Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 9, 1994 TAG: 9408110004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KENTON ROBINSON THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If not, then why do you remember so little of what you did in 1973? Why do you forget who you're calling the minute you dial the phone?
There's an explanation for these synapse lapses, say researchers who study memory and the human brain, and it has nothing to do with what you fed your head in the '60s.
It wasn't the drugs, dude; it's just muddle age.
Those who smoked pot have not forgotten any more than those who did not, nor are they any more forgetful, says Alan Searleman, a professor of psychology at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., and co-author with Douglas Herrmann of the new textbook ``Memory From a Broader Perspective.''
It is difficult, he says, for even the straightest person to remember in any real detail what he was doing 10, 15, 20 years ago. And losing your car keys, or even your car in the mall parking lot, is an experience common to all ages, though one that becomes more common the older you grow.
``I would say unless you took things to extremes, you're likely not to have any ill effects due to the fact," Searleman says, ``that you smoked marijuana.''
Or tripped.
``There's really no evidence that any of the recreational compounds - cocaine, marijuana, LSD - are capable of causing significant or prolonged brain damage that would have any effect on anybody's ability to function adequately in a cognitive way,'' says Arthur Leccese, an associate professor of psychology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, who does research on the effect of drugs on memory.
Unless you overdosed, of course, but an overdose ``is a life-threatening emergency where a person has taken so much of the drug'' that he's convulsing and internal organs are shutting down. If you're not sure whether you ever overdosed, you didn't.
But there is one drug, he says, that even in small doses can kill memories. And it's the one many former hippies have turned to in middle age.
``I teach a course where we talk about memory loss as a consequence of brain damage, and if you scour that literature, you'll find that - short of overdose - the only drugs we know do it are alcohol and the other organic solvents, glue sniffing, stuff like that,'' says Leccese. ``The only drug that is demonstrated to be certainly associated with brain damage and brain damage to areas involving memory is alcohol.''
An extreme example of this is hardcore alcoholics who succumb to something called Korsakoff's syndrome: ``The person, for instance, despite the fact that they're in their 70s, they may still believe that they're 19 and that Eisenhower is running for office.''
But even the moderate consumption of alcohol, Leccese says, can affect memory.
``Even sub-intoxicating doses, let's say a quarter of a beer. You know that wouldn't even intoxicate somebody, nonetheless it would kill neurons. That's the way alcohol works. It's a very primitive drug, and it's quite odd that one like that is the one that would be so legal and so freely available. That's the memory destroyer, if any of them are.''
But what about people who did a lot of acid? What about flashbacks?
``They do happen,'' says Neal Goldsmith, a New York City-based social psychologist, ``but it tends to happen in people who were megatrippers, people who took acid every three days for a year and a half, people who did 500 trips, things of that nature.''
If your memories of the '60s seem all run-together like a kid's watercolors, that may be because much of what you experienced back then was under the influence.
Researchers know that memory is very ``state dependent,'' which is to say you tend to remember things better if you re-create the state in which you experienced them in the first place.
In other words, if you were stoned then, you might find yourself better able to recall those days if you got stoned now.
Memories, especially those of the distant past, also tend to be the products of a fairly creative act.
``Whenever you're trying to remember something, you're basically reconstructing it,'' Searleman says. ``You don't remember word for word, detail by detail, and so what you're doing is you're reconstructing based upon your own awareness of the world and the way you think things should work.''
by CNB