A Drug to Cure Fear(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
A Drug to Cure Fear
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/opinion/sunday/a-drug-to-cure-fear.html
2 comments
Propanolol is not common, but it's certainly not a new finding by any means for treatment of anxiety (whether that is a one-time "stage preformance" dose, or a daily dose for persistent symptoms).
I do wish that Propanolol was tried on more healthy (edit: those without heart conditions where beta-blockers would be dangerous) psych patients before benzodiazapines or SSRI's. I have PTSD and it helped me a lot with barely any side-effects. Dependance is still a question, of course, but I still advocate its helpfulness. I do not however in any way think it should be advertised as a drug to "cure" fear.
That notion makes me sick. Unfortunately, that's what people will be seeking, in lieu of other treatment options that don't involve medication.
I do wish that Propanolol was tried on more healthy (edit: those without heart conditions where beta-blockers would be dangerous) psych patients before benzodiazapines or SSRI's. I have PTSD and it helped me a lot with barely any side-effects. Dependance is still a question, of course, but I still advocate its helpfulness. I do not however in any way think it should be advertised as a drug to "cure" fear.
That notion makes me sick. Unfortunately, that's what people will be seeking, in lieu of other treatment options that don't involve medication.
In an earlier time hunger, fear, (and probably even things like love and religious sentiment) had strong purposes. To a certain extent they certainly still do.
The problem is in this world all to often these impulses are destructive and as the problems of the world get traced down to the root these emotions will become revealed as troublemakers and replaced with something more suitable as the capacity is developed.
For example... look at hunger. We need it to tell us to eat. Or we did. But the desire to eat evolved in a time when food wasn't as rich or as plentiful. So now it causes problems. Kills more people than terrorists and cars and smoking and drugs. So people try to beat it back, go on diets, suffer, but why?
So eventually what I think will happen is that something will be tied into your metabolism. You'll get hungry when you physically need to eat and in proportion and with desire for the things your body really needs. Adjustable, controllable. Not the things a body craved on the Savannah 20,000 years ago or whatever.
Other emotions... same thing. Incidentally, I'm not advocating this...I have no doubt plenty of people would be horrified at the thought and the concept has extreme risks for sure. But I think in the total cost/benefit it will be what happens to humanity fairly soon evolutionary speaking.