortured; others were even reported to have appeared buried alive. Estimates vary on the number executed, with a low of a couple hundred to a high of several thousand. Commonly villiage leaders who had not shown satisfactory Communist leanings during the time the Republic of South Vietnam ruled the area were murdered.
The NLF set up provisional authorities shortly after capturing Hue, and was charged with removing the existing government administration from power within the city and replacing it with a revolutionary administration. Working from lists of "cruel tyrants and reactionary elements" previously developed by VC intelligence officers, many people were to be rounded up following the initial hours of the attack. These included South Vietnamese soldiers, civil servants, political party members, local religious leaders, American civilians and other foreigners. These individuals, according to VC documents captured during and after the siege, were to be taken out of the city and held and punished for their "crimes against the Vietnamese people".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hue
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/nav
At My Lai between 350 and 510 civilians were killed, so the Hue/Tet killings were much bloodier and more orchestrated, so why is My Lai always brought up when the Communists killed more?
I don't think that a drug like this will be used to facilitate war crimes because a Military needs discipline and rape/murder goes against discipline. An Army is a mob and shows some mob behaviors which are tempered in a military unit by training, routine and dispiline, the US military, NATO, Russian, Israeli and those militaries which closely follow these doctrines will not allow a drug which breaks down the discipline to be dispensed.
Yeah. Thats good news. Canadians are pain in th a**.
It is NOT a "forget pill" or "amnesia pill" or anything like that. It's a drug that reduces feelings of stress by blocking the action of adrenaline and other stress hormones. It's also used to treat things like stage fright. It does not prevent you from remembering things, it just reduces the feelings of stress often associated with "flashbulb memories" (memories formed under emotional circumstances that seem vivid for years afterward-- "Everyone remembers where they were when they heard Kennedy was shot.").
The FDA, or any equivalent agency, would never ever ever approve a "forget pill." Such a thing would serve no medical purpose and would fly in the face of modern medical ethics.
FYI, they're talking about Propanolol. Quoth the Wiki:
Propranolol, acting as a beta-blocker, has also been shown to have an effect on the formation of memories with strong emotional content. During very emotional or traumatic times, adrenaline and noradrenaline are released from the adrenal medulla which activate beta receptors in the brain. The effect is to give the associated memories more "force" due to the strong emotional content and subsequent beta-receptor activation. Propranolol blocks beta-receptor action, and thereby reduces or eliminates the emotional component of the memory. The effect is to make the memory more mundane.
Remember, "science news" is just as bad as regular news.
does this mean Law and Order SVU will finally be cancelled? finally.
One for the lady too.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Propranolol is very cheap, unscheduled, and available from most online pharmacies. If you want to try it you shouldn't have any difficultly acquiring it. It does not make you forget things, only makes the memories less emotional. If anything it should make victims of crimes *more* reliable witnesses. The only ethical concern is military use, for everything else it is a very good idea.
of an exwife! Now that would make it atleast half my stuff!
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
But I would agree with the statement in the article that one or two pills would be fairly harmless as far as side effects go. This is a drug that thousands of people have stayed on for decades.
Someone brought up the issue of attacking a treated victim's testimony in court. I wouldn't be surprised if this new data means lawyers will start attacking the testimony of all witnesses on beta blockers for whatever reason. And I would bet probably 25% of Congress (I'm guessing based on age and sex) is on a beta blocker.
It seems to me that alcohol if taken in very large quantities has this effect. Ever go out on the town, make an ass of yourself (as told by your friends) but not rememeber any of it?
1. Find a new use for an old drug that costs 22 cents a pill.
2. Give it out one or two pills at a time.
3. ???
4. Profit
A rape victim is also sadly a witness. While it would be nice if we could just get rapist on technical details often to proof that it is rape the jury or judge needs to hear the victims account. Often it is a vital piece of the evidence, even with complete physical evidence a victims account is still needed because it makes clear the terrible nature of the crime.
So what happens when the victim takes this drug and has artificial manipulation of her memories?
Some comment that the drug does not erase the memory but only doesn't make it a traumatic memory.
Well, that is part of the defence by the doctor involved. The other part? That he doesn't care about how well his victims will be able to testify.
This is not even like he is curing the symptom not the disease, he is merely numbing the symptom. The disease, rapist, is left unharmed and can strike again and again.
This is nasty stuff. It reminds me of all those Sci-Fi stories where you have a civilisation so perfect and peacefull that they become unable to deal with violence. Cue someone taking advantage of it. If rape is no longer traumatic should it even be a crime? We already got judges around the world judging rape as natural for a healthy human male. Now they can just say, "Oh take a pill you hysteric girl." Far fetched? Check up on the practice of rape victims being the ones punished. No I am not talking about muslim countries. I am talking western countries who did stuff like lock rape victims up in mental wards and or sterelize them.
We need pain, it is an incentive to stop whatever is causing the pain. The cure is not to make rape memories less traumatic. The cure is to elimanate rape. Yes it is very bad for the victim but we need her trauma to convict the criminals and prevent them from being able to do it over and over again.
This is wrong. Hopefully smarter people then me will realize this and impose very strict guidelines on the use. Or maybe we should improve our legal system that rape victims do not have to wait years and years and keep their memories fresh before the trials and re-trials are finally over.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What about close friends and family who know that an event occured and possibly end up knowing more than the original person themselves. Take for example a senario where a person was raped, and the culprit was caught and convicted. Everyone would know what he looks like and who he is. The victim takes the pill to "forget" the event, and therefore doesn't make the association with that persons face and what happened.
Later that person and a group of friends go out and see a person who looks very simlar to the rapist which stirs emotional responses in everyone else except the victim. If that person enquires as to what everyone else is uneasy about what do they say? "Sorry, it is for your own good we don't explain it to you" "Nothing, you are just imagining it"?
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
Why? Soldiers kill all the time, they are ordered to and do so.
Except for Dutch soldiers. They don't want to kill, and especially don't want to get killed. To achieve this, they normally are very friendly and underarmed. The Dutch government is very scared of body bags, so they send them only to areas where there is no real danger.
For HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE! This is a beta blocker, and millions of people take these medications daily, and this is the first I've ever heard about an effect on memory.
The effect of this medication is to lower heart rate, which may help dull that "adreneline" response to remembering a bad memory, but to say it erases it is just silly.
I'm highly doubtful about this 20 patient study (which is almost too small to even call a pilot study).
The trauma pill is people
I guess most of those BOFH's around would love significant amount of prozium pills to insult those lusers even more.
