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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!
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
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
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.
with apologies to Pink Floyd:
"Just a little pin prick."
" Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
Oh well, what the hell...
Are you saying rape victims should be forced to endure PTSD symptoms for the rest of their lives - just because you think people should have traumatic experience to grow from?
There's a big difference between struggling through difficult situations and thriving and being emtionally and psychologically damaged.
Your logic leads me to believe that maybe we should have government-mandated rape in order to make sure everyone has maximum opportunity to grow as a human being. I hope that's not what you're saying.
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
if we take away the emotional and psychological damage of rape, does that lighten the charge from rape to assault and battery?
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
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.
"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.
How about a pill to help 'human beans' spell complicated words like 'psychologically' and 'socially'??
Optimist: The thumb drive is half empty! Pessimist: The thumb drive is half full...
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?
Silly rabbit. Prison isn't about rehabilitation or safety of the populace. It's about retribution. Ask any cop.
"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 guess the way I see it, this pill is kind of like emergency first aid. It helps prevent permanent damage after a traumatic event. The memories are still there - the person is just more able to function after the fact.
There's a medication that if given shortly after a stroke occurs can mitigat the permanent damage of the stroke. Should we withhold that medicine so people can experience the full effect of a stroke - and "grow as a person" as they try to overcome that damage? Or if I twist my ankle - should I not put ice on it, but rather experience the full possiblity of pain and suffering that can cause? The ice doesn't get rid of the consequences of whatever I did to twist my ankle - it still hurts - but icing it may reduce the swelling that can cause secondary damage that will take longer to heal. That's all we're talking about here.
I'm not the OP, but I have one opinion to add...
I'm a male survivor of rape when I was a child. There were many years that I wished there was some magic that would make it all go away, but standing where I'm standing now, I'm glad that pill did not exist. It's better to embrace your pain and be real about it, than to try to hide from it through drugs, dissociation, or anything else.
Now I'm not saying I would actively oppose the administration of this drug, I definetly would not. But this is how I personally feel about it. I would not judge anyone who chose the pill, though I would see it as a choice between the red and blue pills.
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_
where does guilt reside, if not in memory
So it's about memory then, a crime? And not about victims? Or law? You don't have to remember having done a criminal act to be convicted. The moment you commit a crime, you have. It were your actions, you are accountable and responsable and not because of your memory thereof; this has nothing to do with memory. Being "guilty" isn't equal at "having the ability to feel guilty about the action" (and thus requiring the memory thereof).
It doesn't mean you cannot remember something it hasn't occured or it "doesn't exist". I think dino's are awesome, but I don't have a memory of them. To your analogy, they never existed in the first place cause you don't have a memory of them walking around.
Wouldn't that be morally equivalent to punishing an innocent person
Lets try this out, I'll run you over and get you disabled for life. But I'll drink first, so I cannot have a recollection of the event, and forget why we're doing the experiment. You'll try to get a compensation for your grief (I'll drive over your cat too while I back up, just for added fun while we're at it) and drag me to court. I'll state I was drunk, cannot remember the event and thus cannot be guilty. On the notion drunk driving is illegal, I state I couldn't remember being motivated to drive while being drunk and being innocent because of that. That doesn't mean I didn't murder your cat, and attacked you.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Finally there is a solution for dups on slashdot!
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."
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.
A psychopath may be unable to "feel guilth over his actions", that doesn't mean he isn't guilty (accountable) to his actions.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
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?
Because US soldiers didn't kill them and we're not in Vietnam discussing the Vietnamese government? Amazing isn't it, when discussing the potential consequences of something regarding the US military we look at past actions by the US military and not some other group... simply amazing.
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.
Why? Soldiers kill all the time, they are ordered to and do so.
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.
This will reinforce discipline, your logic is actually proving how useful this would be. Your well trained army can be ordered to kill civilians, assuming it is trained well enough. However, some may feel remorse and this will cause long term problems (for the army as a whole and for the individual soldiers). Now with a magic pill, this problem is solved. They can order as many killings as they want without any of those nasty consequences. Of course, as soon as such usage becomes public knowledge recruitment numbers would probably plummet but that wasn't what you were arguing.
I would probably, at one time, have said that a pill such as this was a very bad idea and backed up that thinking with the same type of reasoning as many people here have mentioned. A few years ago, however, I found out that a couple of people near and dear to me had been attacked. It seriously screwed them up for a very long time afterwards (5+ years at least). The problem was purely an emmotional one but it stopped these people from getting on with their lives. If a pill could take the edge off the memories without making the person actually forget what happend I think it's something to be welcomed.
On a related note: it is often forgotten how much pain is caused to the relatives and friends of the person attacked. Certainly in my case I spent years looking after my partner with hundreds of sleepless nights while she relived events in her sleep. There is also a feeling of complete helplessness when the person who perpetrated the crime is able to walk aroudn scott free because the victim is too tramatized to go to the police.
One for the lady too.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
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.
Emotional pain? Well, if you don't remember what you did that caused it you're apt to repeat it.
Yes, by all means, you should remember all the details of your rape or you will get raped again. This is not the same as if you are taking the pill because you have a stressful day or someone pissed you off. Being raped or held hostage or watching someone murder your family are things that can turn a person into a basket case for the rest of their life. If a pill can prevent this, then I say this is a good thing.
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?!'"
Are you saying rape victims should be forced to endure PTSD symptoms for the rest of their lives -
....."
I think my experiences are a part of me, the good the bad and the ugly - they are there and even though they may hurt a lot I want them as a part of my life. I grow from these memories - I like my pain it makes me who I am today. If I could forget any bad part of my life - I would be a smaller person for it. Rape is a tragedy, but yet - it may help if the victim remembered what happend. Like for example "maybe i shouldn't walk on 10th and broad at 3 AM"...or more importantly, "the guy who attacked me looked like
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
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
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
To play devil's advocate, attempted murder is a lesser charge than murder, so in that instance (at least) how bad off the victim is (regardless of your intent) is the deciding factor. Case in point.
Does this seem crazy to anybody else?
A person who has an asthma attack while driving or suddenly faints for no apparent reason and runs over and kills 5 people is charged with 3rd-degree murder. They could end up in prison.
A person who carefully plans the assassination of their next door neighbor but botches the job is charged with attempted murder. They could end up in prison, and it would depend to some degree on how successful they were.
Clearly the second person is a danger to society. The first person might or might not be - and the harshest penalty really called for would be to deny them a driver's license if their condition were expected to recur. However, in our modern justice system the two crimes are not very different in penalty.
In my mind, the apparent intentions of the criminal should be one of the most important criteria in sentencing. Punishing people whose only crime is being unlucky and giving an easy sentence to somebody whose only virtue is being lucky is completely at odds with the whole notion of justice and the protection of society...
OK, I admit this was a bit off-topic, but it annoys me to no end to see these kinds of laws on the books...
I think you're reading too much into the original post - perhaps poorly stated in one line.
Quite frankly I'm more afraid of a pill that helps you forget trauma than the trauma itself. We've made a lot of social progress since the days of the casual Viking Sack and rape have probably. Somehow I feel a lot of this was due to the desire of the traumatized to no longer be victimized, themselves or others.
Painful or not - people being hurt leads to action to prevent it.
Why spend millions on education and crime prevention and social progress when you can just give anyone who feels victimized a pill.
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.
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.