this is my 100th post!

Angela pointed me to an interesting article that talks about how scientists are testing a pill that may erase—or at least blunt—traumatic memories. This could essentially eradicate post-traumatic stress disorder and create a real-life Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Not ever having been a victim of authentic, down-and-dirty, shake-you-to-your-bone-rattling-core trauma, it’s probably not fair for me to say whether this is or isn’t a positive scientific advancement. How should I know if selective amnesia would ultimately be detrimental or beneficial to a trauma survivor?

Some people will point out how suffering makes us stronger, and how every memory, experience, and scar makes us who we are—adding another tile fragment to the mosaic of our selves. I do think we are ultimately the sum of our experiences...or, at the very least, we are profoundly shaped by those experiences. Our personalities are shaped not just by our neurons, synapses, DNA, and brain chemicals but also by the events of our lives. That goes for the good and bad: we are shaped by having loving parents just as much as we are shaped by having monstrous parents. But if I were unfortunate enough to inherit the latter, I think I should have the right to say, “I know I can learn something from this, and I know I can use this to help me avoid making the same mistakes with my own kids, but all I really want is to forget the abuse and neglect I experienced at the hands of the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally.”

Besides, saying that suffering makes a person stronger insinuates that those who are lucky enough to have mellow, positive life experiences are weak, and that’s not always true.

Let’s not forget, either, that trauma survivors aren’t the only people affected by the trauma. It effects everyone around them, too—hence the support groups for spouses of alcoholics and children of Holocaust survivors. Destructive cycles can be deepened and propagated through trauma. A woman who endures a horrific childhood might subsequently subject her own children who an equally horrific childhood, because that’s all she knows, and she’s too fucked up from her childhood traumas to break the cycle of abuse. And those second-generation sufferers can turn around and do the same thing to their own children. Isn’t it possible the PTSD-inhibiting drug could stop those cycles?

People will haul out the old adage: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But the thing is, while that’s certainly true for some people, it doesn’t account for everyone. Sometimes it’s “What doesn’t kill me breaks me” or “What doesn’t kill me turns me into a haunted shell who wakes up screaming every night and flinches at every sound and barricades himself into his home because he’s too terrified to step outdoors.”

People will point out that positive things can result from trauma: laws get passed, charities get created, awareness gets raised…and none of this would happen if traumatized victims either weren’t traumatized or if they had the traumatic memories stricken from their brains. It’s an interesting angle that has merit. Would Simon Wiesenthal have become as voracious a Nazi hunter as he was if he hadn’t survived the Holocaust? Would John Walsh be as powerful a crusader for missing children as he is if his son hadn’t been abducted and murdered? Would Tori Amos have founded the highly-successful Rape and Incest National Network if she hadn’t been raped at knifepoint? Maybe not. Probably not. Would an incest victim get her offending uncle put behind bars and away from other kids if she can’t remember that he ever molested her? Surely not—most people aren’t in the habit of campaigning to get their relatives thrown in jail for no discernable reason. But is it fair to ask one person to be a sacrificial lamb for the sake of many others? Is it fair to ask a traumatized father to embrace—instead of erasing—the pain that comes from his child being snatched, beheaded, and thrown in a canal, just because embracing the pain may cause him to channel it into ways that will help other victims and bring criminals to justice? Is it fair to tell him he’s not allowed to take this PTSD-inhibiting drug because positive societal strides won’t be made if memories of his son are deleted or dulled?

Ultimately, it’s his choice. That’s what I think this whole scenario boils down to: if the PTSD-inhibiting drug becomes available, every victim of trauma should be given a choice—maybe immediately, maybe after a waiting period—about whether it should be taken or not. The person who says, “I don’t want to take this drug to forget the genocide I endured because I want to use my experiences to help ensure that no other genocide ever happens again” is just as valid as the person who says, “I want to blot out every last visceral, gruesome memory of the genocide that haunts my every waking second.” Neither choice is better than the other.

I guess this argument has existed time and time again in other disguises. You’ve got the deaf rights advocates who disapprove of cochlear implants because getting an implant insinuates that being deaf is a deficiency and disability that must be corrected, and you’ve got the deaf people who are like, “Dude, I just want to be able to hear. It doesn’t mean deaf culture is invalid or I’m deficient—it just means I want to hear that Snow Patrol CD everyone is talking about.” You’ve got depression advocates who are all about embracing wacky serotonin levels and the creativity and insight they sometimes spawn, and you’ve got the depressed people who say, “I just want to get well. I just want to wake up in the morning without crying or lying paralyzed in my bed.” The PTSD-erasing pill seems to fall into this same category of being saluted by some sufferers and decried by others. On and on it goes.



song heard most recently before posting:
New Test Leper—REM