Or... Maybe not...
So why are they reporting that it works?
Not a day goes by that I don't thank the stars above for all these pills that help me .... uh... help..to...um.. what was I saying?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
It can't work because it doesn't exist.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I think Huxley foresaw this in "Brave New World." From the foreword of the First Perennial Classics edition published in 1998. "The love of servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution we require, among others, the following discoveries and inventions. First, a greatly improved technique of suggestion--through infant conditioning and, later, with the aid of drugs, such as scopolamine." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopolamine
If you look at treatments for PTSD, you'll see that psychotherapy hasn't been proven to be helpful.
On the contrary - a brief scholar.google.com search has a number of articles by researchers suggesting that psychotherapy helps a number of people with PTSD, whatever the cause may be.
The National Center for PTSD has information for Veterans Affairs staff on how to treat returning Iraq War Vets, and it includes mental health counseling, including individual counseling, group therapy, and family therapy. (Disclaimer: I am a former VA psych intern)
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
A polygraph isn't even accurate. It's easy too fool and gives false positives. It's a worthless machine that as far as I know is only used in U.S.A.
I see there are quite a few people arguing wether or not this pill would be a good thing or a bad thing. While we could argue ad infinitum about this when it comes to soldiers, rape victims, etc; I see the medication as a good thing for people who undergo traumatic medical procedures. Studies during the past decade have shown that people who undergo things like heart surgery, organ transplants, chemotherapy, cancer surgery, etc experience PTSD due to the physical trauma the body goes through. After having several open-heart surgeries to correct a defect I was born with, I spent most of my life depressed and dealing with PTSD, although I didn't know it at the time.
Now that I'm getting treatment for the depression and PTSD, I'm happier, healthier, and a whole lot nicer to be around. I'd rather have the medication available so others won't have to go through the hell I did.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
We already have this; Roofies are banned, and for good reason.
A tramatic event needs to be remembered and dealt with.
Why not take rape victims for electro shock therapy, make them forget the last 24-36 hours?
What a great concept; or we can take the enemy combatants and have them "forget" the trama of torture.
Next we can grab anyone off the street, apply torture, have them sign a confession, mind wipe them.
Instant zero unsolved crimes!
What a great and successful police force.
I feel safe already!
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
So now after the rape victim has been through court and the rapist has been convicted. The victim takes the pill, the rapist appeals (on whatever grounds) and as the victim can now no longer remember anything the rapist gets off...
How long before 'this' is the new date rape drug
Smile, it confuses people
A gramme is better than a damn! :D
Send your spendthrift head of state this
MDMA (better known as "ecstacy"), is currently being studied for exactly this purpose:
t ocol_approved.htmh 4.shtml
http://www.maps.org/mdma/
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/news/maps_mdmapro
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma_researc
So it looks like the drugs have actually won the "War on Drugs"...:)
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
If you are tired don't sleep more, it will be a waste of time, drink a lot of coffee instead.
If your get stomach pains after drinking too much coffee, don't stop drinking coffee, take a pill instead.
If your stomach medicine has some side effects, take another pill to alleviate those side effects.
If your girlfriend left you and you are sad, don't talk to your friends and don't try to find another girlfriend instead. Just take an anti-depressant.
If your life is very stressfull, don't try things like finding a more comfortable job, just take a lot pills instead.
By treating symptoms instead of their causes, you will spend tons of money on medicine and your will be in a horrible shape healthwise. But hey, at least pharmaceutical companies will be happy!
RTFA. The article explicitly mention that this has nothing to do with forgetting an event, but with reducing the physical/emotional response to recall of the event. If anything, reducing the trauma of remembering something could very well make it possible for people to remember more detail.
Maybe suffering is a way to finally learn not to put yourself in such situation where you will suffer? If you see it in a broader perspective, there is always a reason.
There are totally safe and natural ways to ease suffering from depression to shock, which is currently being used in most catastrophe-stricken areas. There is no need to use drugs to "fix" your memory, mind or body, through breathing excercises the Art of Living is teaching, you can breathe out all the stress. Millions of people have been helped, among them thousands of people suffering from shock after catastrophes.
Yes, it may take a bit more time and effort. Valuable things usually do. However, a quick fix, does not cure the root of the problem: war and the mind clinging on negativities and calamites. If ten people give you compliments all day, and one give you a bad compliment, which will you rememember? Yes, we need to change our minds, but through time-tested and safe methods such as yoga, not through drugs. Reducing the intelligent human being into a drug-addicted animal is not going to solve our root problems, only make them worse in the long run.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
What drug do you get for the trauma of being jailed for abusing PTSD drugs?
What will the mental landscape be of a long-term PTSD drug abuser?
Presumably, the military super-psycho killer will at least have memories of burning these women and children. So soldiers will be on them for life to kill the middle-of-the-night flashbacks?
Either that, or they will come up with a drug that _permanently_ lets people learn from the moment that killing people is juusstt ffiiinnnneee. Yeah, I want to work in the cube next to that dude when he gets discharged.
In civilian use, who hands them out? Night psychiatrist on duty at every precinct station?
Oh, yeah. Distributing this stuff throughout society will be just great.
But it does open artistic opportunities like "Mi Lai, the Musical Comedy As I Remember It.", which I suppose a hip crowd of PSTD drug abusers would find hilarious.
Sorry -- I didn't mean "psychotherapy", but rather "psychiatry".
Cognitive-behavioral is present-focused, and seems to get much better results than the Freudian stuff.
I can't comprehend how dwelling on horrific memories (e.g. how you felt when your buddy got burned alive while you watched, pinned down by a sniper) could help at all to get on with one's life. Yet that is the sort of things that psychiatrists encourage.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
How many drugs do people need to take to function 'normally?' I am no Scientologist, but I think that drugs are not the instant solution for every emotional or physical problem we face.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I can see that this could be useful to someone in small doses to get them through the day when "too much" has recently happened.
I can also see the horror potential, already some folks can justify or deny anything or at least pigeonhole contrary experience to an inconsequential or 'unrealistic' perspective, but many who experienced the day would remember it all, with nobody to remember how what happened really felt did it really matter that anything happened at all?
This will be an authoritarians wet dream in a handy consumable capsule.
"Drink this citizen, you WILL feel happy."
Ever heard of Freud and repressed memories? Here is my take on it:
#1 Pretending it never happened doesn't help.
#2 Going into every detail and clinging to the bad memories making them your own, incorporating them in your very personality, also doesn't help.
