It was 9:21 PM and the constant knocking on my bedroom door woke me up. My two girl friends, Ruby and Chin, came over to ask me out for a drink. I was hesitant at first. I was not prepared but they were able to convince me with their eager persuasions. At exactly 10:00 we hailed a cab and went to the bar where we used to drink.
Conversations poured in as we filled our glasses with vodka alternating it with beer. Bottle after bottle after bottle, we drank. The liquid seemed tasteless to me that I would finish my drink in a few gulps. It was more than a month since my last alcohol intake.
The next day, my friend showed me pictures of last night and I looked at them confusingly. She told me stories of what happened and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Oh no, not again,” I thought. Unknown to them, I’ve been experiencing blackouts several times before. Usually every time I indulged in alcohol.
Blackouts, as what Dr. Aaron White would describe, are episodes of amnesia (partial or complete loss of memory), during which subjects are capable of participating even in salient, emotionally charged events - as well as more mundane events - that they later cannot remember. (Blackouts are not to be confused with the act of passing out.) These periods of amnesia are primarily “anterograde”. It means that alcohol impairs the ability of the person to form new memories while he/she is intoxicated but does not erase memories that were formed before intoxication.
People around you would not even notice that you are experiencing this kind of condition because you are able to do things—simple and/or complicated, like driving a car, talking to complete strangers, dancing on top of a table, crying out loud and other complicated and sometimes humiliating behaviors.There are actually two qualitatively different types of blackouts: en bloc and fragmentary blackouts. People who are experiencing en bloc blackouts cannot recall any details from events that ensued while in the period of intoxication, regardless of efforts by others to facilitate recall. It is as if the process of transferring information from short-term to long-term storage has been completely blocked. It is also unclear when this type of blackout ends because people tend to fall asleep before they are over. However, they are able to keep information active in short-term memory for a few seconds that’s why they can do even the most complicated things.
Fragmentary blackouts on the other hand, involve partial blocking of memory formation during the events that took place while in the intoxicated state. People who experience these are often aware that they are missing pieces of events after being reminded that the events occurred. Reminders would cue some recall of some missing information. According to research, these are more common than the en bloc type.
What causes these blackouts? Research suggests that drinking large quantities of alcohol precede blackouts. Also, gulping drinks and drinking on an empty stomach, each of which leads to a rapid rise in alcohol concentrations in the blood. Women are also at greater risk since they have lesser body weight and proportion of body fat than men.
These blackouts are potentially dangerous since people under the influence of alcohol are fearless and mostly go beyond their limits. People experiencing these were reported to get involved in crime or accidents. Lucky me! I have trusted friends who laugh at my silly antics but would always keep an eye on me making sure I don’t get into trouble and we would always go home together safely.
References:
Alcohol, Memory Blackouts and the Brain
By Aaron M. White, Ph.D.
haha. nan! so which one was that? the en bloc or the fragmentary?
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