Memory (Year 2 Sun.)
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I’ve never been in a position like you presented, but I think that medictaion, which could help with forgetting or repressing such a terrible things should be allowed to take by person, who needs it. If you ask me, If I was through traumatic experiences or something, I would try to handle with it wthout taking medication. I think my family and my friends could help me to deal with it by standing by me, just being there for me. But these are just my thoughts, I don’t know how i would act if I was in situation like that.
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Thank you for your post, Kamila. When I asked this question to another student, she told me that she would never take the pill because experiences (including tragic ones) shape us and make us who we are. Do you agree with her?
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If she thinks that, she must have a very strong personality, I guess. Maybe it’s just like she said, that experiences (including tragic ones) make us who we are, I won’t argue with that.
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I agree with her. Our life experiences make us who we are and we have to remember about it. Lots of people forget about it and don’t give a thought to the fact that if not for one situation they would have been someone totally different. Since 2016 I’ve wondered who I would have become if… and for me forgetting some unpleasant memories would totally change my life. Have you ever heard about a butterfly effect?
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Let me answer this question. The Butterfly Effect is the idea that small events can have a large, unpredictable influence on the future. It is actually just a metaphor for a field of mathematics called Chaos Theory.
Chaos Theory is, in effect, the science of surprises, the nonlinear and the unpredictable. The theory teaches anyone who learns it that we should come to expect the unexpected.-
By mentioning butterfly effect I just wanted to show how easy it is to change everything by one decision and for me forgetting traumatic event can be something comparable.
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Yes, I noticed, and I, in turn, wanted to explain what this phenomenon is.
And the comparison is irrational. A person who has experienced trauma is not satisfied with the fact that it happened to them, because it shaped them as the specific person that they are now. They would gladly erase this event from their life and all the pain that goes with it, no matter how disastrous the effects could be.-
You’re not right. I’ve experienced trauma and I would never try to forget it. I also know some other people who have been through sth very traumatic too and they share my opinion that fighting PTSD is the best what we can do but changing ourselves by forgetting isn’t a good solution of our problems. That’s my opinion and I will stick to it.
What’s more please don’t say that people who experienced trauma would gladly erase this event because there are lots of people who wouldn’t choose that option. Our opinion is one thing but generalizing what others would do is sth different.
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It’s hard to decide how I would behave if I were actually in this situation. It seems to me that if my traumatic experience was constantly painfully vivid in my memory, and I had no control over it, it would make it difficult for me to function in my post-traumatic life. In such a case, I would like to take advantage of the treatment.
If I had the strength to deal with the trauma, start therapy and work on it, then I would prefer to do without drugs that help me to forget about it.
But I think I would need some other form of pharmacological support, for example, something to calm me down. I believe that it would allow me to return to my traumatic memories during therapy without panic attacks or heavily crying.-
Hi, Joanna. Why would you prefer to recover without the help of medicines? Bad memories tend to haunt us throughout our lives, they recur in the most unexpected and unwanted moments and make us relive the painful situations. Wouldn’t it be better for us just to forget them?
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On the one hand, it would probably be better to be able to erase these experiences from memory with the help of medication, but I am not sure if it is possible to “erase” only bad memories so precisely, selectively.
On the other hand, I think that difficult experiences shape us and our behavior in a particular way. We draw conclusions and learn from them, some people can draw inspiration from suffering, creating art or saving other people from similar situations.
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Personally, I’ve never been in such a situation, so I think I can’t say what I would need.
However, I know a person who, after a hard life experience, needed help. Not only talking to other people,like psychologists or psychiatrists, but also pharmacological ones. Night fears, hearing voices, couldn’t get close to places that reminded her of the situation, reaction to some verbal expressions, which used in a completely different context caused paralysis – she had to face it every day. This person, being under the care of specialists, came out of trauma. Without the help of medicines, it seems to me that this would be impossible.
I believe that every person after traumatic experiences should get help. The drug that was mentioned above seems to me to be facilitation. It also depends on how it works. If only this drug would forget this traumatic situation, it would be cool. What would happen to the side threads of life? Would they also be cleared of our memory?