In #1 you are repressing the memory. But it still lingers in your mind-body system, so it will affect you in daily situations until you finally "digest" the event. Sometimes this will happen, and you will have to face the pain, shame or whatever feelings you attach to it, again, and realize it is just.. feelings, it is not really you, it is a passing sensation if you just let it go.
In #2 you never fully "digest" the event. You relive it again, and again, boring your friends with it again and again, making them take up the subject when they meet you, again and again. You undergo therapy for years and years, never feeling fully healed. It becomes part of your conscious personality, so you are never really free from it, until you let it go.
Ok, so I made to references to "digesting" the event. Whatever that means, it's just a word I came up with now. I believe only spirituality can really help. Knowing that you are not the event, what has happened is done, time to move on. It's sort of a middle path between #1 and #2, where you take on life from here and now onward, because you know you are much more than just that event, but also accepting it is part of your past.
"Digesting" the event can even make you realize something good has come out of it! Many times it takes alot of time for people to see good in a bad event, but there always is some good coming out of every event. The more spiritually aware you are, the quicker you will "look back" at the event, and the less disturbed you will be from it.
Personally, I recomment Art of Living course, which will relieve all levels of stress and give a excellent health/mind benefits for those who continue with doing yoga and breathing excercises.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
PETER: But is there any way that you, you could just sock me out so there's no way that I'll know I'm at work? Right here? (points to his head) Can I just come home and think I've been fishing all day or something?
Let me know when they have a pill for that.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... would you take the blue pill or the red pill?
lucm, indeed.
The really scary argument is: If rape isn't traumatic, what's the harm? Why shouldn't we make it legal?
The real disease is not the rapist, the person, but the mindset which is no doubt having some sort of trauma of its own. By drugging our members of society, we're sort of covering our problems with the proverbial blanket, not really dealing with the root.
When this is done in the individual, the problems are still there, it's just not showing up too often, and the person is having less of a human experience, living a drugged and cut-off reality.
Doing this on a society-basis is already on the way, with prozac being given to small kids. This is reverting humanity to animalism, because we are unable to deal with it in an intelligent and compassionate manner, a humane manner. We're treating humans like animals, thus reducing the "humanness" in us all. This is what we're teaching the coming generation.
But there are solutions that are actually working, and is actually promoting human values instead of taking easy short-cuts which leads to dead-ends. Yoga and breathing excercises are proven to reduce stress and depression, and also giving all-round health-mind benefits. It has been used for thousands of years and are safe and time-tested ways for a better life. Its roots are really the first science on earth, the Vedas, which means knowledge and was the first science to really acknowledge the scientific method. Every emotion has a corresponding rythm of the breath you see, so through the breath and changing the rythm consciously, we can have effect on the mind. While changing the mind with the mind is more difficult. Check out Art of Living courses near you.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
"Kiss me till I'm in a coma.
Hug me honey. Snuggle bunny.
Love's as good as SOMA"
Aldous Huxley - A Brave New World
You say you want a revolution....
1. Insert tape backup
2. next day
3. Insert tape backup
4. Crash
5. Restore from Tape
6. Tape fails
7. Take Pill
8. Insert tape backup
9. loop
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
WHat the... I think most would agree that while this is possibly a constructive development that encourages further study, what is needed by the masses is just the oposite.
How about a pill for increasing mental clarity, accuity and recall?!
ol' whatshisname
We should call it um...... STUMMIES!
One thing that should be taught first in universities and schools is "how to learn"
There are such classes. At least two of the colleges that I taught at had such a course, along with "how to learn" being a major emphasis in many gen ed classes.
There are many difficulties, though.
One is that professors are just as human as students, and nearly as likely not to know how to learn, let alone know how to teach learning.
Another is that, "how to learn" is (IMO) much more than just a set of techniques such as those that you described, it is a mindset (an attitude, a way of looking at the world). Mindsets are hard to transfer.
I have known (both as a teacher and as a student) students that outwardly use all of the techniques that you described, and had other good habits, and still don't learn. (Perhaps part of the problem is the myth that grades measure learning, so many peope study for grades, instead of for learning.)
Our first few years of life vitrually all of us are amazingly good at learning. For some reason (I expect because learning is hard work) nearly all of us slow way down, and many of us stop.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Rape is considered bad because of religion.
(Then again, so is murder.)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Magic pill indeed...if it erases short-term memories of traumatic events, it would be the ultimate date-rape drug. GHB (the date-rape drug du jour) already does this to some extent...a drug whose actual purpose is to do this would be horrible if diverted.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Combinations of acetyl-L-carnitine, alpha lipoic acid, and CoQ10 have shown similiar effects (link , link)
Granted, we now have a bunch of very smart, long-lived, god-awful horny-all-the-time rats running around. You got a problem with that?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
But I always called it beer.
"He was a wise man who invented beer." - Plato
"He who controls the past, commands the future. He who commands the future, conquers the past." - Kane
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
"Nobody forces rape victims to endure this or that."
A straigtforward definition of rape really does include the idea that it was forced.
(e.g. from google: force (someone) to have sex against their will)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
This would be great to give to my wife after I've made a particularly stupid statement.
"Whoops. Did I say that out loud? Here honey, take a pill."
This should work way better than my recent attempts to use my jedi master voice:
ME: "You will forget I said anything. You will not remind me of this when we are having an unrelated argument. You will not think less of me or harbor any resentment."
HER: "What are you some kind of a Jedi waving your hand around like that? I'm a Toydarian. Your mind tricks don't work on me."
One of the major discoveries of last century was just how pervasive and powerful psychic trauma is to people, especially soldiers, police officers, and emergency rescue personel.
It is way, way, WAY more common than was ever suspected, has NOTHING to do with one's strength of character or moral fibre, and can be crippling in ways that physical injury can never be.
There is NO choice in who will wind up with PTSD, and little to no way to predict when a particular individual will come down with it, or how strongly. It is insidious, often nearly invisible, and powerful.
I have seen many friends struggle with the effects of PTSD, and it is not at all a laughing matter.
Happily, there are techinques to help people deal with it, and to lessen the impact it has on their lives. Two books I highly recommend are On Killing and On Combat, by Lt Col Dave Grossman. These books are, to the best of my understanding, the first books to really deal with the psychic cost of killing, and how to minimize it if you are forced to deal in violence.
