Blackouts
From Drug Rehab Wiki
Years of alcoholism wreak havoc on more than just your physical well being. The constant abuse of alcoholic substances does some serious damage to your mind as well. If you think this is a myth, think again.
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A Blackout Scenario
Here’s a scenario that will sound familiar to many an alcoholic. You remember going out to the sports bar to meet up with some friends. You hadn’t intended to hang out so long, but after knocking back a few beers watching the football game, you were having such a good time, you decided to stick around. After all, everyone was in a good mood. Your team won, and you made a few bucks on the football pool (or sports bet, if you’re also a gambler). Pretty soon, your hard-core drinking buddies started in on the hard stuff. Naturally, you joined in. You might have even bought the first round. In an alternate scenario, you lost big-time, and needed to drown your sorrows (and forget about all the dough you just squandered) in booze. Somewhere along the line, you lost track of just how many and how much you drank. That’s not all you lost. Cut to the wee hours of the morning, or sometime in the late afternoon. You wake up covered in vomit, having passed out cold on the bathroom floor. The trouble is you don’t know where you are. This place doesn’t look familiar, and you have no recollection of leaving the bar, alone or with anyone else, let alone driving. Where the heck are you? You try to lift your head, but the pounding pain is too much. In disgust, you reach for some toilet paper to wipe your face at least, but the dispenser is empty. You attempt to call out, but your voice is raspy, weak, as if it belongs to someone else.
Binge Drinking and Blackouts
What’s happened is that you had a blackout caused by too much alcohol consumption. This is known as binge drinking, consuming vast amounts of alcohol in a short period of time. You do remember pounding those shots, right? According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA), doing shots in rapid succession in a short amount of time can produce partial or complete blackouts.
A blackout represents a type of episodic anemia. There are two types of blackouts: en block and fragmentary.
• En bloc blackout - During the en bloc blackout, the drinker may be able to participate in conversations and activities, but they later have no recollection of them. Alcohol-induced blackout does not generally erase memories formed prior to intoxication. But it does impair the ability to form new memories while the individual is intoxicated. Ironically, the intoxicated person, who is able to keep bits of short-term memory for a few seconds, is able to carry on conversations – sometimes to the point where others think they’re okay, when they’re actually far beyond being mildly inebriated. They can drive cars, and perform simple tasks. But the short-term memory doesn’t transfer to long-term memory. As a result, the intoxicated drinker cannot remember any of those events that transpired while he or she was intoxicated.
• Fragmentary blackout – Unlike the total blocking of short-term memory that occurs in en block blackouts, fragmentary blackouts only partially block memory formation for events that took place while the individual was intoxicated. The individual only becomes aware of the blanks when they recall pieces of a conversation or part of an event, and asks you to fill in what’s missing or is reminded of what took place. Typically, the drinker might say, “Remind me,” in response to a question from another about what the drinker said or did while intoxicated. Interestingly, the reminder may trigger some recall of the events or conversation. Research shows that fragmentary blackouts are more common than en block blackouts. Research on binge drinkers and blackouts has shown that blackouts of either fragmentary or en block nature are a powerful indicator of alcoholism.
BAC and Blackouts
It’s natural to assume that the higher the blood alcohol content (BAC), the greater the likelihood that you will experience a blackout – that you’ll forget what happened while you were drunk. In fact, drinking major quantities of alcohol often precedes blackouts, but there are other factors contributing to blackouts as well. According to research, gulping drinks and/or drinking on an empty stomach both lead to a rapid increase in BAC.
Studies of subjects who had consumed vast amounts of alcohol in a short period of time showed that blackouts occurred at BAC levels that often began at levels around 0.20 percent and as low as 0.14 percent. Blackouts also have a range of duration, from 9 hours to 3 days. Of course, if a person continues to consume large quantities of alcohol, the blackouts become more or less a permanent state – at least as long as their BAC levels are high enough to produce the amnesiac state.
Social Drinkers Have Blackouts, Too
Most research conducted over a period of 50 years on blackouts involved surveys, interviews and direct observation of alcoholics, most of them middle-aged males, and many of whom were hospitalized. But more resent research focused on social drinkers, primarily groups such as medical and college students.
In a 1995 study, one researcher wrote that 33 percent of the first-year medical students he interviewed acknowledged having at least one blackout. A 2002 survey of undergraduate college students found that 51 percent of those who had ever consumed alcohol reported blacking out at some point, with 40 percent stating they’d blacked out in the year prior to the survey. Of those who consumed alcohol two weeks prior to the survey, 9.4 percent said they’d experienced a blackout. Students experiencing the blackouts later learned that they’d engaged in acts of vandalism, drunk driving, unprotected sex and spent large sums of money – none of which they remembered.
Males and females can experience blackouts. Females, however, are at greater risk of blackouts, due to gender differences in physiological factors affecting distribution and metabolism of alcohol, including body weight, key enzyme levels, and proportion of body fat.
