Accelerated forgetting of a trauma event after a single dose of hydrocortisone
nature.com
nature.com
Our brains are complex entities, this treats it as a simple one. I think it will leave a hole in continuity and it may well be helpful, but residual awareness that something horrible has occurred will linger and it will be harder to resolve.
I guess what I am trying to say is that the body remembers, even if we manage to pluck out one simple way the body goes about remembering. This may trigger reactions to certain stimuli which will make less sense when the person cannot relate it to remembered trauma.
I think PTSD is something you have to work on, and get help for. I did eventually for mine but years and years of not having any treatment.
This is the McDonalds solution.
A terrifying branch of this is the military's interest in using it in war zones.
It fills my mind with images of soldiers getting "reset" on a frequent basis. What would they be like after a year or two of that? (I have also read ideas on preventative drugs to help a soldier not remember).
Humanity, whatever someone is able to retain in a war zone, is the last defense against atrocities. The remembrance of atrocities is the only way to bring them to light later.
That said, these aren't things that can be figured out based on gut feeling or how something "seems". Your body doesn't remember anything, what are you talking about?
There's no reason to think that it would be impossible to create a pill to mitigate some trauma. This seems like a dangerous obsession with "therapy", that our modern society seems to have. "Taking pill bad. Must work through"
It's been observed for a long time that some people handle trauma way better than others. Who says we can't get to a place where everyone can have that, or that we can never find medicine that helps?
Have you ever been hangry? How about the experience of chronic intestinal irritation worsening your depression? How do you feel in your head when you can’t stop your heart from racing after a stressful day of work? Those are all examples of the inverse.
The body is the trigger but the brain is the source of the symptoms.
This study specifically measured only the first week after watching a trauma film, so I'm sure you're right that the extension of this to actually treating PTSD will be a lot more complicated, but it doesn't sound like the treatment is expected to cause complete forgetting of the event.
I was having non-stop flashback of traumatic events... When I was deep in these memories(what i think they call intrusion), It was like having taken cocaine with 10e5 effect flooding my frontal lobe, a lot of anger and depression at the same time. I was enable to get out of bed except once in a week to buy some food... When I ran out of food I could stay +48h without anyintake...
I googled something about memory improvement or trauma... I don't remember well... and came to read about an hormone, sold in most dieterary shop on the internet. I decided to give it a try.
It was life saving. Instant effects. In a month of self prescribed cure, I was coming back to life. It had unfortunately a few side effect, the most dominant was burst of anger. So I stopped it. But it was enough to get me in track.
What would have been the alternative solution ? Therapy ? Which one? Most of them (if not all) are either pseudo-science gibberich when it is not plain mystical or "spiritual" bullocks, like the one that says you want to fuck your mother but you don't know it until you spend 7 years, 100$/week, on a couch telling whatever come to your mind to a guy which could as well be emulated by an 60's version of therapist bot.
I'm not sure the product I ordered was what was advertised. Years latters, I ordered it again (an other brand) and it had no the same effect if any at all.
What could be the rationale for denying someone an effective treatment?
Am I supposed to live my life warning others about risks they don't care they are taking? I sometimes just want to be normal and forget what happened, and join the others in not thinking about people getting killed as part of my every day life.
A very overlooked drug that can be used in the treatment of many disorders related to anxiety, stress and fear. Without the risk of debiliating addiction benzos and benzolikes bring.
My mom has severe PTSD that is causing memory and cognitive decline because all her resources are dedicated to fight or flight. She is just a ball of the most significant stress you can imagine and it’s destroying her.
Have any recommendations or suggestions?
This pulls the memory into short term storage and then when you sleep the memory will reconsolidate into long term storage but without the physiological adrenaline/stress response.
I had some terrible experiences that provoked strong grief responses and it took several cycles of recall / reconsolidation before the emotional stress response was stripped to something manageable.
For my moms case, she’s unfortunately buried whatever trauma it is that is causing her to eg always have her bags packed and ready to bolt such that I don’t think she can consciously identify a memory that has traumatized her. She doesn’t even think she has trauma (despite everyone having at least some trauma and her more than others). At this point she’s just put up all her defences and refuses to deal with the root of it. It’s ruining her psychologically and unfortunately negatively affects all those who are around her (considering she’s at 20/10 stress levels nearly all the time but she thinks that’s normal).
Thanks again for sharing what has been working for you. I’m trying desperately to find something that can help her become a functional human being again because I’ve been her full time caretaker for last couple years and now it’s killing me too. But perseverance they say, balanced with burn out.
https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/news/tetris-used-to-prevent-post-...