They aren't perfect - Col Grossman makes much of the desensitizing nature of certain video games (which I think is overblown) and parts of On Combat start to read like advertisements for his consulting agency, but these are required reading for anybody in the military or law enforcement trades - or for anybody who thinks that PTSD victims in any way choose their fate.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I have mod points, but I felt that I might be better able to help here by depositing my own $.02.
I went through a lot of stress last year. Among other things, between being laid off, a girlfriend who was completely off her rocker (but who wouldn't accept any help), evacuating New Orleans, and eventually settling down in a strange new city where I know absolutely nobody, I could probably say that last year was probably the most stressful year I'd ever had. That said, I can't imagine not having those memories of the events and the memories of the ammount of stress I was under. Although I probably wouldn't elect to experience any of those events again, I'm not sorry that they occurred. You see, because of everything that happened, I was able to find out just what kind of person I really am.
Not to sound too mystical about it, but I was able to find a certain inner strength that has been lacking from my personality for a large part of my life. I'm sure somebody wiser than I has said it before, but through adversity will we find strength. As a certain starship captian once put it: my pain -- that is, my painful memories -- is what makes me who I am. People may not realize it, but those rough experiences will make us stronger than we ever were before.
I think the idea of a trauma pill is ridiculous. Anti-depressants? Sure, why not? Sometimes people do need some help coping with the stress in their life, but to just ignore it completely - to forget that it is even there? Well, that's just a bad idea.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
I had the very same thing happen to me my freshman year at The Citadel. The Citadel is a military college in South Carolina known for having the toughest fourth class system. Essentially the four academic years are broken into classes (seniors are first class; juniors are second class, etc.). At any rate, the first day of your freshman year concludes with Hell Night. There's all sorts of physical training, yelling, and various challenges. Well the funny thing is I don't remember Hell Night at all. I recall one of the sergeants kicking in my door and telling us to get down to the quad (the courtyard in the barracks), but I don't remember a thing about that. Some of the upper classmen took pictures and I saw them later on. There was a picture of me doing push ups and I couldn't even recall doing any push ups that night. It was completely blocked out. I don't have any PTSD symptoms, it's just interesting what the human mind decides to store and what it deems does not need to stay.
To shreds you say...
If people really feel they need a pill (ie. "quick fix") for every problem that life hands them, I've got a solution. One pill that takes care of any problem. Permananently. It's called Cyanide.
Jesus H. K-RISTE!!! Emotional pain can be quite debilitating and there are many things people shouldn't have to go through. But doesn't anyone find it the least bit frightening that we, as a society, are trying to find ways to remove every negative thing life throws at us? Is that really a "good thing"? I remember a particularly painful breakup I went through and it took me a very long time to get over it. I certainly would have been tempted to take that pill when I was experiencing the pain. However, looking at it a decade and a half on, I'm glad that such a thing was not available. Had I chosen to forget that trauma (yes, it's mild by comparison to PTSD or rape) I would not have developed as a person and would likely have not been able to form healthy relationships later. I suspect that there are aspects of negative experiences that build us up into better people. Whether it's a rape victim who channels his or her rage into working to protect others from the same fate, or a soldier who tells the truth about what really happened on the field in an extended conflagration. Pumping these people with pills would take that away from society as a whole. And that is a BAD THING. We really need to question the use of medication for everything. It's gone completely out of control and mostly due to profit motive of the pharma industry.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Another question: Do we really want this in the hands of the defense department? There would be even less qualms about sending people into harms' way if something like this were in their medicine cabinet.
And don't think they wouldn't; they're quite willing to try and force potentially harmful vaccinations and other dubious treatments on their own personnel. Oh, and if something goes wrong, the drug company needn't worry - they probably won't be held accountable.
This drug definitely has a downside.
Not to dispute any of your other points (which I agree with completely), but in my case I have always found that when a professor forced me to take notes (for example, required them to be turned in periodically for a grade), I was unable to remember most of what I'd written down unless I read them back again afterward, which in most cases I could have done just as easily by reading corresponding portion of the textbook. In other words, the act of taking notes actually prevented me from remembering the important parts of the lesson. I am sure that for some, and perhaps most, students, your method would help, but there are certainly some students who would have more trouble with a strict regime of note-taking than they would have if they simply paid attention in class without writing everything down.
The reversal I experienced was probably due to my acutely visual memory, combined with the ability to deconstruct and visualize the professor's main points, adapting them to the format my memory was best at. In other words, I was already finding the main points and summarizing the lesson, and writing down the notes merely distracted me from doing so.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
idunno, rape is a hard pill to swallow
Oh well rape, it's not that bad just give her a pill to shut her up. Boys will be boys.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Can't you just see it?
...and so on!
"Why bother ENLARGING your PENIS when you can simply STOP feeling INADEQUATE about it?"
On another list, someone looked into this after reading a similar article about this "magical pill". I haven't done all the research myself but I trust their conclusions: "It looks to me like they do not claim it reduces or erases the memory, more media hype. They say it lessens the hormonal reaction to the event (adrenaline etc) so that later when recalling it you do not get a replay of that same hormonal response. It is presently used for high blood pressure." Plus, this is not a good way to handle that problem anyway. Drugs are usually a bad solution to problems of the mind. Rather than reduce a person's awareness with drugs the person's awareness should be increased and they should be brought to the point where they can confront the memory.
Beta blockers have been in use for a very long time. Their main effect is to blunt the adrenaline (fight/flee) response. Overall they're very subtle drugs with no discernable effect on one's mental state. Public speakers and concert musicians will take them to control mild stage fright and essential tremor. In no way do they affect the memory of an event, stressful or otherwise.
When I first started on beta blockers -- to control a minor arrythmia -- the only effect I saw, aside from the desired one, was that I had to start trimming my fingernails. Whatever nervous impulse caused me to worry off every little snag was gone.
At least one doctor in England has proposed that every male over 40 should be on a statin drug, aspirin, and a beta blocker, since all these are well-tolerated and in most cases beneficial.
I'm not well-versed in all of Buddhism, so take what I say with a grain of salt. It is just my uneducated words based from my experience, and an assumption that most schools of life are supposed to lead to 3 ends: end of suffering, acceptance of temporary suffering or lesser suffering.
This is completely wrong. The first noble truth of Buddhism:
1. All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, containing suffering.
It is the wrong idea to take one point by itself and call it a day. You don't stop there, but start to study the rest of the scriptures and lectures by Buddhism. You don't cut a tiny branch off a giant tree and call it a lifeless, sorrowful, rotting piece of organic material, when the whole living tree is there for you to investigate.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
At least one doctor should be removed from practice.
