Warrenellis.com — The Trauma Pill

Warrenellis.com — The Trauma Pill
Read “On the Sea of Memory: a Journey from Forgetting to Remembering” by Jonathan Cott (an author and Rolling Stone journalist who did the last interview of John Lennon before the killing.) This is a new book that includes all kinds of wild-sounding tales about memory, including this one about beta-blockers and PTS.
Cott, a wonderful writer, received electroshock treatments for serious depression and subsequently forgot 15 years of his life, 1985 to 2000. In this book he explores memory from all kinds of angles — medical to African storytelling and Tibetan Buddhist remembrance of past lives. In between he writes his own story.
No, this business with beta-blockers and PTS isn’t a joke and isn’t Brave New World. Traumatic memories, as I understand, never diminish in intensity and so can ruin the lives of people who’ve already been through too much.