I don’t know if I would agree to take this medicine right away, but I would definitely consider the suggestions. The knowledge that this would confuse the chronological order of my past life could also affect me with various effects. -
Firstly the case is if those medications would be the only possible form of treatment available to you? One should consider if forgetting about a bad experience completly would be truly beneficial for them. Bad experience in this case would be treated merely as some kind of flu or cold. When taking a pill you want to restore your previous „healthy state” that you’ve been in before the illness. In my opinion it reallly doesn’t work the same with bad experiences which are much more interwined with our live timeline. One can’t be cured from a bad experience by just forgetting about it. It would start a whole new bunch of problems for a person to just completely forget about that experience – just by a fact that experiences have consequences which cannot be understood if we won’t be able to remember them just as a fact of our past. It could also create a form of slippery slope where that person would want to erease all bad experiences from their lives, where obviously experiences are creating who we truly are. So answering your question I wouldn’t take this kind of medication because that’s why we have psychotherapy not only pharmacological treatment.
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Though it sounds like a perfect solution at first, it doesn’t seem to be that great if you really think about it. Firstly, you absolutely should be allowed to take such medication if it existed, there are no doubts.
The rest might be problematic as every question creates more problems. How would the ‘forgetting’ about the experience work? Would you forget only traumatic memories and nothing around it or a whole period of time would be erased? Eighter way it would create memory gaps which would lead to further confusion and possible suffering. My second concern is that forgeting may ease our concious mind and free us from thinking about the experience, but what about other symptoms of trauma? Without us being conciously aware of said trauma I assume all of the other symptoms would make us feel really unwell mentally and for which there wouldn’t be any reason or explanation. The other scenario is that we wouldn’t remember the traumatic experience, but were aware or were made aware of it. In that case I can’t imagine being at ease with the fact that something so terribly bad happend to me that I needed to take medication in order to forget about it. I would not be able to take my mind off of it.
All in all I would consider taking this medication only if all of my uncertenties and problems with it were solved and when psychoteraphy and medication for managing the symthoms of trauma would fail. -
I agree with statement that hard situation shape us and make us who we are. BUT no traumatic situation in my opinion. Traumatic for me is for instance murder or rape. I can imagine when somebody become stronger after him father died of cancer. But it is hard for me to imagine that somebody become stronger after his father was killed by criminal. It’s build hatred to people I think. So medication to help forget the experience it is no bad idea. But on the other hand if for instance some day I will wake up in hospital and some doctor will told me “Someone raped you but you don’t remember it. This is your signature that you wanted take medication to help you forget. Now you can go to home.” – it’s sound not good. Or if some day someone will told you “Your father dead not of cancer but somebody killed him” – believe or not?
After all I think – if I was after traumatic situation and medication was offered to me – I will try deal with it without medication.
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I have some traumatic experiences and sometimes I think that it would be easier to just forget about some of them, especially those affecting my life. But on the other hand. Every situation we find ourselves in shapes us and makes us the person we really are. Every case is different so it’s really hard to decide whether this medicarion would be a good solution or not.
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I have some traumatic experiences too. To be fair – a lot of them but they made me who I really am and I’ve learnt that some trauma can prepare us to future difficult situations. What’s more I think that I’m stronger after what I’ve been through and that I can challenge everything so I would never take the pill.
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Theoretically, I think that every experience and problem we are struggling with shapes us. Some degree of pain and sadness is inscribed in our lives and we will always experience it after all. However, I mean experiencing such sad events, such as the death of a loved one. This is tragic but inevitable.
However, traumatic events, such as abuse or assault, are things that do not happen to everyone and this is probably the worst thing that a person has to deal with, while often completely without coping with it.
I myself have some traumatic experiences that haunt me to this day and I would do a lot without blinking to erase them from memory. It really depends on the person. Some people prefer to be aware of certain events and work through them, while others try to get rid of all memories of a specific incident.
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