Emotions are yours to learn how to deal with. Stop drinking coffee. Stop working/living under unhealhty stress. Get out of bad relationships. Stop eating foods which are not good for you.
I've gone through some difficult patches of stress and anxiety which I did not understand at the time. I found that paying attention to my health and my environment and my practices is what saw me through. I had to learn new techniques for living, all of which have given me a wider range of powers and abilities. Pills of this sort can derail the growth process.
-FL
Nice. But as you already know, Buddhism is not a road for everyone to take. Just one of the possible roads. I'm a Zen Buddhist, and though I'm very comfortable with it, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. There is a road for every person and it might not be the same as ours. Just my 2 cents.
A race was working with an alien technology that could remove/implant memories (including erase bad memories). This could be a massive breakthrough. If they can somehow force it to target memories (perhaps with some sort of therapy or mental "exercizes" done by the taker), it could probably be great for traumatic memories. I'd be hesitant though to take a drug that probably doesn't target memories too much, unless everything over the past few * I wanted to forget.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
This pill reminds me of this: http://imdb.com/title/tt0116768/
great movie.
Who is this Jimmy character, and why was he cracking corn in the first place?
Gosh, I thought that this pill was already being put into our water. The way people act, you'd think that having a lying president who spies on us and sends our citizens to die in a bogus war would be traumatic enough to trigger some repercussions! But every day I'm amazed by how much people just ignore this- as if what he has done isn't worse than watergate both in morality and legality.
Good point, we have no idea what the long-term consequences of these mind control drugs will be. However, the money is probably there to be made, so we'll be able to enjoy the societal benefits anyway. Like Tylenol for the folks who weren't planning on using their Livers, and Prozac, Xanax &c. for the bystanders who forgot to wear their ballistic protection.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
It's actually quite common for people to take this drug before experiences that might make them nervous - public speaking, flying, whatever - because it blunts the fight-or-flight reflex.
(Yes, I am a doctor. No, this is not medical advice. YMMV. Don't take it if you have asthma, it might precipitate an attack.)
I may be wrong about this and am not going to google it from work given the search terms I'd be using, but I'm pretty sure the Nazis invented methamphetamines and gave them in large quantities to their soldiers -- not for overcoming scruples, but for overcoming exhaustion. I'm pretty sure I remember reading that the Goering was a complete meth-head by the end of the war.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Primary rule: keep the soma flowing.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Both sides used amphetamines in WWII and most branches of the armed forces continue to use them today. The drug itself was invented in the late 1800's, although I thing the chemist was German.
If they smoke a pot every few hours for a couple days, the same effect would be accomplished. It reduces the amount of memory retained for the duration of it's effects. It is cheap and readily available. Albeit illegal in foolish countries.
beta blockers are a very old class of drugs and propranolol is one of the oldest of the class. They have been on the market for more than 25 years and are very widely used for control of high blood pressure and other heart and circulation problems. Millions of people take beta blockers (I do myself).
If this class of drugs had any magical properties with respect to trauma and memory, they would have been noticed long ago. What we are talking about here is some very minor effect that may not even exist, although one group of researchers think they have some evidence.
Most "discoveries" like this turn out to be wrong. Sturgeon's Law applies here too.
Nothing to see here, folks!
Instead of actually fixing problems, it's always easy to reduce the effect of the symptoms. I know that rape victims may not want to deal with all the pain, but there is some reality in it. When your siblings or children or parents die, I believe you should feel that pain. That pain is what makes you who you are.
Pills can't cure everything, and they aren't a way to address serious social ills. By saying pop a pill to make it better, you are in a way embracing the fact that we can never even come close to solving these problems.
Imagine if the Megan's mother of the Megan law had only popped a pill. Without her pain, her feeling of the need to get something accomplished in her daughter's name probably wouldn't have occurred. The same goes for anything that victims of violent crime have done to help legislation.
I know that for some people the pain of a traumatic event can lead to mental instability and possibly even suicide later in life, but to cover up these things with a pill is simply to cure a symptom. The disease still exists. I think people should be pushed towards dealing with traumatic events instead of repressing them. We already do enough of this without the pills.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
The possibilities for abuse of this drug are immense. To twist the OP just slightly:
Post-traumatic stress: "Sergeant, I want you to take this pill, you don't need to remember that I just accidentally wiped out a village".
Rape: Give the victim the date-rape drug -and- the forget-a-rape drug.
Yeah, umm, bad as both above are, the cases of abuse are worse.
Time for your Happy Pill, Citizen...
Prise the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
EVERYONE has had less than positive experiences in their life.
What's important is the lesson that we learn from those experiences. Sometimes the lesson contributes to our own personal growth, and sometimes the lesson inhibits it.
BUT - every less-than-positive experience has some positive learning associated with it.
Maybe you have a fear of heights, that was installed when your mother pulled you away from the edge of the deck when you were 2 years old. Positive learning: Mom cared about her baby, and was concerned that you might injure yourself. Heights in and of themself aren't 'bad', but you as a 2 year old were unaware of the potential hazard, and Mom needed to protect you.
This is basic Hypnosis / NLP Timeline work.
I used to work with a lady who was always pissed off. I told her I knew some hypnotic techniques that were good for anger. Several months later she calls me up... "Remember how you offered to help? Well, I'm worse now, is the offer still open?"
She had a good idea where her problems came from - self-described "military brat" who moved a lot growing up... Got pregnant when she was 14, divorced from the father of her 2 other kids, financially unstable, maybe some sexual abuse, etc. But having a good idea what created her problem didn't help. I guided her into a trance state and led her through some "timeline" work, taking her back to some of the less than positive experiences in her past.
Everyone has had times that weren't so great, it's the lessons we take away that count. With the benefit of hindsight, even the worst of experiences have some positive lesson that can benefit you.
So - I directed the co-worker to a less than positive experience in her past. Find the positive lesson, go back to the start of the event, re-live the event with that lesson in mind, and experience how everything changes from that point in your past all the way down through your personal timeline to the present...
I'm just an amateur, so "D" is still kind of angry. But after going through 3 or 4 or 5 separate less-than-positive events (I didn't ask what they were, but I do know that she was surprised at what came up) the all-consuming rage is gone.
It's stupid to expect a drug to fix every problem we might have, because it concentrates power in distant pharmaceutical companies, when local professionals (Hypnotists/NLP Practioners/etc) are better able to help us with our problems.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
PTSD is not when you have to regret something its the symptoms you develop after you have witnessed/exprienced an event that "shook the foundations of our beliefs about safety, and shatter our assumptions of trust." (rape and war do that well) i know that from exprience, i suffer from chronic PTSD myself.
