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New Drug Helps to Dampen Bad Memories
wile_e_wonka writes to tell us Researchers at Harvard and the Montreal-based McGill University are working on a drug that would allow psychiatrists to dampen painful memories in their patients when combined with therapy. "They treated 19 accident or rape victims for ten days, during which the patients were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event that had happened 10 years earlier. Some patients were given the drug, which is also used to treat amnesia, while others were given a placebo. A week later, they found that patients given the drug showed fewer signs of stress when recalling their trauma."
Would you like a drug?
it's important to remember the bad times, so you don't end up there again. something about those who can't remember history repeating it.....
-.no
The most traumatic thing most of Slashdot has experienced is having their parents turn off their internet connection, come on, all we're going to get is comments about alcohol or how we're becoming a drug-obsessed culture. Experience something *really* traumatic or know someone who has, and you'll see the benefit of research like this.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
That has some unintended consequences.
Yeah, for some of us that'd set us back to prenatal mindsets. I think Eternal Sunshine was convincing enough that doing this is a bad idea. IMO there is just about nothing as bad as someone you cared about forgetting you.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Quote: "if you clear the symptoms with mind numbing drugs, it means you just suppressed the symptoms, not removed the actual cause."
I hate to say this, but you can't change the past.
How does a drug target specific memories? Or does it simply make you an emotional brick?
I'm always wary when I hear things like that. Drugs that change your mental framework. We don't know jack about the brain, to be blunt. LSD has been out for decades now and we still don't have a clue just how that stuff works. Yet we keep cranking out more pills for "mental" problems.
Why do I also have the feeling that this pill would only suppress the traumatic experience instead of making people deal with and resolve it? Is that the new medicine? Instead of curing, we treat. Which is incidentally also more profitable, because a cured person is just that, cured. Doesn't need more medication. Treatment, though, can take months, years, decades or however long you want. And for the whole time, he keeps swallowing tablets and gets his shots.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"I don't see how a chemical that supresses feelings that need to be felt is going to be at all beneficial to a trauma victim"
Past a certain point, the feelings don't need to be felt - they're a barrier, not a character-builder. By reducing the associated stress, maybe the person is able to be less afraid look closer at what happened, and gain new insight?
We do it with mood-altering substances all the time, from "comfort food" to chocolate to booze, etc. All legal. Sugar has a tremedous impact on your mood - just look at any hyper kid on a sugar high - and yet I don't see people recommending we starve people because food can alter your moods.
I'd say lets do some more testing and see what happens.
Kevin Smith on Prince
'Ok, Mr. Jones. How do you feel now?'
'I feel wonderful...'
'Do you still feel outraged when you think of our government controlling your life?'
'No, it really doesn't bother me that much.'
'What about this protest meeting you are organizing?'
'Oh, that. I know it should be important, but I really don't feel like going anymore. I think I'll stay home and plant some flowers.'
'Good, Mr. Jones, you may go now.'
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
It isn't. This is easily demonstrated by beating a coma victim to death. They won't perceive your actions, but they'll still die. If you really want to try the schroedinger's cat falling in a forest line of things, make a robot do the beating. The coma victim will in fact die without being measured.
It isn't. There are a variety of individuals with brain injuries that impede or destroy memory. They can still perceive you, and remarkably, they're often still able to function to a degree in the real world.
There's no such thing as a personal reality. Put down the Led Zeppelin, and if you're well educated in Philosophy, climb out of the barrel. You can make all the solipsisms you want, and yes, it's particularly difficult for me to convince you that I exist, when you can just claim that every sense by which you're detecting me is faulty.
That said, this isn't The Matrix, and you can be affected without being aware of it. As the old saying goes, the bullet you don't hear is the one that killed you.
This ... is a difficult point. On the one hand, yes, in many ways we are created and defined by our experiences. On the other hand, though, in many ways we aren't. Consider for example that thing that Ripley's Believe It or Not always does when they're out of material, where they find two twins who were seperated at birth, and point out how they wear the same kind of clothes and the same teeth are missing and their girlfriends both have the same weird deformities and whatever.
