“Spray To Forget” is an art project-cum-product from designer/artist Reed Seifer; he’s blended some aromatic oils that are used for stress relief aromatherapy, with the idea that you can “edit your consciousness” to overwrite bad or unwanted memories.
While Seifer’s project is a bit wishful, there are real efforts to understand how to manipulate or mitigate memories using pharmaceuticals like the beta-blocker propranolol (which is normally prescribed as a blood pressure medication). As this Wired interview with Anders Sandberg points out, the ethical complications are enormous, and we as a society are probably not ready to engage in them constructively enough, but that doesn’t mean there won’t continue to be efforts to bring memory-altering drugs to the marketplace.
My open question for your consideration is whether you’d consider using something like “Spray To Forget” as a way to deal with traumatic experiences that are difficult to process. To my own surprise, I am a little uncertain; once upon a time I would have vehemently said “no”, but now I sometimes find myself wishing I could simply wipe away painful memories that even the passage of time hasn’t fully managed.