Blackouts are Unpredictable
You might be saying to yourself that what you experienced is only an aberration. You don’t normally have these incidents of lost time. Don’t kid yourself. If you are a hard-core drinker or a social drinker that engages in binge drinking, you’re more likely than not to experience blackouts at some point in your life. The trouble with blackouts is that they’re so unpredictable. You might think you’ve got everything under control because you tell yourself you’ll limit your drinking to a certain number of drinks. You could leave your credit card at home and only carry enough cash for X-number of beers, wine or cocktails. But this may not do the trick. You may be drinking on an empty stomach, or drink after taking medication, or be physically exhausted, or have other factors that come into play. It may only take a few drinks – even one, in certain circumstances – to bring on a blackout. Once you’re in the blackout, you won’t know it. It’s only when you wake up on the floor by the toilet, or in the car crashed into a tree or parked in some isolated spot, or in bed with a stranger, that you’ll realize you lost hours or days in an alcohol-induced blackout.
Drugs and Alcohol and Blackouts
For many social and hard-core drinkers, alcohol alone isn’t enough. Often prescription and recreational drugs are involved as well. This can range from prescription sedatives to marijuana and other street drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy, or methamphetamines.
Alcohol interacts with drugs of all kinds. That’s why prescription medication carries warnings about drug and alcohol interactions. Some prescription drugs can produce amnesia on their own, including diazepam (Valium), and flunitrazepam (Rohypnol), both benzodiazepine sedatives. Combining alcohol with these drugs increases the likelihood of memory impairment. Similarly, combining THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) with alcohol creates more memory impairment than if either substance is consumed alone. With the tendency of many college students and young adults and adolescents to smoke marijuana and drink simultaneously, some of the reported blackouts may have been caused by polysubstance abuse. Combining drugs and alcohol most often produces the en block type of blackouts.
Blackout Vulnerability
Are some people more prone to suffer blackouts? The fact is that it’s true, and you may be one of them. Research conducted on college students, half of whom had experienced at least one fragmentary blackout in the previous year, showed that those with history of fragmentary blackout performed worse on tests while mildly intoxicated (0.08 percent) than those students with no prior fragmentary blackout history. Two plausible interpretations of the study data were that:
• Subjects in the fragmentary blackout group were always more vulnerable to alcohol-induced memory impairment – which is why they performed so poorly on testing under alcohol.
• Subjects in the blackout group performed poorly on tests under alcohol as a result of prior experience (drinking enough in the past to suffer alcohol-induced memory impairment).
Subsequent studies point more toward the latter. Students who engage in repeated episodes of heavy or binge drinking are more likely to have incidents of memory impairment when they are intoxicated than non-binge drinkers.
Studies of pregnant woman who drank during pregnancy and their subsequent offspring showed increased use of alcohol and alcohol-related consequences, including blackouts, in the children. This suggests there may be a genetic contribution to the susceptibility to blackouts. In other words, some people are just more vulnerable to alcohol-induced amnesia (blackouts) than others.
Long-Term Effects of Alcohol and Memory
Alcohol abuse can have a dramatic impact on memory. Primarily, it disrupts your ability to form new long-term memories. As the amount of the alcohol you consume increases, the greater the magnitude of the memory impairment you may suffer.
Acute alcohol abuse impairs brain functions involved in planning, decision making and impulse control.
Getting Off the Blackout Roller Coaster
Okay, you’ve had a blackout. Now what? The only way you’ll be able to avoid blackouts in the future is to stop drinking. It’s as simple as that. Addiction experts say that you can’t control when and how you’ll have a blackout, since the contributing factors are all over the place.
If you drink, you’re putting yourself - and others – at risk. You already know you can’t stop at one drink. And one drink leads to another, and another, and pretty soon you’re binge drinking and completely out of control. It’s only a matter of time, and a short time at that, before you’re over the cliff and into a blackout.
Consequences of blackout drinking can be severe, even fatal. You could easily have an automobile accident while driving intoxicated and in a blackout. Someone may be seriously injured or killed. You will be liable, if you survive. At the very least, you may incur significant, even disastrous, expenses for legal fees, hospital and doctor bills, out-of-court settlements, even jail time. You could lose your job, your friends, even your family. In short, your life could very well be ruined as a result of alcohol-induced blackouts caused by your alcoholism.
How can you stop this? The best way is to seek professional treatment for your alcohol addiction. And, let’s face it. Blackouts are one of the warning signs that you have a problem with alcohol. Look into residential treatment centers for alcohol addiction, or hospital inpatient or outpatient treatment facilities. You can also find support before, during and following treatment for alcohol addiction by joining a 12-step group such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
But don’t try to go it alone. You’re not the best counselor in this case. You’ll tell yourself too many lies, preferring to believe that you can handle your liquor. You can’t. Your behavior (winding up on the bathroom floor, etc.) proves it. By reaching out, admitting you have a problem, and committing to overcome your alcohol addiction, you’ll be making the first in a series of crucial steps toward your recovery. Make this the last time you need to ask yourself what is the last thing you remember. Get help today and start on the road to a future of clear thinking and one that is alcohol-free.