I can confirm from personal experience that this works, and that it isn't specific to Tetris. Other visual/spatial puzzles are similarly effective.
I finally got a prescription, and a full bottle of pills at the ready -- but I haven't tried it yet.
Here’s to hoping it works well next time you need it tho.
I recall reading that propranolol reduces the physical manifestations of anxiety, stress and fear, but you still feel it internally. For example, when used for stage fright, you won't fidget, stutter, blush, sweat, and have a racing heart beat, but you'll still feel the anxiety inside yourself.
"In short, there is no convincing evidence that playing Tetris actually helps people. The studies have methodological problems, tiny sample sizes, and have failed to replicate. Some found a reduction in “intrusive memories,” but no improvement in outcomes of PTSD or distress."
https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/10/tetris-trauma-viral-twi...
It was used to keep people awake for a long time immediately after a traumatic event. The Tetris was less important than the lack of sleep.
If you don't sleep and play Tetris for a couple days you scramble the process of turning short term memories into long term, making them less impactful.
I'm curious because my therapist said I probably have CPTSD (not as severe as your ex had it, though; to the point it doesn't even sound like CPTSD to me).
The 'apparent severity' of PTSD has more to do with the pattern you fall into.
Don't accept the irresponsible "rare" declaration, either. "Seldom-reported" is far more accurate and likely, given that CSR can be subtle. It takes a particularly knowledgable doctor to diagnose it, or a very persistent patient. When you combine those factors with the fraction of users who even have the wherewithal to go to an eye specialist in the first place, and the likelihood of the incident making it into a tracking database, you have the formula for a hugely under-reported malady that can ruin the quality of people's lives.
Patients should be apprised of all risks so they can weigh the benefits of the treatment, which may of course be deemed superior. The important part is that patients should always have the facts so they can make the choice.
>We found that participants receiving hydrocortisone showed a faster reduction in daily intrusion frequency. Voluntary memory was assessed once, at the end of the week, but was unaffected by hydrocortisone.
Ultimately I see some contradictions in what the goal of different types of psychiatry/therapy is. Is the end goal to just be as happy and functional as possible? Is it to avoid the worst case scenarios the most while not caring as much about baseline? Or is there a moral/humanistic good to processing the world even if it results in being less happy and more functional in concrete tasks?
I'm really not an expert in any of these things - but it does sometimes bother me that the discourse on this is jointed. I think it comes up in political/cultural talk quite often.
If you have a bad day, talking to someone about it usually helps.
Hell, bitching to a coworker about the idiot you just got off the phone with is a pastime for the average office workers.
This drug eliminates the amount of time you think about a past event. This is pitched as good. Is the model that thinking about something is bad but talking about something is good? What if talking about something changes how or when you think about something? As you said with your co-worker example (which I realize is not PTSD levels) I think it could be pretty easily argued that fixating about your current situation is actually contributing to negative mental processes.
I have done therapy for specific issues and it worked for me - but nonetheless still dont see some contradictions between therapy and a pill that makes you think about something less.
I think I get what you're saying; I could, for instance, just drink a lot every day to ignore a variety of ideas, but it's much healthier in the long run to deal with those ideas directly.
Unfortunately, the reason why there are so many palliative coping strategies is that unless a person is in a state where they can examine those uncomfortable thoughts, then it's just creating more harm and the person isn't able to deal with the issue. That in turn often leads to the maladaptive coping that leads people into therapy in the first place.
So a common therapeutic goal getting people to a point where they can first recognize that they are in an upset state, second calm themselves without totally disengaging from the event and, then (if possible) work on whatever thoughts or events led to becoming upset in that manner.
That work is contingent on the first two parts of that; palliative care to help people get into a place where they can do the first two things without engaging in more harmful types of coping strategies (drinking, for instance) seems like a reasonable method.
The drug in the paper, to me, seems more like the coping strategies you talk about but without the other physical harms. Like what if alcohol made you not think about something but actually kept your physical and mental health the same/stable? Would that be desired? Isn't that what this drug is hoping to achieve?
Also, the purpose of therapy, such as CBT, is not to fixate on one's current situation, but be able to unlearn feelings of trauma / anxiety from the event. This is done by engaging with a trained professional who can help the patient carefully break down their thoughts and feelings. Reflecting on a traumatic situation with a partner is different from reflecting on a traumatic situation amongst oneself.