Sounds like a Neuralizer like in Men in Black, just in pill form.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Keep in mind when considering this drug, it is already used for high blood pressure by millions. (It's a beta blocker)
Because of that we already have a lot of practical knowledge about it's safety and side effects, including it's effects on memory. Surely, people who take it regularly have already testified in court. Of course that doesn't mean defense lawyers won't try to claim it somehow taints a witnesses memory, some defense lawyers will say or do anything (perhaps to the point that court is more traumatic than the original incident)
It doesn't somehow erase any memories, or even blunt the ability to recall them. What is DOES do is blunt the traumatic associations that cause their recall to re-create the physiological state you were in at the time. That is, it lets you recall the memory like any other rather than re-live it.
Off lable use post-trauma is not even that new, though there has been little formal study, probably because the patents are all expired.
Or there could be many uses where it might damage memories that would be used by a victim and the police to find or prosecute someone. (criminals might start carrying a gun and a bottle of pills)
Seems like it'd be far more dangerous than helpful, in the bigger picture of probably abuses.
MDMA
Interesting.
See from a distance, of course.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Seems like this could be seriously abused in our legal system (not that you need this to abuse the legal system but...) Take the pill then commit a serious crime where no one but you has all the details because everyone else is dead. If you don't leave enough evidence and you 'honestly'don't remember anything it would be interesting to see what happened.
They rediscovered ecstasy?
It's been around for years -- It is called marijuana, pot, chronic, ganja, spliff, weed, etc. and it doesn't take a billion dollar drug company to manufacture it either. Anyone who can grow tulips or a tomato plant can create this trauma drug.
I smoke two joints in the morning
I smoke two joint at night
I smoke two joint in the afternoon
It makes me feel all right
I smoke two joints in time of peace
And two in time of war
I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints,
And then I smoke two more
Daddy he once told me,
"Son, you be hard workin' man"
And momma she once told me,
"Son, you do the best you can"
Then one day I meet a man,
He came to me and said,
"Hard work good and hard work fine,
but first take care of head"
As well as by the "good guys" -- as shown in "Men in Black".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Isn't learning to deal with the things life throws at us part of what makes us who we are?
Can I quote your sig?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
...And I'll keep my PTSD. It is part of me, and even though I hated going through things, it makes me who I am today. To try and "HELP" me in that way infuriates me. More people in this world need to deal with things, taking a pill will not change the fact that the world is a dangerous place, and always has been.
To repeat myself, "DEAL WITH IT".
Perhaps these pills could help to stop the mind from obsessing and going over and over the events that caused the trauma. Yeah, it was good for me to resolve the feelings and thoughts on my own, but it was almost torture to have my mind so pre-occupied with the event. Concentrating on anything other than the event was near impossible. So if this pill could have brought the obsessive thoughts down to only a week as opposed to a month, all the better.
I can only imagine that the time and pain produced by traumatic events that some people go through would be simply unbearable. A woman who accidently kills her own child; a man who witnesses a catastrophe; a teenager who looses an arm - good riddance to those intrusive memories.
Namaste
...of the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
I wonder if this would help treat victims of bad acid trips. Supposedly PTSD is the root cause of the psychological problems that can persist.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
I suspect the controversy over MDMA is potentially the main reason why most researchers would choose not to mention the active ingredient in their PTSD pill.
Are they effective enough to get people over the trauma of Bill and Hillary Clinton, or George W. Bush?
We are talking serious trauma here, I know.
Is this the pink pill, as opposed to the blue pill?
wake up and hold your nose
...and the usual roofie colada for your date?
The goal of the Drug industry:
To see evey human on earth chemically modified for profit.
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
Actually there are drugs that have been around for years that have helped psychiatrists treat PTSD and other emotional problems. Its called 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA (and its analogues and derivatives), too bad its illegal.
There's already a highly effective treatment for PTSD -- it's called EMDR, short for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. I'm always suspect of drugs as treatment for psychological problems. On the one hand, they work great for problems that appear to be primarily biochemical in nature (eg, bipolar, some forms of schizophrenia). But there's a tendency to throw drugs at problems that are primarily emotional or behavioral in nature (eg, the ballooning diagnosis of ADHD with the attending behavior-control drugs). Drugs should be a treatment of last resort; if there's an effective non-drug treatment, such as EMDR, that should be tried first.
"I think that in a society where everyone is enlightened past belief in God would be that moral."
Did you mean for that sentence to read that way?
It doesn't make sense to me.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Just think, you can do anything you want, give the victim this drug and they are terrible witnesses in court.
Or you can make your solders commit horrible attrocities and then give them a pill and they can't testify against you in a court of law later.
Seems like a really really bad idea to me.
Having read what everyone else is saying, I feel I must add my $0.02.
Y'all have this all wrong.
I recognize that drug! I've been on Propranolol! It reduces stress. But it does *NOT* block memory formation.
I've been on other drugs that do block memory formation... I went in for an upper GI biopsy once. The memory effects of that drug were very clearcut. One second the doctors were getting ready to put a coax-cable-on-steroids down my throat. The next was hours later with some nurse was telling me, for the umpteenth time, to stop doing wheelies in the wheelchair.
Propranolol, in contrast, is about as harmful as aspirin.
It was prescribed to me to treat test anxiety. (One of the many side effects of my horribly barbaric and tortured childhood.)
You say "Test Anxiety", how bad can that be? Well, pretty bad. I could do the work. Easily. I was just far too stressed out to think clearly. Which was further exacerbated by the much-higher-than-normal stakes involved. And by my parents, who were concerned that I would surpass them and were doing a damn fine job of sandbagging me. Naturally, behavioral conditioning kicked in with positive feedback, making each test worse than the one before.
Propranolol, in very low doses, blocked the stress. I was free to think, to work, unencumbered.
Of course, that's how I was/am outside of testing. So those effects were not readily observable at the time. (It's remarkably hard to be objective about the subjective.)
The effects of Propranolol were so difficult to discern that, at the time, I thought I might have been given a placebo.
The worst side effect I ever saw was when I tripped. Normally, reflexes and adrenaline would kick in. I'd stumble, throw my hands out, and catch myself on the ground.
Under Propranolol, one moment I'd be walking. The next I'd be lying on the ground going "what the hell..." I knew I had tripped. I knew the root I tripped on. But I had no time to react.
