Wisdom

What if I could swallow a pill and all the pain and grief could vanish? Would I take it?

In this thought experiment, I always assumed the way such a pill would work would be to, ever so surgically, remove the references to Mary stored in my brain. Rewire the whole grey matter show and rewrite my story, in the same way that screenwriters adapt stories for the big screen. They remove a character here, insert one there. The overall story arc is kind of the same, just sanitised now for better big screen viewing. Better remembering.

My response to these fleeting thoughts and questions in the mind is a resounding “no”. If that part of me was gone how could I still be me? Isn’t there something fundamental about the way we recall and interact with the memory of our experiences that defines us? Even if those experiences are so emotionally charged that there are times we don’t want them exposed for risk of detonation. There is happiness to be found even in the most tragic experiences. There’s a comfort in the grief. The pain makes it real. Doesn’t it?

But here’s another thought experiment. What if the pill doesn’t expunge Mary from my memory? What if it, purely takes away the pain? What if, after taking the pill, you can talk to your heart’s content about your lost loved one, because the sadness and grief is gone completely. It was just an event in your life. The emotion has drained from your soul’s sponge, and there are simply no further tears to be wrung from it. Would I take that pill?

This is not a thought experiment. It’s reality. This longform piece (https://newrepublic.com/article/133008/cure-fear) at newrepublic.com is an amazing story of scientific discovery. A cure for phobias and post traumatic stress, by simply swallowing a pill shortly after being exposed to or reliving the fear or trauma.

My thoughts  and words here are not for those people whose lives have been devastated by fear or trauma. These are the obvious intended recipients of this fantastic medicine. I can only begin to imagine the relief that such a treatment would bring to their lives. Rather my thoughts turned to the less obvious forms of trauma and grief where the final outcome is yet to be determined. Could you; would you short-cut the grief journey and down a pill?

I realised when Ellen died over 10 years ago now, that there was something powerful happening to Mary and I as we gathered the courage to retell the story over and over. Somehow, somewhere in the retelling was healing. It worked with Ellen, and, since Mary died, I purposely have (almost) never shied away from the need or opportunity to tell my story for the same reason. It helped us then and it has helped – and is still helping me – now, understand and deal with the aftermath of Mary’s death.

After reading the above article, I’m wondering if we were simply self administering “exposure therapy”.

There was something else though that’s harder to explain about the feeling of managing to deal with death, and come out the other side. I know Mary and I both felt it. We talked about it on many occasions. It was like we wore (wear) a little badge. One that told the world, “hey, we’ve been through some serious shit, but you know what, we’re out the other side now and looking back, while we’d do anything we could to change what happened, the whole rotten thing has actually turned us into better people”.  Now that is a weird dichotomy. It’s hard to explain. I feel it even more now.

Mary’s dead. I’m a better person.

Don’t read anything into that statement other than the words that are written. There is no “because” that can link these two sentences, no “than I otherwise would have been” and definitely no suggestion of being “better off”. But there it is. I do feel like a better person.

I feel stronger emotionally. Although I’m time poor I feel like I’m generally a better dad, a better friend. None of this means that given the option, I wouldn’t go back to my old self, with Mary in a heart beat. It just means – in the same way that Mary and I felt we grew after Ellen’s death – I’ve changed after Mary’s death. I’m acknowledging that her death has changed me. Maybe – at least in parts – in positive ways. I also acknowledge that it’s not done changing me yet.

In exploring this idea I came across the following words by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke “The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.”

Can I claim agency in this change in me? In any progress towards understanding? Now that’s an interesting question. I want to. I feel like I’m the agent of the change. Hell, I decided I was going to “do” grief, and I reckon I’ve made a pretty good fist of it so far. When Mary and I coped with Ellen’s death, that was us “doing” grief. Part of the growth has to be that feeling pride for getting through something, getting things done. I owned the grief, and I have been doing the work to get me though it. (In no small part also thanks to the support of family and friends).

I’m no champion of free will. And if I get too carried away with the above thoughts, the underlying knowledge that while I feel the agency, it’s not really down to “me”, reins in excessive hubris. I’ve got no real right to feel proud about it. At least no more right to feel proud than say someone who, through natural ability alone, can hit a cricket ball 10 rows back. That’s genetics. And yes for those people that work at it and become successful there’s something more than genetics at play, but I’m not convinced the experiences and innate drive we may or may not have to work hard on perfecting an inherent skill is not also down to luck in the end.

