Pill to ease memory of trauma envisioned - Brave New World

Boston Globb ^ | 11/8/2002 | Ellen Barry

[rface]

Someday in the future, people may walk into an emergency room after a rape, or a car wreck, or a shooting, and be given a pill to protect them from the haunting memories that may follow.

For millions of war veterans, abuse victims, and others, the psychological shock following a traumatic event can be as damaging as the event itself. Post-traumatic stress disorder, which affects an estimated 3 to 8 percent of the population, is typically treated with therapy to help the victim live with the memory.

[rface]

Ashland, Missouri

[conservativemusician]

Huxley is rolling over.

I can hear it now. " SOMA...SOMA...SOMA..."

[cardinal4]

Better living through Chemistry. Just like Prozac, Zoloft, and Ritalin. Creating a chemical dependency as short term solution is NEVER the right answer.

[EggsAckley]

Uh oh, now you've done it. Be prepared for a string of posters (mostly guys) who will excoriate this article. Even Bill O'Reilly said that "people who suffer trauma are flawed human beings." That's why I don't watch him any more.

This is a serious (series?) topic, and I don't think I'll stick around to defend it from the "UeberMensch" types who will poo-poo it. Good luck.

[EggsAckley]

Ah, I see that they're already here.

*let the chest pounding begin*

[Malacoda]

Where the Hell was this pill when I was suffering through Bill Clinton being elected TWICE???

Seriously, though...as a society, we're drugging ourselves right out of living.

I'll avoid the obvious "History of the World Part I" joke about how we have a drug for everything but premature ejaculation...but I hear that's coming (or cumming) soon!)

[Lysander]

“Tastes Great-- Less filling....Tastes Great-- Less filling...Tastes Great--Less filling....Tastes Great-- Less filling...Tastes Great-- Less filling....Tastes Great-- Less filling...”

[101st-Eagle]

''It would have enormous public health relevance,'' said Dr. Glenn Saxe, the chairman of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, who will present his findings today in Baltimore to the world's largest yearly meeting of traumatic stress specialists. If human trials confirm his observations, such drugs could be administered routinely in emergency rooms ''not unlike [anticlotting agents] are given to heart attack victims,'' he said.

IMO this will never be approved by the FDA for this use. Any drug used to alter consciousness this much (not just something that allieviates depression but instead causes a memory erase) is automatically discounted and banned, regardless of the personal hell it might help to wipe away. It is too bad the populace can't see the forest for the trees. There are many psychodelic drugs that IMMENSELY help people in therapy; ones that work miracles for a family and therapist sometimes. But since they are abused by some, they are taken away for all.

Again, a crazy paradox we live with given the legality of other drugs for medical usage and alcohol. The term pschodelic is just too scary for some thanks to Timothy Leary type excesses rubbing up against the establishment's mind set.

[Andiceman]

Two thoughts:

First, I'm not going to try to "second-guess" my mind by using chemicals to change the importance it gives to certain memories.

Second, and more concerning--how long until "someone else" decides when you need this sort of medication. "Move along, don't mind what you saw here today, take your pill, move along, nothing to see here. Starbucks is two blocks up on the right. Go home and turn on MTV, everything will be fine."

Can y'all guess I'm no very optimistic.

[101st-Eagle]

And hypocisy from those negatively posting above who might drink alcohol or not condemn themselves, their friends or loved ones for being "too weak to relax and socialize without it"-even if they are not alchoholics.

[Junior]

Instead of revisiting the victim as an intrusive flashback, the memory of trauma would be more like recollections of ordinary events.

It might be a bad thing to desensitize people to psychic pain; it is the one thing that allows us to empathize with others in similar plights.

[rkaic]

If I were raped, and given a drug such as this, maybe I would not feel as strongly about the rapist. Maybe eventually criminals that cause traumatic crimes won't be punished as severely, since the victims do not feel as strongly about the incident. That is scary.

[Leto]

Faith in God has been the traditional remedy for coping with stressful events. Now we are looking to Chemical to insulate us from life, rahter than faith to help us understand life.

Sad.

[doc30]

Imagine such a drug used by the government. Give it to the whole population after a 9/11 event and there won't be any anger or desire for justice. The ultra-liberal pacifists would love to use this to influence public opinion for a "no war" and "roll over and let the enemy do what they want to us" stance.

[joesnuffy]

Trauma is often used by God to draw people to Him....
Its only natural that the Humanist Controllers would want to impeded this (if they could)

[rface]

Imagine - that the entire US took this pill on Sept. 12, 2001. The world would be at peace.

Ashland, Missouri

[Orangedog]

"Life's not a song. Life isn't bliss...life is just this...it's living. You'll get along. The pain that you feel can only be healed by living."

Small pearl of wisdom I once heard in a song. Trauma is part of life because it's an imperfect world. There have been a handful of events in my life that would have made things easier if the memories could be "lessened", but those experiences and memories are part of what makes me the person that I am today. I'm not self-loathing enough to erase part of what makes me...me.

In any event, Pandora has opened her box once again and in time we are going to have to confront this subject head on. Use of technologies like this have the potential to not only affect any particular part of society, but the course of humanity.

[valkyrieanne]

How bloody stupid. Has it occurred to anyone that maybe there's a *reason* for those shakes and nightmares after a traumatic event? That maybe the strong emotion reinforces a *learning experience?*

[APBaer]

If only Bill Murray had access to this in "The Groundhog Day" he would have thought each [same old] day was new and exciting.