It had already been discovered that administering the drug to patients who have recently experienced a trauma interferes with the transfer of memories from the part of the brain where they are experienced, the hippocampus, to that area where they are stored to come back as flashbacks, the cerebral cortex. What wasn't known was whether patients who had experienced a trauma years ago would receive the same benefits as those newly traumatised.
Since people who suffer from flashbacks relive the memory completely, the test cases who wrote their experiences out began to re-experience the emotional traumas all over again. In other words they had recreated a circumstance within themselves that closely matched those of a recently traumatised patient and should therefore be able to benefit from an immediate administration of the drug.
A week later the patients were called back to listen to a reading of their scripts. They were all monitored for anxiety symptoms. An overall twenty percent reduction was noted and their trauma level was less elevated then the group who had taken the placebo.
This group is considered too small a sampling to provide an indication of how successful the treatment is, but the doctors involved feel it is sufficient evidence to encourage them to keep investigating.
The doctors freely admit they have no idea what amount of risk the patients face in the dampening of other memories. Will happy memories be affected or will it just be the memory that is foremost in the mind at the time the script is being written?
It's obvious a person can't just take the drug and the emotional impact of their bad memories will decrease. They have to be in a controlled situation where they are administered the drug while at the height of the emotional experience for it to have any effect at all.
At first blush, this sounds like it might be something useful. It's not doing anything like erasing memories, just easing their emotional impact. But I can see two problems, one obvious and one that has more to do with long term treatment implications for a patient.
The obvious hesitation is that nobody can have any idea what other affects this drug, utilized in this manner, could be having on the memory. If a patient only experiences minor improvement the first time and elects to continue the drug therapy, what will the cumulative effect on the memory be?
Everybody is so different when it comes to our emotional and psychological makeup that it could be almost impossible to make a generalized prediction on how people will react to it. There would be no way to guarantee there won't be contradictions for those taking the drug.
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