Has your Sunday morning ever been like a version of the movie The Hangover? Your clothes are spinning around on the fan; there’s a random homeless person in the kitchen; and your mattress is on the roof. Your head is probably throbbing; you have the urge to throw up; and you’re racking your brain for some recollection of how you got home. In this case, you and your roommate may look at each other with the same exact thought: What the hell happened last night!?! If this is your experience the morning after drinking, there’s a good chance you blacked out. So here it is, Collegiettes: everything you could ever need to know about blacking out.
What happens when you blackout?
Blacking out from alcohol is when you remain conscious but are unable to remember what happened during the time of your intoxication. In a way, blackouts are an episode of amnesia, just not as traumatic and long-lasting. Blackouts aren’t like passing out, where you lose consciousness, but rather you lose your short-term memory. Blackouts are typically a result of binge drinking. In technical terms, alcohol affects the brain’s ability to obtain short term memories and process them into long term memories.
Types of Blackouts
There are two types of blackouts resulting from alcohol. A fragmentary blackout is where you may not remember events during your intoxication until you’re reminded of them. For example, your roommate might say, “Wasn’t that hilarious when we pushed Ian into the pool last night?” All of a sudden, you start to remember what happened. On the other hand, a total blackout is a complete loss of memory even with reminders or cues. In this case, your response to, “Wasn’t that hilarious when we pushed Ian into the pool last night?” might be, “What pool? Who’s Ian?”
What affects the occurrence of blackouts?
Blackouts typically occur from drinking too much too quickly, resulting in a rapid rise in blood alcohol level. College students are especially vulnerable to blackouts because of the amount of binge drinking that takes place. Also, women are more susceptible to blackouts than men because of the way they metabolize alcohol.
The Dangers of Blacking Out
In a nutshell, blacking out increases your chance of making dumb decisions while intoxicated. Surveys of college students revealed that many who had experienced alcohol-induced blackouts found out later they had driven under the influence, had sex without protection or had broken the law by vandalism or trespassing. It can also be pretty scary to wake up the next morning and not know what you did or said the previous night.
How can you prevent blacking out?
The only way to truly prevent blackouts is to not drink alcohol. However, that’s not a very realistic piece of advice for many college students. Thus, the best way to prevent blacking out is to limit the amount of alcohol you consume and to pace yourself in its consumption. Once again, blacking out is most likely to occur when you drink too much too fast. Getting yourself pregnant or arrested are surefire ways to ruin your night, and your college experience. Have fun but be smart–that’s all there is to it.
Sources:
http://addictionrecoverybasics.com/alcohol-blackout-types-of-alcoholic-b…
http://recoveringaddict.hubpages.com/hub/Blackouts
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm
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