Yet I still feel a certain degree of pride. And I feel like the pride feeds the emotional growth and supports it.

Nelson Mandela in his book Long Walk to Freedom writes “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it… The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Could you really feel pride at your triumph in circumstances where there was no fear to overcome? Where there was no grief because you swallowed the pill? Could you really feel like you conquered? These feel like emotions that are triggered on the basis of achievement. Can you have this achievement without the fear? His use of words like ‘courage’ and ‘conquer’ suggests he felt the agent of his triumph (and rightly so).

But this article, this pill, that can take away fear and trauma overnight, hacks away at my illusion of agency in the triumph. The science reveals the trick in the mind. Somehow, in my beginning to arrive at a place where the pain is no longer there, it appears at the source is the simple presence or absence of a protein at my synapses when my most painful memories are recalled. It’s hard to claim agency, to feel pride, in the presence of absence of protein at my synapses. Whatever chemicals are bathing my synapses right now, I’ve got no wilful or voluntary way to regulate them.

The drug is propranolol. “When propranolol was reviewed by President’s Council on Bioethics it called it ‘the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain or guilt’”. Propranolol is a beta blocker. Beta blockers block the receptor sites at the synapse for adrenaline and noradrenaline, which are part of the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn mediate our fight or flight response. The key discovery has been that if these proteins can be blocked while the patient is reconsolidating the memory (by way of active exposure or recall) then the reconstituted memory is free from the anxiety and fear that originally went with it.

The analogy used in the article is that under normal circumstances, where people recover from fear or trauma without this treatment, the anxiety and fear filled memory is like a red M&M in a jar that has been filled with blue M&Ms – that are absent the anxiety and fear. After time passes, when recalling the memory safely a blue M&M is pulled from the jar. However the red M&M hasn’t been removed, it’s still in there.

In my own experience it’s in the retelling of the story, and talking openly about things that I’ve managed to fill the jar up with the blue M&Ms to an extent that the red one surfaces only rarely. But I know it’s in there. I know how it tastes and feels on my tongue. If I want to go looking for it I can find it. And sometimes I do. Intentionally.

I don’t like the thought of it being not there. It’s like the badge I wear. The badge is there because of the pride I feel. If the red M&M is not there, even though it may have been an illusion all along, I can’t take credit for anything and there is no badge to wear. Can you actually grow in this circumstance? Can you become the better person? I think I need the illusion (if it is one), I need the red M&M to be there – somewhere.

The researcher took the drug herself when her daughter underwent surgery, to help relieve the anxiety the researcher may have felt during and after the procedure. She said: “My memory feels very strange… Normally I might have had a very emotional memory, but now it’s just an event…. I missed the emotion… It gives colour to the experience”. Life’s colours are not all light and happy pastels.

But what about Cara I wonder. What she witnessed… Does she (will she) feel the trauma to such an extent that perhaps it would debilitate her at some point. I hope not. I don’t see any signs. Should she be administered the pill and treatment as a prophylactic? As a parent if you give me the option to review and write my children’s future story, I would not hesitate to rub out the pain and suffering. But is that the right answer?

Just this week I listened to the podcast On Being (http://www.onbeing.org/program/krista-tippett-an-inquiry-into-the-mystery-and-art-of-living/8644) . It’s a wonderful podcast normally hosted by Krista Tippett, however this time she was being interviewed for her own thoughts after years of interviewing others. Two thoughts struck me while listening to the interview.

The first arose during a discussion of a quote from Philo from Alexandria: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” Somewhere in this quote is an assumption that you’ve fought a battle or two. Otherwise how can you be kind and appreciate or have empathy for others’ battles. My sister and I were recently having a conversation about how people responded to us, how people interacted with us, following Mary’s death. Her observation was simply that it was the people who had never experienced loss or some form of tragedy or trauma, that had no idea how to communicate or engage on the issue. They avoided it, or would change the topic of discussion. In those instances the kindness and understanding that we were potentially looking for from friends was not there.

I have often thought of those people who’ve had experiences, and been able to draw on them to share, listen and help me grow as having wisdom.

The second thing during the podcast discussion resonated with this very point. I’m paraphrasing Tippett’s words here: “What goes wrong doesn’t have to define us… wisdom is found in people who walk through whatever darkness, whatever hardship, whatever imperfection and unexpected catastrophes – the huge and the ordinary – and integrate them into wholeness on the other side. They’re not fixed, but they’re whole and healed. Not in spite of the things that happened but because of how they let them become part of themselves.”