Versed, the Persistence of Memory, and Assault

Great Debates
1

Prompted loosely by the concurrent thread.

Quick Review: Versed is generallly described as an anaesthetic that doesn’t produce full unconsciousness like a conventional general anaesthetic, or block sensation (such as pain, the way an epidural injection works during childbirth), so much as it inhibits the formation of memory, so the patient does not recall the event.

Let’s accept that description at face value for now.

Question: if something traumatic happens but you don’t have any recollection of it having happened,

a) did it really happen (“if a tree falls in the forest…”)?
b) does it matter that it happened (i.e., is it no longer traumatic)?

Some Corollaries and Stuff, to stir the pot:

x) Joe the rapist has a batch of Rohypnol (aka “roofies”). His victims don’t remember. Joe likes where this thread might be going, and therefore says we should assume he is disease-free, uses a condom, doesn’t leave abrasions, etc, so it’s just the invasive sexual act itself.

y) It is said (by the repressed-memories folks, and yes some of that ilk have been discredited, see satanist childcare center woo stuff etc) that our minds cope with trauma by blocking memories, but that far from it being a cure-all, it haunts the person’s subsequent life until they re-evoke and process and come to emotional terms with what they went through.

z) Reciprocally, though, before we get all horrified that people undergoing medical procedures under Versed are being traumatized and that this is messed up and worrisome etc, it is also said that patients under general anaesthesia, people in a full coma, and at other extremely reduces levels of awareness, may nevertheless be able to receive sensory inputs and form memories, and insofar as the medical procedures may be necessary and important and performing them under conditions of full consciousness would not be fun for the patient, we are talking about degrees and compromises here, not absolutes.

Despite including z, above, it’s probably more fun for us to debate the absolute in the abstract though. What is the philosophical implication of “it happened but we erased it from memory”? At that level is it ideologically worrisome to have it equated with “didn’t happen”, or is genuinely unremembered experience the same as nonexperience?

2

Yes, and yes. Even an assault that left no perceivable effects on the body is an assault and is morally wrong; even if one believes that only things that explicitly and directly cause harm are morally wrong, such an assault could harm the victim because they could find out about it later and feel the same sort of sense of violation that they would have had they been aware of it immediately.

3

Causing someone to have no memories of a specific timeframe, without their consent, is itself assaultive, even if you don’t do anything else during that unremembered span.

4

Yeah, you don’t just get to turn off my brain so you can rape me.

If you asked a random stranger in advance if they would consent to this, what do you think they would say?

5

Strangely enough, if I ask myself the question, I…think I’d just shrug and say whatever. So long as there’s no physical evidence and I remember nothing, I…don’t think I care. In theory I understand that I ‘should’ be outraged if something like that was done to me, but…trying to imagine it, I really can’t muster up any interest or care; the main thing that keeps coming back to me is just the loss of some time that I could have been…reading a book or playing a game or posting on the internet or whatever. That’s…the most I can come up with that I feel a genuine reaction to if I try to imagine it.

6

To be more explicit about where I myself am coming from: I find it creepy to be told that I’m going to undergo a medical procedure and I will be in some unspecified degree of physical pain or discomfort – sufficiently unpleasant that they say “you really really do NOT want to be conscious and alert for this” – but that they’re going to give me Versed, which will make it all fine and dandy because I won’t remember it.

And I’m going WTF, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fucking horrible, and if anything I think maybe I’d consider it worse to have the memory of it erased; at a bare minimum it doesn’t mean I didn’t get exposed to something that I “really really did not want to experience”, so why are you folks acting like erasing my recollection of it makes it as if it didn’t happen?

In that situation I negotiated to get a different anesthesia that put me fully under.

Anyway, whether that was or was not a wise medical decision on my part, the underlying philosophical question has remained with me. It’s always seemed like utterly weird logic to me: “We’re going to do this unpleasant thing to you, you won’t like it at all, but don’t worry, we’ll make it so you don’t remember it afterwards”. If anything that seems like license for them to behaving in an dismissively detached manner while I’m expressing horror, agony, fear, etc.

7

You may honestly believe that, but I don’t, not for one second.

8

I quite simply do not have a few hours to spare for… what, incel shenanigans? Nope, can’t spare the time, and please keep your hands the eff off of me. Don’t sneak into my home at night and grope me either, even if you leave the place undisturbed and don’t wake me up.

9

My personal experience, which now stretches over two decades, with Versed is that it is a wonder drug. No pain, no bad memories, no trauma.

Example: I have a narrow throat opening. When I had back surgery a decade ago the anesthesiologist struggled to put the breathing tube in. Struggled to the point where my air was cut off. I remember thinking this is what it felt like to be waterboarded. I thought I might die.

Let me emphasize that. I went into serious back surgery with my last conscious thought being the possibility of my death. That trauma will never go away.

Several years later I needed more back surgery. I made it a point to tell every medical person at every stage that I would never go through that again. They started the Versed before the insertion of the tube. I felt nothing. I remembered nothing. No trauma.