Not exactly a survival trait for troops in combat.
But outside of dangerous situations... This stuff is a godsend!
x--Always Anonymous when I talk about my past...Google is not my friend--x
-- No Text --
Wikileaks, no DNS
Ps. Matrix reference.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I recently found a great source of pills that help you to forget, but I can't remember where I got them. :-(
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
I don't see why not - I probably stole it from someone else. ;)
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
After a while you will develop your own short hand syntax. Not every word said by the professor is important. For example he or she might say: "Most often in plasma etching, radicals will be absorbed on the wafer and then form volatile products." Possible keywords are: {plasma etching, radicals, absorb, volatile products}. Now the whole thing could translated to something like "@ plasm etch. radicals absorbed on wafer => volatile prod.". If you have established for youself that @ means during, at, while, at the same time. And "=>" means causes, forces, results, produces.
You forced yourself to extract the main idea and then wrote it down. You dictated to youself in your head what you had to write. Your hand traced the sybmols of the words. So you associated tactile, auditory and visual sensory information to the concept.
Also, you don't have to write notes in a linear, text-only format -- use diagrams. If possible. A picture _is_ worth a thousand words. So in this case draw a very simple digram of a vacuum chamber. Then show radicals with an arrow going into the wafer and then volatile products coming out of the wafer. That will be much easier to recall than a paragraph of words.
I can't comprehend how dwelling on horrific memories (e.g. how you felt when your buddy got burned alive while you watched, pinned down by a sniper) could help at all to get on with one's life. Yet that is the sort of things that psychiatrists encourage.
Since you asked, that is a link to a website that does a fair job of learning about the process of Systematic Desensitization. In your sniper example, a person suffering from PTSD would feel anxious (and probably behave in a way that's not adaptive) in situations that reminded him of the traumatic event. So if he was walking through a park, and triggered some memory of the traumatic event (let's say the trees reminded him of the jungle where this all occurred, whether the memory was conscious or unconsciously recalled), he might suddenly get scared, angry, and nervous. Which is pretty understandable, given his experience. But if he lashes out at his partner, or the only way he can finish the walk in the park is to get drunk, then you've got problems.
So you talk about your feelings of anxiety, anger, frustration, helplessness, etc. surrounding that experience, to normalize them, and to make them less "charged." And then if they're less powerful, then you can deal with situations in a better manner.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The problem is very few people take notes. They try and take transcripts. Do you think the poor sucker who types court transcripts remembers a word of what went on?
Real notes are extremely personal, usually indecipherable to other people, especially those who weren't in the class, and may be extremely short -- just a few words to trigger memory of important points (important to you).
Yes -- I've read about that.
I've also heard that video games, used in systematic desensitization can work wonders.
Oddly, for some the triggers are different, but the response is the same. E.g. you heara beeper go off, and your pulse quickens and breathing changes. It would be funny to have a game to desensitize people who run critical systems.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Wouldn't it be better if they remembered, suffered, and convinced people not to go to war in the future?
It wasn't until soldiers became literate that war all of a sudden became a tragedy (around WWI era). I guess when the guys doing the actual killing actually write about their experiences, the glory of war falls a little flat.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
now now, we can't have drugs that increase sexual activity! that could lead to immoral activities!
I see good use for a pill like this in situations dealing with horrific crimes with survivors. I've never been rapped or witnessed someone close or even just someone murdered and I am sure very few people on here posting that say this pill is a bad idea have been threw that kind of situation. Who are we to say deal with it or shit happens, when a situation like that has never happened to us. I can't begin to imagine what is going inside minds of the victims after an event like that and I don't think it is right of us to then deny someone a chance that may let them live a normal life again. People behave differently in these kinds of situations and would impact who ever it is uniquely. From some of the statistics I have seen about 1/3 of reported rapes victims experience PTSD. Not everyone may have been in a situation life altering to them so don't think that this pill would be mandatory and as it said only works when the chemicals involved during traumatic experience occurs.
Reading some of the other posts I see a few people on here have misconception that the women or men who have been rapped was partly at fault for their ordeal, like someone saying to not walk alone on 10th street at 3am. Though I'm not saying that, that doesn't happen but statistically "Nearly 6 out of 10 sexual assaults occur at the victim's home or the home of a friend, relative, or neighbors", there is also the story of a mother with her child who was raped in a parking lot putting groceries into her car in broad daylight and told that her child would die if she screamed... so don't try to point partial blame at a rape victim to deny them use for a solution to leading a normal life.
Lastly this is graphic and very horrific but what if... A friend of yours comes home from work and finds her husband and children beaten, gagged, and bound. Before she has time to think about the situation she is in, she goes to untie them only thinking of their safety. As quick as it took her to get to her family she is suddenly grabbed from behind and thrown into a wall, hitting her head against it and falling into daze during which she is tied up. She is raped in front of her family only then to be forced into watching the criminal kill all of the people she cares for... Before the criminal is done he rapes her again and shoots her in the head... she survives... Imagine the emotions that would be involved... If the choice were up to allow her the use of the pill if she wanted to take it, what would you do?
http://www.maps.org/mdma/
My guess is that an evil shrink could induce anxiety disorder/phobias in otherwise normal people, just through the power of suggestion.
s/shrink/girlfriend/
True on both counts. I guess I've just always found the questions themselves provided sufficient information to "jog my memory" during the test, and outside the test you have the entire textbook for reference. If the professor says something important that I know isn't in the textbook, I mentally associate it with the feeling of forgetting something on the test, which means that my "memory aid" is most useful exactly when it is most needed.
However, my system may not work for just any student. My scholastic habits were far from usual, any that may have influenced my decision to avoid notes. For example, I almost never did any significant review prior to a test, or even an exam, because I wanted the test or exam to reflect what I had actually learned during the semester, and not what I could cram into my brain the night before. Thus, if I did take notes, I almost never looked at them afterward. Also, though I cared about my grades, I didn't make them my entire life like some of my classmates seemed to. Despite that, I didn't do all that badly overall, and I had A's in most of the classes I really cared about (CS/CE combination major, in case you were wondering). The one domain I would make an exception for was history, since there are so many facts, figures, dates, and names to remember when dealing with history that the external storage space became essential. In that case, the notes were more of a "cache memory" I used to adapt to the overload. I'm not sure how much it actually helped, though.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
You get happiness, just not now.
