In a perfect world, we’d just forget things that have hurt us or completely destroyed our ability to function on a day-to-day basis – remember Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Our mind would become a filing cabinet we could flick through, reaching in and throwing away offending memories, so we could start afresh without the burden of the past. Thanks to science, this could soon be a reality for recovering drug addicts.

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute in Florida have discovered a method of chemically wiping away memories, particularly those associated with drug abuse.

“We now have a viable target and by blocking that target, we can disrupt, and potentially erase, drug memories, leaving other memories intact,” said TSRI Associate Professor Courtney Miller. “The hope is that, when combined with traditional rehabilitation and abstinence therapies, we can reduce or eliminate relapse for meth users after a single treatment by taking away the power of an individual’s triggers.”

During the study, the scientists found that a single injection of a chemical called blebbistatin successfully disrupted long-term storage of drug-related memories – and blocked relapse for at least a month in mice with meth addiction.

Although the idea of losing pieces of your past sounds slightly terrifying, the scientists behind the study believe their work could revolutionise drug addiction treatment, enabling millions of addicts to completely forget the triggers that lead to drug use. Triggers – from sounds, smells, to seeing something in the street – can last a lifetime and are widely considered one of the main risk factors when it comes to relapse.

Rehab teaches patients to abstain and counsellors treat the psychological issues that comes with addiction, but there’s currently no pharmacological assistance for meth, cocaine and MDMA dependence. Having a drug to help with recovery would certainly respond to a public health need.

At the moment, the treatment has only shown positive results on mice and addictions to other drugs are yet to be tested, but it’s a positive start. Now that science has discovered a way to target types of memories and erase them, what else might we one day pay to forget?