FORGET ABOUT IT

WE MAY SOON BE ABLE TO DELETE BAD MEMORIES FOR EVER. BUT FORGETTING COMES AT A COST

- by MIRIAM FRANKEL

Steve Ramirez knows how devastating painful memories can be.

In 2015, when he was a doctoral candidate working on manipulating memories in mice, his close friend and lab partner, Xu Liu, died unexpectedly at the age of 37. Haunted by memories of his friend, he found himself struggling to cope with his work and daily life.

Initially, Ramirez, who is now a professor of neuroscience at Boston University, wanted to numb the memories, which, on the face of it, may have seemed like a good idea. But the way he went about it had serious consequences. He turned to alcohol - and developed a severe drinking problem.

The realisation that things had gone too far came years later, in February 2021, during a very average day in the office.

"I was thinking, 'Okay, I've had three drinks and it's 11am. How many more can I have throughout the day without being a mess at night?'" he says. As he pondered this, a rehab facility phoned to offer help - concerned friends had contacted them on his behalf. "It clicked that in order for me to go to rehab, I'd have to take leave from work, and I wouldn't really be around my friends or family," he says. "The idea of losing everything suddenly became very real."

A few days later, his friends and wife staged an intervention. The combination of events was eyeopening. "If there was ever a wake-up call, this was certainly it. And the next day, I went to my first group meeting." The meetings changed everything and Ramirez hasn't had a drink since. "The group offered a connection with other people that I realised had been missing in my life since Xu died."

Since then, Ramirez's research has flourished and his memories of Liu's death are helping to drive it forward, instead of being tied to feelings of helplessness. Moreover, what he, and others like him, have found is that not only is it possible to manipulate painful memories like these, but you can do it without the harmful effects of alcohol.