Reply to NYT expose on The Tell by Amy Griffin

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I read the book and the NYT article. The book was well-written (and the NYT states she had a ghostwriter) but I don't believe that she recovered memories that had been completely buried and were brought up by MDMA use. It is exactly like recovered memory through hypnosis thst happened in the 1980s: something completely forgotten with no corroboration from others brought back to full awareness of it. I think it is the same old story in new packaging.

The book downplayed how rich and connected she is. I had not heard of her or her husband but she's friends with Goop and that level of influence/wealth. Easier to get book deals and interviews (and hire ghostwriters) in that world. But also she and her husband are investing in microdosing and want to profit from it. I think she and he (he used it before her) think it's a valuable tool. Do others? It's trendy right now. 
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I haven't read the book but this whole thing is making me less interested in macrodosing psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. I have battled depression and anxiety for decades. I have childhood trauma but I know some of my memories are suppressed (not totally hidden, just fuzzy and it can be hard for me to remember details especially of traumatic incidents). My family is aware of the trauma but worked hard to cover it up and pretend it was normal. My siblings and I have all dealt with this in different ways, with one sibling deciding none of it was a big deal at all, one deciding to cut our parents off completely and views it as unforgivable abuse. I've considered using MDMA to try and make sense of it all.

But this story doesn't make it sound like a useful solution. It seems like microdosing could make it worse by confusing me further, potentially making me think I'd recovered a memory that was invented or borrowed, and just generally cause even more conflict in my family than already exists. I'm going to stick with traditional therapy, sorry.[/quote]

I don't think human brains (especially children's brains) work  the way people want them to -- they don't contain tidy little memory packages wrapped up in paper and all you have to do is have a tool to unwrap the paper to reveal the "real" memory.  There is tons of evidence about how distorted memories can be -- even adults witnessing something like a car accident will legitimately remember it in significantly different ways.  The brain will often borrow something from a different memory to fill out holes or things it missed.  Kids memories in particular are really compromised because kids often don't have a frame of reference for what they are experiencing some the brain will borrow from some other experience to make sense of it, which is why kids often remember things that couldn't have happened (becuase their brain is borrowing from a fairy tale or kids show, and so adults will know that it couldn't be true).  It's more problematic when the kids brain borrows from a different, possible experience --- like substituting a different (known) person for an unknown person in a memory.   
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), your best path forward is probably not trying to figure out the past, but instead figure out how you and your family fit into the future together.[/quote]

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