Medical Can amnesia be caused by a specific drug?

Alcohol.

What's your interest in this?

 

Severe alcoholics often get to a point where they will buy a drink or bottle rather than a meal. Over time they become malnourished, not getting enough of all the necessary vitamins. A deficiency in a certain B vitamin will lead to the permanent destruction of their ability to form new memories. This is called "Korsakov's Syndrome."

Oliver Sacks describes just such a patient in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat in chapter 2: The Lost Mariner. The man couldn't remember anything that happened more than ten minutes previously.

 

Do you have memories you want to destroy?

 

You're still trying to come up with some hare-brained, spare-brain scheme.

 

Drugs like Vicodin have amnesic properties. They don't cause loss of older memories, but prevent the formation of new memories while you're under the influence of them, so you don't remember anything that happened while you were taking the drug. It doesn't work for everyone though.