Adventures at the Intersection of Memory and Impulse Control

August 4 -12, 1971

I’ve been thinking about memory and impulse control recently. That started when I learned that memory first developed in cavemen as an evolutionary trait to stop people repeating mistakes especially when consequences could be severe.

This comes home to roost for me when I'm driving in Toronto’s notorious traffic. Sometimes impulse control fails me and I bypass a shortcut if access is blocked. Then two minutes later I'm stuck and swearing at myself for not taking the shortcut.

This disturbing trait reminds me of all this.

I was in Mashhad, Iran, in early August of 1971 travelling overland from Lisbon to Kathmandu. I had arrived in Mashhad by overnight train from Tehran.  I got to Tehran on a four day bus ride from Istanbul.

 

Tehran was tense but safe. I felt the clash of civilizations that Samuel Huntington wrote about. I saw an emerging western city floating in a cauldron of steamy eastern soup. The cars, the department stores, the westernized people had an optimistic air. But there was a gathering storm buffered by a strong police and military presence.

My first brush with future Iran happened soon after I arrived in Mashhad when I tried to walk into a mosque. A woman with a scowl like one of Cinderella’s evil sisters ushered me out behind a flaming branding iron.

Later I hooked up with two buddies who had befriended a local.

This man, let’s call him Ali, was a cop. He was wearing a tailored dark blue suit. Tall and slim he looked like a Bay Street millennial born before his time. He said he was a detective. I thought he might be Savak, the Shah’s ruthless secret police.

Ali relished in reviewing Iran’s drug laws with us. The law lacked complexity and nuance. The choice was life or death. If you were convicted of a drug charge your life ended. This got me thinking about a memory I promised myself I'd never forget. It's this.

I had met George in Istanbul a week earlier. George was a local dandy. Well dressed. Well spoken. He discovered me lollygagging in an outdoor cafe down the street from the twinned tourist sites; Hagia Sophia and The Blue Mosque.

We spoke for awhile. George got to know me a bit. Enough to know I was travelling on the cheap and would be broke when I got home to Toronto in the fall.

George told me about how drugs were cheap in Turkey because it was a transit point between the poppy fields in Afghanistan and robust demand in Europe.

He knew I was on my way to Iran and said I'd be dumb to buy drugs in Istanbul. Not that the idea would ever cross my mind. But he did describe how I could make some easy money to support my studies if I bought a brick of Marijuana in Istanbul and mailed it home to myself. It would cost 20 dollars to buy, five bucks to mail and worth possibly a thousand dollars on the street outside Rochdale College. I had never dealt drugs and really didn't know how I'd sell the brick in Toronto but I wasn't focused on that then.

I lacked a constraining memory. So with some  excellent salesmanship from George going over the pros and cons and answering my objections I succumbed and handed over a crispy blue American Express 20 dollar travelers cheque.

I was to pick up the brick on the Asian side of Istanbul that night, a ferry ride across the Bosphorus to the less prosperous slummy side of the city. No problem. I was standing on the designated street corner in time for the exchange. As the minutes ticked past I realized two things. Firstly that I had been swindled and secondly how witless I was to have succumbed to George’s sales pitch. I was angry at myself and swore that I would remember this night and never do anything so inane again. A life experience. The constraining memory I needed.

Now back to Mashhad and my collegial discussion with Ali about the drug laws in Iran. I was wondering if he could see through me. Did he know I lacked impulse control? Did he know I had missed the point of Midnight Express? Did I look guilty even though I had no drugs with me? I got out of there fast. Secure with my constraining memory that would keep me safe.

Alas. Not so fast. Not so safe.

A week later, in Kabul, Afghanistan, I could not resist the impulse to buy a hockey puck sized chunk of hash for a price that would make the merchants at Dollarama blush. So much for constraining memory.

What's become of me? I have memories and an abundance good intentions but still not so much impulse control. I continue to fight to do the right thing every day of every year.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve descended from a strain of cavemen who survived without the ability to use memory to protect themselves? Maybe so.