Drug "deletes" painful memories?!

Comment

Comment by Melissa J. Roth on February 18, 2009 at 1:27pm

That is freightening! Do you know how many people on this planet are already taking propranolol?

Comment by Donna Carter on February 17, 2009 at 11:59am

If it is in ANY anxious hands... they would be the wrong hands. IMHO.
This is one, of many, beta-blockers that has a list of precautions, side-effects, and interactions...that is so long you need to sit down and study it to really retain any of it. And a few of these side-effects are deathly.

From what I can gather... they believe that it is best used for 'fear of speaking in public' so you take it before you go up to speak. Or 'fear of heights' so you take it before you go some place high. I believe what they are thinking...is that it doesn't act like xanax or some of the others because it doesn't give you that, limp, tired feeling that is associated with the other short term anxiety drugs... AND it is being used kind of like operant conditioning. The person takes the pill, the person goes and does what used to scare them, the person does it...and it goes great, the person now has a new response of knowing that they can do the 'scary' thing and it wasn't scary, repeat, repeat, and soon they have this new behavior - without the drug.
I tried to find more information on the actual 'deleting' of painful 'stored' memories (like, can they touch the memory of when so and so was just a child and they were traumatized?), but I was unable to get more than just the 'report' of which was so vague - I wonder where they pulled it out of.

~~D.

Anytime the FD(eath)A - approves anything, the mortuaries should get a memo to increase their space.

~~D.

Comment by James Malone on February 17, 2009 at 6:45am

Lee, is it that drug actually deletes the negative memory or just the strong emotional charge attached to it? If the latter, it would be in line with what hypnosis and other methods strive to do.

Comment by Michael Ellner on February 17, 2009 at 2:59am

Hi Lee,

If society doesn't snap out of the: "Science will develop a magic pill for every ill trance" the mass social self-hypnosis could very well develop into a international social "psychosis" (*Not a medical or psychological opinion.)

FYI- I heard about propranolol from a Gulf War-vet who saw me to stop smoking several years ago...

He mentioned suffering from PTSD and told me that he had tried everything including the "Memory Drug" that the VA was very high on at the time -- He reported that the drug did help a bit, but, he couldn't handle the "side" effects. He said all of the vets that he knew who were given the drug in his support group had stopped using it for the same reason --

I explained that hypnosis and cognitive therapy (an unacknowledged form of hypnosis) are quite effective in helping people make peace with their PTSD and suggested he consider coming back to see me after he had enjoyed the benefits of our session and was sure that hypnosis worked for him. He came back a few months later and I was able to help him learn how to shift out of the PTSD states.

I met him about a year ago and he reported that the work we did was a great help to him and he was still smoke free...

If only we could put "it" in a pill, "eh?"

Warmest regards,

Comment by Brian David Phillips on February 16, 2009 at 8:08pm

Lee, we saw the same thing coming out . . . personally, I am very wary of memory erasure as a strategy to coping with stress or trauma. Artificial Repression does not work in the long term and I have serious doubts regarding chemical memory erasure as well. The Clockwork Orange and 1984 images are valid and that's a Brave New World we may not wish to travel into. I posted a blog entry on this at http://briandavidphillips.typepad.com/brian/2009/02/blood-pressure-medicine-may-lead-to-memory-erasure-drugonce-again-aritificial-repression-comes-into-.html with references back to previous essays. After the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I had a few requests for artificial memory repression from young lovers spurned and always suggested learning other more positive coping strategies.

All the best,
Brian
http://www.briandavidphillips.com