Now = bad, after death = good (this sums up most religions, actually)
Unfortunately you are right in this. Many religious people believe something good will come out of their religious actions in the future, that they come to heaven while others, sinners, will be cast in hell and suffering. That somehow, it is not allowed to feel good, own great stuff or have a nice time on earth, because if you're fine then you should feel guilty. Basically, it's a way to control people. In extremity in these times, fanatics believe they will come to heaven by suicide-bombing people they see as the enemy, heretics.
However, you will not find one religion _based_ on unhappiness, sorrow, misery and guilt. The core of every religion is based on knowledge about life, about how to raise human consciousness, enrichen life, healing, make the impossible happen and all the great stuff and stories! This core, which is all positive, is what is called spirituality, and is in the original core and intent of every religion.
Unfortunately, human mind has had a tendency to twart things for its own ends, thus making trouble both for itself and others. This is called ignorance, because it does lead to misery, even though it might seem like a material gain in the short-term. It is all based on misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the original scriptures and lectures.
Happiness is easy. Nobody can make you happy. Nothing can make you happy. If it does, it is only for a short term, while the external event or item is present. This type of happiness, just like a drug, will make you desire more and more things and attach more and more things on your happiness. So when they leave you, so will your happiness. It is a short-lived happiness not worth anything, because when they leave you, sorrow comes. It also makes you unattractive: Who thinks a nagging 5-year old child wanting MORE presents under a heavy loaded tree is something to admire? This is the current state of affairs in the West, compared to 99% of the rest of the world..
Not being attached to happiness and sorrow, will also make you non-attached to things and external events. If something happen to come your way, you graciously accept or reject it, unattached. It doesn't mean you reject everything, because it may disturb your peace, or you should be so very pious and ascetic. That may become an attachment in itself!
This is a tiny bit of what Buddhism and other paths are about I believe. Happiness sprouting from ones self naturally, without clinging to that happiness, and using the correct knowledge to eradicate sorrow, which is just an after-effect of happiness with attachment.
Blablabla. Hope I make myself understood: That there is much more to this than meets the eye just after a few lines of reading.. That the core of at least Buddhism and other paths based on the ancient Vedas, are indeed rational and logical, when you start to sincerely study them.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Me too. Any time I've ever been forced to take notes I never, ever looked at them again. I once had this teacher who liked to give us pre- and post- tests. You'd write a test at the beginning of a unit to see how much you knew, then wrote a test at the end and compared to see how much you learned. The only time I ever studied (my mother made me) I had gotten 100% on the pre-test and only 95% on the post. ;)
Like I tell people, I prefer to learn things while they're being taught, or better yet, before, rather than just before an exam. I got 100% on the essay portion and 99% (I suspect the answer was wrong) on the multiple choice part of my grade 12 (last year of high school) provincial Social Studies (history and geography combined) exam. Fortunately I was never required to memorize a date for Social or History. Enlightened teachers I guess. My university History teacher used to send me to the library to write exams.
I could have used this back in 2002 when I realized 9/11 was an inside job. What a shock that was. Since I'm expecting lots more weather warfare, how do I get a prescription?
That's what I do.
The philosophical argument is interesting too. Memories are a fundamentally defining attribute of the human experience. What happens to us as human beings when we choose to modify that?
But we already try to. Gotten drunk after you got dumped by a SO, fired from a job, realized your wife has been cheating on you for the last 10 years, etc?
Gotten stoned at the end of the day to blow off a little steam?
So your point is kind of moot.
The problem is, the SS didn't need these pills to do what they did. Did the citizens of Dachau do much of anything resembling numbing grief once the purpose of the "factory" in the town was revealed to them?
I think the main motivation for the gas chambers was just sheer numbers required. The Germans didn't dig the graves, the condemed did. The Germans didn't cart out the dead, the prisoners did. With the gas chambers and mausoleums (I won't call them ovens), they could be renditioned quickly without having to stop for the crude step of putting bullets in them first.
There was an NPR interview with an Iraqi man who professed to have been a torturer for Saddam Hussein. How could someone bring themselves to doing this shit, basically? The man said it's a process, an indoctrination. Unless you're already a sociopath, you have to be made into a torturer. One of the most powerful tools used was the torturing and execution of fellow indoctrinates, often times at the hand of the indoctrinates. When someone says, "torture him or you will suffer the same fate", well... human nature dictates that 999999/1000000 will do the dirty deed.
So, if you have a society that so buys into the koolaid that the Jews are responsible for all the bad that has happened to them, and it makes sense, then bad shit starts to happen. How did the Tutsis and Hutus blow up into their stark ravin' mad slashfest? It didn't just happen over nite. How does all the Hindu-v-Muslim shit in India happen? It's been developing there for over 500 years. If you grow up in an environment of bullshit, it seems like the truth. So tieing up your neighbor in barbed wire and throwing a car tire full of gasoline around his neck, and lighting it up on fire, starts to sound like a reasonable way to resolve differences in your favor.
Yeah, many folks wouldn't get the cosmic joke, but you seem to have a pretty good handle on it yourself. I've been enlightened and overburdened, on and off now for the past decade. Enlightenment is not at all something you can hold onto though -- and I think that's the whole point. We challenge ourselves to learn more about what we aren't, thinking it will somehow have an impact on anything tangible. We're aching to please! It's like suggesting the politics of societies within the tiny grain of sand stuck to the roof of your mouth will have any bearing on anything whatsoever -- it's impossible. But we're no different from that society. We have rules, too. We have pain, too.
So then, we wonder; what's possible?
Heart!
Only heart is possible, anywhere. Everything else is just meaningless, on each plane.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Divorce lawyers, definitely. Tattoo artists. Little League, PeeWee Football, and Youth Hockey coaches (for the parents).
I'm sorry for your wife. I don't know if it will cure her, but it will definately help. Art of Living courses have been successfully given to terrorists, quake victims, flood-victims and many other types of victims. Trauma-relief is a very big priority for International Association for Human Values and Art of Living Foundation. Especially since traditional medicine is not really all that successful about it.
Instead of just me talking about it, you can read more about it, and here also.
I recommend it fully. With an open mind and a genuine wish for healing and relief, I can almost guarantee that there will be much of that. A center should be close by, since it is a world-wide organisation.
There are people in this world that care, and there are ways to relieve any stress and trauma. I'm a volunteer for this organisation, and have seen much that have risen my faith in humanity despite everything else we see in the media.
I recommend you try it. You might just find out like me that there still are wonders in this world. Good luck, and best wishes to you and your wife!
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/