ABSTRACT
Joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) as a teenager at the start of the 1980s was an exciting but very dangerous thing. Street protests, murders, and explosions were the normal expectations for society in Northern Ireland, and the police force was there to detect, contain, and prevent acts of violence, investigate crime. Interpol statistics indicated that Northern Ireland was at the time the most dangerous place in the world to be a police officer more than twice as risky as serving in El Salvador, next most hazardous location. Scientists state that extreme emotional memories activate a process that ups the intensity of long-term memories in same way that volume control on a radio increases. Studies have shown that emotionally arousing events cause stress-related hormones such as adrenaline to be released by the brain, which impacts upon emotional learning and memory. As a police officer there was a heavy emphasis on having to be strong and not showing emotion or weakness.