In fact, I once woke up during carpal tunnel surgery when the only anesthetic was Versed. I turned my head and saw the doctors at work. I felt no pain, no trauma. Just curiosity. They noticed and bumped up the dose. Then I was in recovery.

I cannot understand how Versed is philosophically different from any other type of anesthetic that leaves you unconscious. I’m old enough that I’ve been knocked out with a variety of drugs. Blackness is blackness. There is a physical difference: it’s superior to other types I’ve had. Arguing against a superior drug because of mental contortions is at best a silly waste of time on the Internet, at worst an assault on somebody who might be frightened away from its use.

I needed to say that. I return the thread to its hypotheticals.

10

Consent.

While it’s been mentioned several times, that is the key to this hypothetical. Roofied rape victims with no physical indicators did not give consent.

11

Let’s get away from rape fantasies and whatnot, and go to the issue that is at the core. One that has bugged me since I learned of Versed.

Say you’re getting some invasive procedure, like stuffing a camera down your throat. The doctors know they aren’t doing any physical damage, so they just use Versed to make sure you don’t remember.

But you during the procedure are in horrible agony. The feeling of being trapped with a camera down your throat, that you can’t remove, is as panic inducing as waterboarding for you. It’s the most horrible experience you have had up to that point in your life. You want to cry and run away, but you can’t. You want to scream, but you can’t. You pray you’ll die during the procedure. If you could you’d knock that evil doctor over the head with a crowbar for what he is doing to you.

But then it’s over. You don’t remember any of that.

So, what does that mean? Was the terror you felt during the procedure real? Is it less real if you don’t remember? Where did all that terror go to?

12

Thank you, o well-named contributor to this thread! Yes, that’s the kind of discussion I was trying to foment. The reference to Rohypnol, etc, was just an attempt to paint a lurid picture of how “don’t remember” does NOT inherently equal “doesn’t matter”, so as to make my point. Apparently it was a bit TOO lurid and that’s what everyone seems to want to talk about.

13

I think there is actually an interesting question buried in the OP, one that I had been intending to bring up regarding the moral importance experiences that have no consequence but I think example you give has so much baggage associated with it that there is no way to actually get at the point you are trying to reach.

Very simply put, non-consensual sex is wrong period no matter the state of the victim. Having sex with a woman who is passed out and has no memory of the experience is rape even if she never finds out about it. It is also illegal to have sex with a brain dead woman or a corpse, even though there is no possibility of trauma in either case. If these are straight forward open and shut moral cases, how can doping someone up on pills be in question.

14

I tried making a less emotionally charged version of the OP here.

15

Well, let’s just ignore sex and discuss the issue. it’s easy!

Say you are getting a surgical procedure that involves cutting into your abdomen. For some reason, it is important to keep you conscious, and for some other reason, no local anesthetics can be used. There’s nothing that can be done on these points.

So the doctors give you a muscle relaxant and Versed. During the procedure it hurts just like you’d imagine someone cutting into you without anesthetic would feel like. And it takes an hour. You’re fully conscious, fully aware of everything, and unable to move or do anything. You’re intubated, so you can’t even scream.

But then it’s all over, and you remember nothing. But it was real while it was happening.

Did not your mind go through trauma? Was your brain affected at all by the procedure? Shouldn’t you still, at some level, remember something? It happened.

Doesn’t that bother anyone? Scare them?

16

Well, the answer for me is still the same; as soon as I no longer know it happened, if I haven’t been harmed (and indeed, have been helped by it) then it doesn’t matter. In the moment, though…yeah, THAT me is not going to be happy. But once I don’t have the memories of the event, that version of me no longer exists. His opinions are now irrelevant, since he doesn’t exist. The me that still exists is one that doesn’t remember the event, so that version of me doesn’t care.

17

To never-never land where it belongs. I’m with Exapno Mapcase - it’s a wonder drug. Fact of the matter is you NEED that procedure. So either you remember the trauma for this necessary procedure or you don’t. Don’t is vastly preferable. This philosophical argument for the integrity of memory is utter nonsense in my humble opinion. Sometimes it is vastly better to forget.

I had a sigmoidoscopy, awake for the entire procedure. It was uncomfortable and mildly stressful. Not terrorizing, not traumatizing, but uncomfortable. Had a colonoscopy on some mix of opiates and versed and it was a breeze. More invasive, better avoided if you can, but an entirely more pleasant experience than being wide awake for the previous procedure. Remember not a second of the actual process and much happier for it.

ETA:

Nope :).

18

No. No. No.

No. No.

Remembering is trauma. Not remembering is bliss.

YMMV.

19

Well, duh. That’s why I used it as a comparison to make my point about Versed. I was somehow unaware that this point was even marginally debatable.

My bad.

20

Well, it scares me.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it does. Even if it (may) have already happened to me, and I don’t remember. No, especially then.