I think it's probably better to reflect on and process a _potentially_ traumatic event, than it is to repress or otherwise force yourself to forget it. But either of those is preferable to dwelling on it and spiraling in negativity.
Perhaps this is just a matter of degree. For really bad trauma (mass casualty, etc) it's probably good to have stronger tools available.
It seems plausible to that thinking (even if involuntary) about any other traumatic memory may result in short term stress but in the long run help you process it and be healthy? Like in my own experience thinking about something a lot on my own is part of therapy - since I really think about how I explain the situation and what really happened - so I guess I'm skeptical that not thinking of something is actually good for mental health in the long run even if in the short run it works.
That's a fair criticism. Doing research on real PTSD is tough -- everyone's experience is a little different, and is colored by their personal history -- and it'd be wildly unethical to put test subjects through an in-person experience stressful enough to induce lasting PTSD. Some studies, like the Tetris intervention one I linked elsewhere [1], used real trauma patients; others, like this one, have to rely on stress simulants like a violent film.
I will note, however, that Irréversible [2] -- the film this study used excerpts from -- is exceptionally violent. It's not a run-of-the-mill action film. One of the scenes the study probably used graphically depicts a man being beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.
[1]: https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/news/tetris-used-to-prevent-post-...
I guess maybe the core of my confusion comes with the term "intrusive" or "involuntary" memory. To me, in reference to PTSD, this sounds extremely negative. But perhaps you were in a situation where you saw someone die, perhaps even someone you know, should the goal be to only think about these things in therapy or when you sit down to meditate? Is involuntary/intrusive thoughts on these bad so long as it doesnt have major effects on your stability?
Not nearly as traumatic - but when I went through my last break-up I thought about it non-stop for a few weeks. I was able to get through my work and keep up social engagements fine, but otherwise it consumed me. Would it have been better to only think about the situation in therapy sessions and allotted meditation time? Maybe? But I'm not that sure on that I probably needed a few weeks of internal "involuntary" struggle in order to be free of the negative thoughts around it going forward.
I guess for me the answer is that if your brain is thinking about something, even if it seems a bit disorganized, you are still processing it on your own time and the short term benefits of not thinking about it then may not actually be good for your long term. Though perhaps this runs counter to established literature I'm not aware of.
I still have this multiple times, every day, even with 2-3x therapy per week since a year.
This is nothing like "recalling a memory". Also, since I am unable to clearly express what I have witnessed/experienced, talking to "ordinary people" (e.g. most my friends) about it is mostly met with reactions that really don't help at all.
In general, PTSD treatment involves changing one's perspective towards the traumatic event so that when triggered, the thoughts it recalls are not intrusive and debilitating - making it so the patient doesn't feel shame, fear, loss of control when trigered.
I know PTSD can be traumatic and takes different forms
I suppose my confusion still comes from the fact that stopping intrusive thoughts is measured as good. But what if these intrusive facts are needed (just like therapy) to process things in the long run?
I would understand if someone could ran a (very costly) experiment that said "Taking this over the course of 5 years lowered the amount of outbursts/negative behaviors someone took" but this is just measuring thoughts.
Presumably, if there had been another group that had been in a therapy group after seeing this traumatic film it is highly possible the number of times someone thought about the film (which is what they were measuring) would have gone up - but would that be bad?
If the patient is not sufficiently able to choose due to being mentally unable and the drug is likely to bring them back to lucidity, then it is obvious that bringing them into a lucid state is the logical path, so we should recommend administering the drug.
For my part, I've noticed that people who dwell on these traumas have a hard time. Meanwhile I've suffered numerous things that many of these people claim have led to debilitating mental illness and I operate in a space of mental comfort. So, should I encounter another trauma event, I'll take the forgetting drug.
And presumably you, believing otherwise, should refuse it.
P.S. Here's a thought experiment for you: What if the MMR-2 vaccine instantaneously kills people at the age of 60. It was introduced in 1963 and this year is 2022, so the first recipients are not yet 60. So you simply cannot prove that it does not do this. You have a son. How do you reason whether to risk the possibility of instantaneously killing your son when he hits 60 vs the risk of him contracting any of Measles, Mumps, or Rubella?
If someone successfully processes the trauma in a way that isn’t disruptive, they by definition don’t have PTSD anymore.
What you’re saying is a bit like saying someone who suffers from persistent, terrible constipation, to the point it causes them health issues should ‘just poop’.
If they could on their own, they wouldn’t have the problem!
