Given all the research showing the importance of sleep for consolidating memories, it should come as no great surprise that the reverse is also true: depriving yourself of sleep could help you forget experiences you would prefer not to remember.
A mouse study has revealed the brain becomes overly stimulated after a traumatic event causes an ongoing, frenzied interaction between two brain proteins long after they should have disengaged. However, the injection of newly developed drugs into the hippocampus within a five hour window calmed this process, and prevented the development of a post-traumatic fear response.