If you frequently drink to excess, you may wake up the next day struggling to piece together your memories of the night before. You remember what happened up to a specific point, but after then, things get hazy. This alcohol-related memory loss is known as a blackout.
Blackouts occur when your blood alcohol content is high enough to significantly impair your judgment, your coordination and your memory. During a blackout, you may injure yourself because you trip and fall, or you might make a poor decision such as taking other drugs or having unprotected sex. The difference comes down to factors such as body weight, gender, metabolism and how quickly you consume the beverages. There are two types of blackouts: partial and complete. A part of the brain called the hippocampus plays a crucial role in your ability to form new memories.
We are here to help you through every aspect of recovery. Let us call you to learn more about our treatment options. Someone experiencing a blackout may be more likely to participate in risky or dangerous behaviors.
These include drunk driving, property damage, and unplanned sexual encounters. A person in a blackout will have no recollection of these activities once sober.
Because many people continue to engage in conversation and act normally, it may be hard to determine if someone is experiencing a blackout.
Common signs and symptoms that someone is experiencing an alcohol blackout include:. The more alcohol a person drinks and the higher his or her blood alcohol content, the more likely he or she is to exhibit signs of a blackout. Binge drinking is the primary cause of an alcohol blackout.
The more alcohol a person consumes in a set amount of time, the more likely he or she is to experience a blackout. A rapid rise in blood alcohol levels is what ultimately causes a blackout to occur. This means that, during a blackout, someone may be able to recall something a few minutes after it happened but not remember it several hours later.
Consuming alcohol while dehydrated or on an empty stomach can increase the risk of a blackout. This is because these conditions allow blood alcohol levels to rise much quicker than when someone is hydrated or has recently eaten.
During a blackout, the hippocampus in the brain is unable to form long-term memories. As a result, a person can fail to remember large chunks of time despite being conscious. Everyone experiences an alcohol blackout differently. In the US, meanwhile, laws vary by state. But New York, for example, says mental incapacitation can legally result only from involuntarily being given a drink or drug, not from having chosen to drink.
Sarah Hepola has ample experience of this kind of disconnect. In historic studies, scientists plied participants with alcohol to induce memory loss.
This cannot be done today for obvious ethical reasons Credit: Getty Images. This makes blackouts a useful marker and predictor of other detrimental behaviour. For these reasons, questions about alcoholic blackouts are now increasingly being used in screening tools to quickly get at whether someone is a recreational drinker or a problem drinker.
Mary-Beth Miller, an addiction psychologist at the University of Missouri, found that a simple intervention technique could help blackout drinkers reduce their drinking, a finding she first showed in ex-army veterans and then extended to university drinkers. It is an online questionnaire that asks individuals about their drinking habits, and reports back how much they are drinking compared to others who are similar in age and background.
An online questionnaire that feeds back how a person's drinking habits compares to others, could help reduce alcohol consumption Credit: Getty Images. Screening questionnaires about alcohol use now routinely ask about prior blackout experiences, which could make it easier to target and find individuals who need help. Simply asking about the amount an individual has drunk was not found to be effective. These interventions are not time-consuming or expensive, making Miller hopeful that she and colleagues can build upon them to develop even more effective interventions.
Other researchers hope that asking about previous blackouts will in turn help reduce other types of risky behaviour. For those who experience regular blackouts, a good first step is to better monitor your own alcohol intake and ask friends around you to do the same. For Hepola, it is only looking back that she could see the warning signs. She has now been sober for eight years and is glad to no longer fall into the black trapdoors of memory loss. It has made her life a lot simpler, she says.
You can follow her on twitter or facebook. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. In Depth Health. Why do only some people get blackout drunk? Share using Email. By Melissa Hogenboom. Even when drinking the same amount as others, only some people experience blackouts.
But blacking out can predict other problems down the line. Risk factors We now also know more about other factors that influence blackouts , such as drinking on an empty stomach or when sleep deprived. Across the board there seems to be inherent brain vulnerabilities, and genetic vulnerabilities, that put a person at risk. Consent wormhole Like the risk factors, the consequences of blacking out are not only worse for adolescents, but also for women.
You have to rely on a preponderance of evidence to determine whether or not consent was given. Screening questionnaires about alcohol use now routinely ask about prior blackout experiences.
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