Perhaps therapy is an intervention where they really can remove that waste from you with minimal invasiveness? And that's the argument here? But I still sorta think there is a measurement error here where taking a drug to not think about something so you can only think of it while with others is delaying the issue, not solving it.
The point remains - saying ‘but can’t you just x’ when the problem is they can’t just x doesn’t really get you anywhere.
A lot more people should come to this conclusion, reflect on it, and then not post whatever thought helped them come to this realization. Just go read enough to inform an opinion on the matter before sharing it.
There should not be discussion forum on the website if there is a belief that smart people (who have read plenty of books on clinical psychology and neurology) can't ask questions about something they haven't personally worked in.
I would be fine with this, but the cat's out of the bag now.
15+ years later she remembers telling them to go ahead and do it, then there's a hole in her memory for about 10 minutes.
I'd say that's one good solution.
This is one reason we always give a shoutout to Tria Orthopedics in the Twin Cities, MN region when someone needs an orthopedist: she was one of their first patients and the wrist maintained full range of motion after healing.
It isn't. Sometimes you can experience trauma, then experience stresses, and react to the stress in normal ways.
The disorder is when this doesn't happen, and you have atypical reactions to stress, which can be debilitating.
There's tons and tons of examples why stress after trauma is a disorder. Also a very good wikipedia article if you'd like a place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_stress_disorder
Forgetting, as a treatment, may be something some people want.
To my eyes your comment is pretty dismissive ("drug people up"). A little empathy, and an open heart goes a long way here.
How is it a solution? If giving people a drug reduces disorders and that benefit outweighs the cost, then it’s generally considered a good idea.
Just like some people are left with persistent recurrent pain in an otherwise healthy and recovered limb (often known as rheumatism), some people are left with persistent recurrent stress after trauma - such as suddenly bursting out crying or cowering in fear after incidentally remembering trauma that happened 20 years ago while doing the dishes.
When this sort of thing happens, we call it "post-traumatic stress disorder", and are looking for ways to treat patients. Making them forget the event is one possible treatment, and there are others (such as trying to disassociate the event itself and the strong negative feelings).
Just like acute pain is useful to keep us healthy, acute stress is very important. But chronic pain and post-traumatic stress are not useful to anyone, they are failure modes of these otherwise useful systems, and it makes sense to try various ways of correcting them.
It isn't. If anything that supports OPs point
We know this for sure since there is an extremely rare disease in which people literally feel no pain. These people have a very tough life, and have to constantly manually inspect their bodies to make sure they don't have injuries they're not aware of (cuts, sprained ankles etc.), and are also essentially unable to participate in any kind of sports because of this.
For example, when putting your hand on a surface, if you didn't feel the pain of extreme heat, you wouldn't know that your skin is getting burned. Or, if you miss-stepped and sprained your ankle but didn't feel the pain, you would keep putting your full weight on that sprained ankle and probably turn it into a serious injury. Without pain, you wouldn't know you're having a heart attack and wouldn't seek any medical attention. I can go on and on: accute pain is extremely important to basic health. You can't "be careful", unless you think it's reasonable to get full medical checkups after every walk.
Note that "acute" means "short lived", it doesn't mean it's particularly strong. It's the opposite of "chronic", which means "long term". For example, when you prick your finger, you're feeling some (very mild) accute pain, which serves the purpose of letting you know your skin was pierced and you need to stop pushing in that direction.
My whole point was that this is utterly wrong, and that, while stress during a traumatic experience is normal and potentially even required (akin to pain), stress after the experience is definitely not a good thing, and should be treated in any way possible (whether that's family support, therapy, or medication is up to every individual case) - just like chronic pain.
Relating to pain, people should get relief as soon as the pain has done its job - that is, as soon as they know about the injury and the area they have to protect - any more pain than that is unnecessary, even if normal. In the vast majority of circumstances, I imagine this is probably a matter of seconds or minutes after the injury occurred. I can imagine some weird, vanishingly rare, circumstances where the pain may legitimately need to be endured for longer, but that would be splitting hairs.
And an accute anxiety attack (assuming this occurs without some traumatic event) is obviously not normal or helpful and should be treated immediately. If this anxiety attack is happening during a traumatic event (say, I am currently being held at gunpoint), taking a pill to calm down may be less required (though even that is debatable, especially for a panic attack, which generally leaves you entirely helpless).
When has grief done its job? I've never been held at gunpoint yet somehow experienced stress on many occasions. How many of those do you want to subject me to? The DSM generally says 6 months to become a disorder for most things from what I've read. How about considering a question that isn't trivial to answer?