Understanding what makes someone addicted to alcohol can be the first step in helping a person seek treatment. Depending on how bad their alcohol misuse has been or if medically-assisted alcohol detox will be needed for withdrawal symptoms, entering a treatment center may be a necessary option. Professional medical staff can assist in the difficult process of withdrawal, making the transition into sobriety less daunting.

Alcohol-induced blackouts: A review of recent clinical research with

This makes blackouts a useful marker and predictor of other detrimental behaviour. Evidence also shows that women with a history of sexual assault are more likely to be re-victimised if they are in an alcohol-induced blackout – compared to binge-drinkers who didn’t blackout. This is because they are risk while they under the influence due to impaired decision making, especially when it comes to assessing potentially dangerous situations, but they are also at risk afterwards because they cannot rely on their memory of what happened. But blood alcohol levels do not explain why only some people lose whole chunks of their memory while others who drink similar amounts don’t. A 2016 study led by Ralph Hingson, also of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, provided some answers. In rats, White showed that there are doses of alcohol where brain cells “still kind of work”, and higher doses where they are completely off – which explains partial blackouts where only fragments are lost.

Does Blacking Out Mean You’re an Alcoholic?

This can make it difficult to identify if you or someone you know is blacking out. Alcohol overdose, or alcohol poisoning, can have signs like difficulty staying conscious, seizures, vomiting, severe confusion, trouble breathing, slow heart rate, cold, clammy skin, dulled reactions, and extremely low body temperature. If you or a loved one are struggling with alcohol or other drugs, call us now to speak with alcohol storage ideas a Recovery Advocate.

1. THC, the psychoactive compound found in marijuana, may also increase blackouts when combined with alcohol.
2. The hippocampus, a region vital for memory formation, is particularly impacted by excessive alcohol consumption.
3. Regardless of the exact reason for your frequent blackouts, blacking out easily is a clear sign of a need to evaluate alcohol use and make changes, potentially with the help of your doctor or an addiction treatment specialist.
4. The brain’s ability to create long-term memories is completely blocked.
5. Some people may be more susceptible to blacking out from drinking than others.

Someone who passes out has either fallen asleep or become unconscious because they consumed too much alcohol. Although this part of the brain can build up long-term tolerance to alcohol, this isn’t true of the hippocampus. The experience can be compared to snapping photos only to discover later that there was no film in the camera. The difference with a blackout is that, not only are there no pictures in the camera, but your mind has absolutely no memory of having taken the pictures.

If you are continuing to experience blackouts from alcohol, but are struggling to control your alcohol use, seek evaluation for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and professional treatment. An alcohol-related blackout causes you to lose your memory without losing consciousness. You may interact with the people around you or engage in normal activities. The people in your company may not realize that you’re in a blackout and won’t remember the events the next day. Some people confuse alcohol blackout with passing out from drinking too much alcohol, but there’s an important difference. Alcohol blackouts cause loss of memory while passing out from alcohol involves a loss of consciousness.

Physiological Damage

It’s as if a segment of their memory has permanently vanished, leaving a blank space in their recollection. A large study of twins found that genetic risk alone accounted for more than half of the blackouts experienced. In a different analysis, drinkers who reported that their mothers may have been problem drinkers were more likely to report blackouts than those who did not, but there was a difference here between the sexes. Men who said their mothers had a drinking problem were twice as likely to black out than women who said the same. One longitudinal study of adolescents aged 12-21, led by Reagan Wetherill of the University of Pennsylvania, showed that certain individuals who later went on to abuse alcohol and experience blackouts, were less able to suppress their actions.

One of the scariest aspects of being blackout drunk is that you won’t know it as it happens. Your friends and family will typically tell you about your actions, which you have little memory of. However, this constant occurrence of not remembering large aspects of a night while drinking will quickly lead people to realize they are a blackout drunk. She was experiencing alcohol-fuelled blackouts – a colloquial term with potentially serious consequences.

That chunks of memory are completely lost during a blackout goes some way into revealing what is going on in the brain. It’s believed that the hippocampus is momentarily impaired – this is the structure of the brain important for weaving together incoming information to create our memories of everyday events. Though these experiments were performed with alcoholics, they set the stage for understanding how even non-alcoholics act during a blackout. They remain influential in part because today – for obvious ethical reasons – scientists cannot ply participants with alcohol to induce memory loss. They must largely rely largely on questionnaires of past events instead.

You should also consider any health effects on your alcohol metabolism. For example, someone with liver disease may metabolize alcohol more slowly and have a higher BAC level after a few drinks than someone without liver problems. Until recent studies showed otherwise, for many decades it was believed that only alcoholics reached the state of being blackout drunk. A bizarre series of experiments – which never would be ethically approved today – revealed some startling insights. Charles F. Zorumski is Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.