Are you removing part of who you are? Maybe. But, look, what about if you lose your fourth toe? You lost a little bit of who you are there, too, and you're a different person for it. Sure, it's a trivial tiny difference, but it is a difference. These things have a scale. I was changed as a person when I got my elbow injury. Not in a huge way, sure, but it's real. I stopped working out because the stress on my elbow is no longer safe. I used the scar to impress each of two different girls.
So, you remove a traumatic memory. Does that change a person? Sure. But, then, change isn't always a bad thing, and there's such a thing as changing back - or, at least, there may be now. Consider the case of someone coming back from a brief tour in war, with shell shock. They can't talk, they can't sleep, they scream every time there's a loud sound, and seeing a gun on TV leaves them crying for hours. Don't laugh; there are people who were wounded psychologically in just such a way.
Say you could remove those memories. Say that turns them back into (almost) who they were before the war. Is that a change? Yes. But maybe you might do better to think of it as a "change back." This drug is apparently thought of for trauma. Rarely is it the case that those changes caused by trauma are beneficial. I'm no psychologist, but can see the case for this maybe becoming an important tool in repairing serious psychological damage.
Of course not. People come back from trauma every day. That there are other ways, though, doesn't mean that this way isn't important. There are something like 30 ways to remove an ulcer. Half of them are in use today. One might expect there to be only one, but the human situation is complicated; sometimes you need to do it through the mouth, sometimes through the butt, sometimes with a remote control robot, sometimes by just opening the stomach.
Different situations need different solutions.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Pissed because p3d0 made a valid point? Fine, forget the inflammatory wording and concentrate on the content: there might be some traumas that aren't constructive or character building. Sometimes, bad shit just happens, without any sort of silver lining. Would you look down on someone for needing help coping and finding it in a treatment like this?
This is about disconnecting the emotional baggage that has engrained the memory so deeply that it causes dysfunction in a person's life. People experience trauma and war and torture and rape and they have memory so tied to high emotion, they have flashbacks and agoraphobia and paranoia after lots of reasoned therapy. These drugs don't change the memory or the valuable lessons that bad memory imparts. It just lowers the emotional ties that can turn bad memories into disassociation and lifelong dysfunction.
Some of these arguments against this type of therapy are barely better than the puritanical arguments that lead to undertreatment of pain.
Ok, I'll bite. I know your half-joking but as someone who has a wealth of traumatic experience under my belt, I do not see the benefit of this research.
Me and my extended family combined have been through suicide, two rapes, abortion, divorce, infidelity, homelessness, and a slew of other things that many people face, but many do not. I don't consider myself unlucky or unfortunate. You're probably thinking I come from a wrecked family or live in a poor part of the country, but the opposite is true. I come from a very solid family. We are all good, successful people that have made poor bad decisions, had bad things happen unexpectedly, or a mixture of both. Many of the ordeals we've been through are terrible to imagine, deal with, and recover from. Drugs would have temporarily aided, but they wouldn't have provided a lifelong solution to dealing with the problems.
It's the decisive moments where you put the spurs on and kick your own ass through a problem that builds character, experience, and a willingness to push forward with life. Drugs are not a solution to navigating your way through the shit life throws at you. Your compass is the willingness to use hard work, patience, forgiveness and toughness to continue moving forward.
People that fall back or remain stagnant for long periods of time after a terrible experience do not have the power to move foward; drugs will not aid in gaining this force.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
hum, seems to me back in college I found this.. Oh Yeah it's called Pot!
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
As a person who has a wealth of traumatic experiences, I have to say that you couldn't be more wrong. I have experienced abuse, neglect, abandonment, extreme poverty and more abuse. I have also lived with depression for most of my life. I have attempted suicide, hurt myself, and lived long stretches where I was barely functional because of this illness.
I am sick of hearing that depression, or other mental illness, is somehow a character flaw. I am beyond tired of hearing that I, and others like me, need to "kick our own ass" and get up and get moving. I am sorry that you had such difficult experiences, but it is obvious that you do/did not suffer from anything like depression or PTSD because of them. Drugs have been a form of salvation for me, allowing me to live without the lingering effects of the awful things I experienced. I am able to function normally as a husband and father today because of drugs.
Before you go spouting off your Ayn Rand self-reliance, pull yourself up by your bootstraps BS, understand that the experiences of other might be different from your own. Count your blessings that you were able to survive without medication or other intervention, but refrain from judging those of us who are "weaker", and need the help.